The Death of the Soul in Romans 7: Sin, Death, and the Law in Light of Hellenistic Moral Psychology (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 2.Reihe) 9783161496127, 3161496124

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber / Editor Jörg Frey (München) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Friedrich Avemarie (Marburg) Judith Gundry-Volf (New Haven, CT) Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL)

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Emma Wasserman

The Death of the Soul in Romans 7 Sin, Death, and the Law in Light of Hellenistic Moral Psychology

Mohr Siebeck

Emma Wasserman, born 1975; 2005 PhD from Yale University; 2008 assistant professor of Religion at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-151599-6 ISBN 978-3-16-149612-7 ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2008 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was printed by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Held in Rottenburg. Printed in Germany.

For Jeanne, Bud, and Susan Bartlett

Preface and Acknowledgments This study is a revised form of my doctoral dissertation completed at Yale University in the fall of 2005 under the direction of Harold Attridge. I owe a special debt to Harry for making himself available for ongoing discussion over the years and for tirelessly commenting on my work. His many helpful criticisms and suggestions helped to make the work, and my time at Yale, immeasurably better. Stanley Stowers continues to be a dialogue partner and friend. This project has been informed by our discussions in countless ways and by his written responses to my work in numerous contexts. I have accrued a number of debts as well to those who have read and responded critically to my work since the completion of the dissertation. Adela Yarbro Collins and Bernadette Brooten responded to my work generously and I have learned much from their criticism and encouragement. Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Wayne Meeks, Merrill Miller, and Krister Stendahl all read and commented on my work on Romans in article form and helped me to anticipate many objections to the argument, style, and tone. I was particularly honored to discuss my work with Krister Stendahl before he passed away as his life and work continue to inspire me. I thank Jörg Frey and Judith Gundry-Volf for accepting the monograph for publication in the WUNT series. Judy also guided me through revisions of the manuscript and helped me to strengthen the argument at numerous points. Tanja Mix assisted me in the process of producing a camera-ready copy and I am indebted to her for much help and patience. I completed the revisions while a visiting professor at Brown University and Reed College and am grateful to the members of both departments for welcoming me to such warm and stimulating intellectual environments. My thanks go to Mark Cladis, Susan Harvey, and Ross Kraemer at Brown and the members of the Seminar on Culture and Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean who read and responded to my work. At Reed I benefited especially from my close proximity to the Classics department and thank Walter Englert and Sonia Sabnis in particular. Reed generously awarded me Stillman-Drake research funds that I used to help move the manuscript through the final stages. I thank my student research assistants, Kate Williams and Sarah Gould who checked the references, and Brian Urrutia, Greg Given, and Joseph Conlon who worked on the indexes with a

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seriousness and enthusiasm that helped to enliven the more tedious stages of preparing the manuscript. Finally, I thank my friends and family for their good humor and support during the long process of writing and revising. My grandparents, Jeanne Titcomb Bartlett and Bud Bartlett, are models of integrity and generosity that I call to mind sometimes daily. As a small token of my affection, the book is dedicated to them, and to Susan Bartlett, my mother and best advisor.

Table of Contents Introduction: Extreme Immorality as Death in Romans 7 ......................... 1

Chapter 1: Moral Psychology and Platonic Discourse................ 15 I. Mind and Emotion from Plato to the Stoics ........................................ 20 The Moral Psychologies of Plato and Aristotle .................................... 21 Stoic Passions: Chrysippus vs. Plato ................................................... 27 The Therapeutic Spectrum.................................................................. 31 Aristotle’s Therapeutic Spectrum........................................................ 33 The Therapeutic Spectrum in Plutarch, Seneca, and Beyond ................ 36 II. Patterns in the Appropriation of Philosophical Discourses ................. 39 Misrepresentation in Appropriation: Galen’s Platonism ....................... 42 The Appropriation of Platonic Discourse in Philo and Plutarch ............ 45 III. Conclusions ................................................................................... 48

Chapter 2: The Death of the Soul in Romans 7 ........................... 51 I. The Death of the Soul in Philo of Alexandria ..................................... 60 Extreme Immorality in Platonic Discourse .......................................... 67 II. The Life and Death of the Soul in Romans 7:7–25............................. 76 The Rhetorical Structure of Romans 7 .......................................... 77 Sin as a Representation of the Passions ............................................... 81 Reason Killed, Enslaved, and Imprisoned in Romans 7........................ 89 Body, Flesh, and Members in Romans 7 ............................................. 95 Knowledge and Ignorance: Life Apart from the Law ........................... 96 Self-Contradiction and akrasi/a in Romans 7..................................... 98 Law and Sin in Romans 7................................................................. 103 III. Conclusions ................................................................................. 114

Chapter 3: The Life and Death of the Soul in Romans 1–8 ..... 117 I. Extreme Immorality in Romans 1:18–32 .......................................... 118 Passions as Punishment in Paul and Philo ......................................... 126 II. The Death of the Soul in Romans 6–8............................................. 128 Sin and Death in Romans 6 .............................................................. 130 Romans 8:1–13................................................................................ 136 III. Conclusions ................................................................................. 143

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Conclusions: Romans 7 Beyond the Bultmann-Käsemann Debate ........ 145 Bibliography...................................................................................... 149 Index of Biblical Citations.................................................................. 159 Index of Ancient Sources ................................................................... 163 Index of Modern Authors ................................................................... 169 Index of Subjects ............................................................................... 170

Introduction

Extreme Immorality as Death in Romans 7 Few texts have been more productively interpreted and reinterpreted than chapter 7 of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Here Paul presents the dramatic self-narration of a person torn between the demands of God’s law and the reality of sin, repeatedly depicting a state of contradiction: “I do not do the good that I want, but I do the very evil that I do not want” (7:19).1 This lengthy description of self-contradiction culminates with the desperate cry “Wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?” and crucially structures the message of chapter 8 that announces God’s merciful intervention through Christ. In the West, a tradition running from Augustine to Martin Luther and John Calvin made Rom 7 central to its understanding of sin and in so doing ascribed a condition of total depravity to all humans and moral conflict even to the Christian. Augustine understood the monologue as a representation of the human will confessing its total incapacity for goodness and made an intense inner struggle with sin the normative human condition.2 Martin Luther famously rediscovered the Augustinian reading in his own experience: “Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction.”3 For Luther, the monologue taught that even the most pious Christian sins before God and revealed the sinfulness of all human striving, even for goodness. On this basis he argued that human beings can only be counted righteous by a gracious God who justifies in spite of their depravity; they are simul iustus et peccator, “at the same time righteous and sinner.” Later Protestant traditions followed Luther in making Rom 7 a prooftext for theologies of sin and justification. So, for example, in the twentieth century the influential theologian Rudolf Bultmann made Rom 7 amenable to existentialist theology by taking the text as exemplary of how 1

Translations of Paul’s letters are my own. All other translations are from the Loeb Classical Library unless otherwise noted. 2 Paula Fredrickson has shown that this reading is characteristic of the late Augustine, in “Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self,” JTS 37 (1986): 3–34. 3 Lewis W. Spitz and Helmut T. Lehmann, eds., Luther’s Works (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1960), 34:336.

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“human existence is concerned with its authenticity and yet constantly fails to find it.”4 Bultmann thus retained the Augustinian-Lutheran premise that the monologue displays the human as powerless to fulfill its most fundamental desires for goodness by construing this good as a mode of authentic existence. While the monologue of Rom 7 has been tremendously productive for later interpreters, historians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries found it difficult to explain many aspects of the text. Even setting aside major issues such as Paul’s understanding of sin, his anthropology, and the Jewish law, historians have had difficulty explaining the identity of the speaker, the nature of its self-described plight, and even the fact that the speaker claims to have died at the beginning of the monologue but then continues to speak for another twenty verses. This study historicizes the language and argument of Rom 7 by situating it within a contemporary moral discourse. I argue that the text elaborates on Platonic assumptions about the nature of the soul and dramatizes the plight of mind totally overwhelmed by passions and desires. The interpretation developed here owes much to the important critique of Krister Stendahl, who argued powerfully against the dominant Western interpretation of Rom 7 as a representation of human self-consciousness.5 In his now famous essay, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” Stendahl showed that readers from Augustine onward understood Paul’s depiction of introspection and inner turmoil in a way that obscured its historical meaning. This critique was informed by the important work of Werner George Kümmel, who argued that the speaker introduced at 7:7 was a type of fictive “I” rather than an actual person or Paul himself.6 Kümmel also undermined the universalist reading of Rom 7 as the consummate human struggle by arguing that the speaker describes a distinctively pre-Christian plight. Stendahl’s approach further particularized the text by insisting that it addresses specific concerns with the law and should not be taken as a doctrinal position on human nature and the reality of sin. Further, where Luther understood the speaker as Paul 4 Bultmann, “Romans 7 and the Anthropology of Paul,” in Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann (trans. Schubert Ogden; Cleveland, Ohio: World, 1960), 151. 5 Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” reprinted in Paul Among the Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 78–96. 6 Kümmel, Römer 7 und die Bekehrung des Paulus (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1929; repr., Munich: Kaiser, 1974), esp. 81. Though Kümmel limited himself to considering the fictive “I” only in Paul’s other letters, Stanley Stowers develops this basic insight in terms of Greek and Roman rhetorical conventions in A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), 264–272, hereafter Rereading Romans.

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using his own experience to typify the torment of everyman, Stendahl argued that such an interpretation generates contradictions when compared with Paul’s self-description in texts such as Rom 9:1, 2 Cor 1:12, and 1 Cor 4:4 where “Paul’s tone is one of confidence, not of plagued conscience.”7 This critique further undermined the notion that the text addresses the human condition as such and focused attention on the way the monologue advances Paul’s arguments about the law and the situation of the Gentiles. Subsequent interpreters of Rom 7 have largely taken Stendahl’s critique seriously but have struggled to find historical contexts that could help to explain many aspects of the text, especially the identity of the speaker. In verse 7 there is a distinctive shift, as if someone suddenly turns and asks Paul a question about what he has just stated. Out of this conversational exchange a voice emerges that speaks in the first person about some form of inner turmoil. Interpreters have taken this as Paul speaking autobiographically, a figure such as Adam, an arrogant Jew, or an exemplar of the Christian or pre-Christian experience.8 Yet even where interpreters agree on a basic position, they often differ substantively on what types of evidence justify the view or how it should be used. For example, Joseph Fitzmyer works through five possibilities for identifying the speaker and concludes that Paul here depicts the plight of “unregenerate humanity faced by the Mosaic law.”9 Though Fitzmyer does attempt to locate the text historically, he only appeals to texts from Qumran to support this reading, especially 1QH 4:30–38, which describes a person reflecting on sin and human wickedness.10 Fitzmyer takes the text as a model for the supposed confession of Rom 7, even though the only clear connections 7

Stendahl, “Introspective Conscience,” 92. I cite only one or two examples of each of the main positions. For the autobiographical reading, see C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London: Collins, 1959), 122–133; that of a Jewish boy prior to a mature interaction with the law, W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (London: SPCK, 1955), 15–35; the late Augustinian reading of 7:7–13 as the plight of mankind generally, and 7:14–25 as the Christian, C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979), 341; James D. G. Dunn, Romans (Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1988), 1.382–383; the unregenerate human being generally, Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980), 192; and for the common association of the speaker with Adam, see discussion and n. 12 below. 9 Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 465. 10 For similar approaches, see Mark A. Seifrid, “The Subject of Rom 7:14–25,” Novum Testamentum 34 (1992): 322; Peter Stuhlmacher, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary (trans. Scott J. Hafemann; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1994), 109–110. 8

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between the texts are that a narrator speaks in the first person and shows an interest in sin. This literature does not account for many features of Rom 7, such as sin’s location in the body; its activities in killing, enslaving, and imprisoning the speaker; the roles of the passions, mind, inner person, flesh, and body; or the speaker’s extended self-reflection on its internal division and repeated complaints that it is unable to put its good intentions into action. In a different way, James D. G. Dunn catalogs a range of positions on the identification of the speaker but then attempts to harmonize them all through a supposed Adamic allusion.11 Although the Adamic reading of the monologue has been very popular, strong arguments have been made against it.12 John J. Collins and John R. Levison have shown that there are almost no texts dated prior to the destruction of the temple that make Adam’s disobedience into a centerpiece of reflection on the origins of human evil.13 The implication of these arguments is that without further literary cues to warrant such a connection or echo, there is no justification for taking the speaker as Adam or someone suffering from an Adamic plight. In addition, Rom 7 does not fit with the story of Gen 2–3 because Adam does not encounter the law. Yet, Dunn insists, “the typical11

Dunn, Romans, 1.382–383. Many interpreters argue for some kind of allusion or direct connection to Adam but on very different grounds. So, Cranfield (Romans, 350) understands Romans 7:7–25 as a direct exposition on the text of Gen 2–3; Käsemann insists that “methodologically the starting point should be that a story is told in vv. 9–11 and that the event depicted can refer strictly to Adam” (Commentary, 196); for a similar approach, see Gerd Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology (trans. John P. Galvin; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 183. In a different way, N. T. Wright (The Climax of Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992], 227) states without argument or explanation that Paul views the arrival of the law as a recapitulation of the sin of Adam; Glen Holland (“The Self Against the Self in Romans 7:7–25,” in The Rhetorical Interpretation of Scripture: Essays from the 1996 Malibu Conference [ed. S. E. Porter and D. L. Stamps; JSNT supp. ser. 180; Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic, 1999], 265) argues that the character should be understood as a kind of Adamic Gentile; and Pheme Perkins (“Pauline Anthropology in Light of Nag Hammadi,” CBQ 48 [1986]: 517) understands the voice speaking throughout as that of Adam, as does R. N. Longnecker (Paul, Apostle of Liberty: The Origin and Nature of Paul’s Christianity [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1976], 92–97). 13 Collins, “The Origin of Evil in Apocalyptic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Seers, Sibyls, and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism (Boston: Brill, 2001), 287–300; Levison, Portraits of Adam in Early Judaism: From Sirach to 2 Baruch (Sheffield: JSOT, 1988); for strong critiques of the Adam reading of Rom 7, see Robert H. Gundry, “The Moral Frustration of Paul Before His Conversion: Sexual Lust in Romans 7:7–25,” in Pauline Studies: Essays Presented to F. F. Bruce on His 70th Birthday (ed. Donald A. Hagner and Murry J. Harris; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980), 229–232; Stowers, Rereading Romans, 86–88; and L. Ann Jervis, “‘The Commandment Which Is for Life’ (Romans 7:10): Sin’s Use of the Obedience of Faith,” JSNT 27.2 (2004): 193–196. 12

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ity of the experience of everyman expressed in the archetypal language of Gen 2–3 presumably therefore should be allowed to embrace a wide and diverse range of particular experiences.”14 For Dunn, the supposed Adamic allusions provide the basis for an all-encompassing meaning that includes Paul’s own experience and that of all other human beings, past and present. He synthesizes a range of positions on the assumption that all share the plight that later Christian traditions ascribe to human nature under the influence of Augustine and Luther. This study argues that Rom 7 can be better understood by appreciating its appropriation of Platonic language and assumptions. The approach taken here owes much to Stanley Stowers and Troels Engberg-Pedersen, who have both made strong arguments that Rom 7 draws on Greek moral traditions to depict moral weakness (a0krasi/a). Though they tend to focus on the second half of the monologue, both provide rich contextual readings of the conflict between thought and action that draw on moral traditions alive in Paul’s day. In the twentieth century, scholars pointed to parallels between the cries of 7:15 and 7:19 – “I do not do what I want, but the very thing I hate” – and the dramatic cries of Medea or Phaedra, but most dismissed their relevance for understanding Paul’s text. For instance, Bultmann interprets 7:7–25 as the paradigmatic story of human willfulness and self-reliance.15 On this view, there can be no parallel to Ovid’s “I see the better…. but I follow the worse” (Metam. 7.20), because Bultmann’s theological paradigm insists that even human acts like identifying something as good and wanting to do it are acts of sinful self-reliance.16 In a different way, Gerd Theissen surveys a range of the moral literature but claims that it represents a kind of contradiction that can only be understood retrospectively and so cannot be relevant to Rom 7, even though many of the texts he cites contradict this claim.17 A confused picture of the moral literature thus obscures its resonance with Rom 7.18 In contrast, Stowers and Engberg-Pedersen take a more comprehensive and integrative approach to ancient ethics and philosophy. One result is that both understand the central issue in 7:14–25 as precisely what Bultmann and many others dismissed: knowing the good but not being able to put this knowledge into 14

Dunn, Romans, 1.383. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (trans. Kendrick Grobel; New York: Scribner, 1951), 248. 16 Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 248. 17 Theissen, Psychological Aspects, 219. Theissen relies on H. Hommel’s “Das 7. Kapitel des Römerbriefs im licht antiker Überlieferung,” Theologia Viatorum 8 (1961/1962): 90–116. Others note the parallels only in passing, as do Fitzmyer (Romans, 474–475) and Dunn (Romans, 1.389). 18 Theissen (Psychological Aspects, 220, n. 58) does note that Epictetus, Diatr. 2.26.1, seems to contradict his position. 15

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action.19 Stowers and Engberg-Pedersen also attempt to integrate these insights from ancient ethics into their analysis of the letter in ways that substantively alter its interpretation. In A Rereading of Romans, Stowers draws on decades of work among scholars of ancient philosophy and identifies a discourse of self-mastery that centers on the passions. Not only does Rom 7:7–25 contain a paradigmatic discussion of the moral-psychological problem of moral weakness, but this ethical discourse also informs Paul’s interests in the passions and self-mastery throughout the letter (1:24, 1:26–27, 6:12, 7:5, 7:7, 7:8; cf. Gal 5:16–17, 5:24). While Stowers develops the discourse of selfmastery largely without specific philosophical orientation, EngbergPedersen’s Paul and the Stoics finds a specifically Stoic ethical model in virtually all of Paul’s letters. On this reading, Paul’s theological paradigm is analogous to Stoic models of moral development in that the person progresses from a state of total focus on oneself to a communal focus on others. Although differing from each other on numerous points, both interpreters take a holistic approach to ancient philosophy and develop complex philosophical models and discourses. As a result, both Stowers and Engberg-Pedersen agree that Paul’s interest in the passions makes sense in light of the ethical discourse of his day that makes passions and desires its central preoccupation. Both also agree that Rom 7:14–25 contains a classic depiction of moral weakness.20 My argument builds on the work of both scholars but comes to different conclusions about the specific type of moral problem at issue in Rom 7. While Stowers and Engberg-Pedersen identify Rom 7:7–25 with moral weakness, I argue that the immorality in view is a more entrenched and extreme form of immorality than moral weakness as usually understood.21 19 Others had previously taken the discussions of moral weakness more seriously, such as A. Van Den Beld, “Romans 7:14–25 and the Problem of Akrasia,” Rel. Stud. 21 (1985): 495–515; Hommel, “Das 7. Kapitel des Römerbriefs,” 90–116. For more recent discussions, see Holland, “The Self Against the Self,” 260–271; Thomas H. Tobin, Paul’s Rhetoric in Its Contexts: The Argument of Romans (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004), 228–250; Reinhard von Bendemann, “Die kritische Diastase von Wissen, Wollen und Handeln: Traditionsgeschichtliche Spurensuche eines hellenistischen Topos in Römer 7,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 95 (2004): 35–63. 20 Engberg-Pedersen develops this position in Paul and the Stoics (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 2000), 239–246, and more recently in “The Reception of GrecoRoman Culture in the New Testament: The Case of Romans 7:7–25,” in The New Testament as Reception (ed. Mogens Müller and Henrik Tronier; JSNT supp. ser. 230; New York: Sheffield Academic, 2002), 32–57. 21 Stowers (Rereading Romans, 279) briefly suggests that Rom 6–8 describes sin in a way that is close to the condition of a0kolasi/a , “a set disposition to do wrong,” but he does not pursue the issue further.

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By the Roman period most philosophers and moralists viewed the role of moral teachers as involving educating persons and setting them on a path toward virtue.22 This idea of moral development usually entails some type of relational scale or spectrum of moral types along which a person progresses or regresses. The wise man or sage represents moral perfection and the achievement of thriving or blessedness (eu0daimoni/a) and bounds one end of the spectrum as an ideal type. Most people, however, fall short of this ideal and so require moral reform to help them progress toward the state embodied by the wise man. Conversely, a concept of the moral degenerate also bounds the negative end of this spectrum so that the wise man has the wholly vicious and immoral person as his other. Though particular formulations vary, I refer to this negative type as someone suffering from extreme immorality, soul-death, or moral failure. The following sketch captures the relation between moral weakness and extreme immorality: (+) always good – almost always– sometimes good – almost never– never good (-)

On this model, moral weakness usually corresponds to “sometimes good” or “almost never good,” and extreme immorality to “never good” or something very close to it. Taking the plight of Rom 7 as that of extreme immorality rather than moral weakness better accounts for the repeated complaints that the mind has become completely dominated by sin as well as the language of death, imprisonment, warfare, and slavery. In particular, the plight described in the monologue strongly resembles the moral-psychological state that Philo of Alexandria sometimes describes as “the death of the soul.” So Philo interprets God’s warning that Adam will die if he eats from the tree of life as referring to the death of the soul: The death of the man is the separation of the soul from the body, but the death of the soul is the decay of virtue and the bringing in of wickedness (o9 de\ yuxh=j qa/n atoj a0reth=j me\n fqora/ e0sti, kaki/ aj de\ a0 na/ lhyij). It is for this reason that God says not only “die” but “die the death,” indicating not the death common to us all, but that special death properly so called, which is that of the soul becoming entombed in passions and wickedness of all kinds (o9j e0sti yuxh=j e0ntumbeuome/nhj pa/ q eisi kai\ kaki/ aij a9p a/s aij). (Leg. 1.105–106)

This text sharply distinguishes bodily death from a type of moralpsychological death. Philo, consistent with his Platonism, insists that the death of the soul does not convey the actual death or destruction of any

22

The early Stoics held that there was no such progress, but rather a total, sudden, and completely transforming commitment; however, later Stoics adopted schemes of progress and reform.

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one part of the soul, but the total domination and enslavement of the good part. He adds the following: And this death is practically the antithesis of the death which awaits us all. The latter is a separation of combatants that had been pitted against one another, body and soul to wit (e0kei~noj me\n ga_r dia/krisi/ j e0sti tw~n sugkriqe/ntwn sw&m ato/j te kai\ yuxh=j). The former, on the other hand, is a meeting of the two in conflict (ou[t oj de\ tou0n anti/o n su/nodoj a0m foi~ n). And in this conflict the worse, the body, overcomes (kratou~ ntoj me\n tou~ xei/ronoj sw&m atoj), and the better, the soul, is overcome (kratoume/nou de\ tou~ 23 krei/t tonoj yuxh=j). (Leg. 1.106–107)

Life and death function as analogies that convey the dominance of one faculty of the soul over another. This use of death metaphors is also consistent with more common Platonic metaphors and analogies for domination such as imprisonment, military conflict, slavery, and rule. The above text from Philo exemplifies a Platonic discourse about the soul that bears on the language and argument of Rom 7. The death of the soul describes a moral-psychological drama in which the worst part of the soul defeats the best part.24 Platonic moral psychology divides the soul into three faculties that struggle against one another for dominance and control.25 In this struggle, the good part of the soul, reason or mind, always fights against the bad parts, the passions and appetites. Ideally, reason should dominate the other faculties so that the person behaves morally. Yet, the reverse also happens, and in extreme cases the bad faculties gain control and perversely enslave, imprison, and even metaphorically “kill” reason. I contend that Rom 7:7–25 depicts the plight of reason or mind imprisoned by the passions and appetites. In fact, the monologue can be read more coherently by understanding the speaker as reason or mind and sin as a personified representation of the passions. Though Paul does not use the term soul (yuxh/) in Romans, I show that he operates with a concept of soul that is those aspects of the person that are not reducible to the body: the difference between a living person and a corpse. In addition, reading Rom 7 as a struggle between reason and the passions fits with the

23 As I show in chapter 2, Philo’s use of these metaphors and analogies has no necessary or implied relation to the figure of Adam. Philo uses Adam as a model of certain moral-psychological conditions and possibilities, not as the originator of all human evil. 24 Variation in the use of terms is characteristic of middle Platonism. Most later writers refer to Plato’s spirited part as the seat of passions or emotions (pa/q h) and often designate passions and appetites together as pa/q h, “the irrational parts,” or simply “the worst parts of the soul.” Plato and later Platonists also characterize the rational part as “the good/ better/ best part,” and the irrational as “the evil/ worse/ worst part(s),” as in Plato, Republic 9.577d–e. 25 This division draws on Plato’s influential theory developed in the Republic and the Timaeus in contrast to his earlier theory found in the Phaedo.

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rhetorical and literary use of the self-in-dialogue and with Paul’s statements about the passions and immorality elsewhere in the letter. Platonic traditions of moral psychology involve a complex of interrelated assumptions about the nature of the soul, the dispositions and capacities of each of the faculties, and the faculties’ relation to the actions and habits of the person to whom the soul belongs. As a result, it can prove challenging to treat issues important to this study, such as the attributes and characteristics of reason and the passions, as though they can be isolated from this larger whole. In an effort to bring out the coherence of the reading proposed here, I outline five interrelated features of the argument advanced in the following chapters. First, Platonic assumptions elucidate the speaker as the reasoning part of the soul (or mind) and in turn explain its attributes and characteristics throughout. On the Platonic model, only the mind has the capacity for self-reflection, judgment, and voice. Taking the speaker as reason elucidates the language of mind (nou~j) and the inner person (o9 e1sw a1nqrwpoj) in 7:22–23 as Platonic and explains why the speaker knows the good, understands God’s just law, and arrives at the correct judgment of its terrible condition: it is unable to put these good judgments into action because of the work of sin. Second, Platonic traditions of literary personification make sense of sin as a representation of the passions. Platonic writers similarly use figures such as an evil ruler, jailor, or simply vice in the abstract to personify the irrational parts of the soul as a single monstrous ruler. As in this tradition, sin in Rom 7 dominates the soul and carries out its evil plans because it enslaves and dominates reason. Third, Platonic discourse historicizes the speaker’s claims about life and death, enslavement, imprisonment, warfare, and rule as metaphors that convey the domination of one part of the soul over another. On these terms, claims such as “sin came to life and I died” (7:9–10) convey sin’s dominance over mind rather than the actual death or destruction of mind and so are consistent with the metaphors of slavery, warfare, and imprisonment in verses 14 and 23. Fourth, Platonic assumptions also account for the antagonism between passions, sin, flesh, body, and members, on the one hand, and the inner man and the mind, on the other. Platonic traditions associate the irrational faculties of the soul with the body and flesh and often personify appetites as beings or a single being that conspire with the body and flesh for ill, while the mind is allied with virtue, reason, and God. A Platonic model thus makes sense of the antagonism and division throughout the monologue. Finally, the moral discourse of soul-death also elucidates certain aspects of Paul’s arguments about sin, death, and the passions in chapters 1–8, especially Rom 1:18–32, Rom 6, and Rom 8:1– 13. Not only does Rom 1:18–32 explain passionate excess as God’s pun-

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ishment for idolatry, but in chapters 6 and 8 sin functions as a threatening counterruler associated with the passions and the flesh as in Rom 7. Chapter 1 considers important developments in Hellenistic theories of mind and emotion and develops a concept of discourse to allow for a finegrained analysis of the use and appropriation of Platonic assumptions, metaphors, and images regarding the soul. The chapter treats Plato’s moral psychology as well as two of his early critics, Aristotle and the early Stoics, and then turns to the development of Platonic discourse among later writers. I argue that writers such as Plutarch, Philo, and Galen appropriate and alter the discourse in significant ways – often synthesizing aspects of Stoicism or forcing a fit with a Biblical text – and that they tend to do so where they find plausible congruence or homology between the traditions. That is, writers do not typically smash together contradictory concepts, arguments, and language but instead develop what I take to be plausible variations and elaborations of Platonic discourse in new literary and argumentative contexts. This is a simple point, but it can help to resolve certain persistent problems with conceptualizing Paul’s use of Greek intellectual traditions. Chapter 2 engages critically with Bultmann, Robert Jewett, and Hans Dieter Betz and then develops an alternative reading of Rom 7 as a Platonic description of soul-death. The first part of the chapter focuses on Platonic discussions of extreme forms of immorality and shows that souldeath in Philo fits with other representations of extreme immorality, especially in the writings of Plato, Plutarch, and Galen. As applied to Rom 7, this discourse explains Paul’s use of metaphor and personification, his anthropological terms, and it also accounts for the self-contradiction that the monologue repeatedly describes in 7:14–25. For as the “I” painfully clarifies, the result of sin’s domination is that the person (considered as a whole) constantly sins because the passions have risen to rule in reason’s rightful place. On these terms, the monologue introduces the apparent contradiction in verses 7:14–15 (how can the same “I” want and do different things?) and resolves this contradiction in a consistently Platonic way in 7:16–25 (the “I” does not really do these things). Thus, the monologue comes to blame sin, rather than the speaker, for the terrible things the “I” does from the perspective of the whole person. The final section of the chapter treats the argument about the law in Rom 7 and argues that the generative interaction between law and sin makes sense in light of the more general problem of self-contradiction central to the monologue. On this approach, Rom 7 strategically subsumes the problem of the law within the more fundamental moral problem of extreme self-contradiction, since the person who cannot do anything they know to be good cannot obey the law.

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Chapter 3 situates the plight of extreme wickedness within the literary context of the letter, especially 1:18–32, where Paul explains this horrible immorality as God’s punishment for idolatry. Read in this way, the monologue of chapter 7 expresses a moral-psychological problem that arises as a consequence of a more general idolatrous disobedience discussed at the beginning of the letter body. This history of immorality is also in view in the moral-psychological language of Rom 6 and 8. The chapter provides an interpretation of Paul’s moral exhortations in chapters 6–8 and treats the issue of the “already” and the “not yet” in Paul’s thought. I argue that Platonic moral psychology resolves these seeming contradictions because the supposed already statements are exhortations and metaphors regarding psychological states and possibilities. This analysis thus obviates the problem of the relation between the already and the not yet, or the indicative and the imperative, and accounts for the continued struggle with the body and flesh that Paul ascribes to the baptized in Rom 6 and those who have the pneu~ma (breath or spirit) in chapter 8. The Paul that emerges in this study will be attributed certain intellectual skills that are often denied him. A long tradition of scholarship has insisted that Paul borrows from his Hellenistic opponents and so radically alters their concepts and metaphors that he produces something new and unique. On this model, Hellenistic thought is accidental, contingent, and instrumental, and it is not part of Paul’s Jewish intellectual core. Philosophical writings in particular have been viewed as belonging to an elite, esoteric sphere far removed from Paul’s everyday social context and Jewish religious interests. This study undermines such views. I argue instead that Platonic assumptions, concepts, and metaphors are at the center of his thought on sin. Several caveats are in order about the use of ancient philosophical and moral writings in this study. First, I do not propose that Romans be read as a philosophical treatise or that others should understand Paul’s writings only in terms of philosophical and moral arguments and ideas. The following chapters focus primarily on ancient writings that concern passions, reason, and the nature of the soul because they bear on the text under investigation. Though this study suggests that Paul’s consistency in appropriating particular philosophical ideas, images, and assumptions deserves further consideration, I do not undertake this here. Rather, I argue that the Platonic divided soul allows for a more coherent and historical interpretation of Rom 7 and fits with the developing arguments about the passions and sin in Rom 1–8. Second, and relatedly, I do not enter into debate over the potential points of homology between Paul’s writings and Stoicism. If my interpretation of Rom 7 has substantial merit, it undermines EngbergPedersen’s Stoic reading of this text in particular but does not render Stoi-

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cism irrelevant for making sense of Paul’s thought. Even writers who openly proclaim their allegiance to Stoicism or Platonism regularly appropriate from their supposed rivals. A Platonic reading of the moral psychology operative in Rom 7 may contribute to and qualify some of the broader debates about Stoicism, but it will not settle them, and there is much work still to be done in this area. Third, I do not argue here that Paul is a Platonist in the qualified ways that writers such as Philo and Plutarch are Platonists, though this too warrants further consideration. As a result, I am not especially invested in whether the conclusion of the study should be that Rom 7 manifests a divided soul or a specifically Platonic soul. I treat this tradition as Platonic to correct the impression that Paul is an appropriator of some vaguely defined Hellenistic thought that does not require robust explanation. Taking Platonism seriously also allows for the productive use of scholarship on ancient philosophy, which is particularly important because this literature is complex and easily misconstrued or parodied. Too often scholars have presumed that Paul’s appropriation of Greek intellectual traditions is haphazard and superficial and then proceeded as if this excuses them from seriously engaging with those traditions. Even if, from some perspectives, Paul’s use of these traditions could be construed as haphazard, this does not necessarily make it inexplicable. Rather, it suggests that what are needed are approaches that can account for this seeming haphazardness in the use and appropriation of intellectual traditions. Otherwise, interpreters risk taking the interests and aims of one type of intellectual – say, systematic philosophers – as the standard by which all others should be judged. Finally, this study does distinguish between engaging in high-level philosophical debates and appropriating certain aspects of philosophy, but not in a way that is common among scholars of Paul. While many scholars have appealed to borrowings, parallels, or topoi drawn from popular (as opposed to technical) philosophy, I develop a concept of discourse to better explain the relation between texts and patterns within texts that are fairly construed as Platonic. A discourse is a set of shared concepts, language, motifs, metaphors, and assumptions about their relationships that enables and constrains intellectual production. Writers appropriate discourses creatively in new and different contexts and so make them of enduring interest and relevance. As used here, discourse should not explain away particularity and difference, but rather allow for a more realistic appreciation of the creativity and originality with which writers elaborate on common language and assumptions. I thus pick out certain distinctive patterns and common features in a complex discursive landscape and argue that Paul is a skilled participant in a fluid but identifiable discourse. While technical or systematic philosophy is important for the production and

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development of Platonic discourse, writers elaborate it with varying degrees of proficiency and skill. The question of Paul’s level of skill should remain open, but his use of moral-psychological assumptions and arguments is significant and requires explanation. The following chapters develop one such explanation.

Chapter 1

Ancient Moral Psychology and Platonic Discourse How can a person know what is right and yet not do it? Rom 7 addresses this problem in a way that has had a tremendous influence on theological doctrines of human nature and sin. Yet, hundreds of years before and after Paul, philosophical traditions have made this problem central in explaining the function and malfunction of the human mind or soul. These traditions ask, “What is the constitution of the human being such that contradiction between thought and action is possible?” At least as early as Socrates and Plato, philosophers make this contradiction central in developing their theories of mind. So, Socrates asks, “Is knowledge sufficient for virtue?” and Plato explains how a person can act contrary to the judgments of their reason by developing an influential theory of the soul that blames inherently rebellious passions and desires. Largely in response to Plato, Hellenistic philosophers debate the nature of the soul and so make the question “How can someone know what is right but not do it?” of enduring interest. The phenomenon of self-contradiction or of acting against one’s reasoned judgment thus becomes pivotal in a series of ongoing debates about the constitution of the mind or soul, the nature and function of passions and desires, and, ultimately, the most appropriate remedies for passions and desires. Several decades of work among scholars of ancient philosophy has established that philosophers and moralists in the Hellenistic and Roman periods construct passions and emotions as a central preoccupation of ethics.1 Though philosophers develop competing theories, all schools of 1

See Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); A. W. Price, Mental Conflict (London: Routledge, 1995); Richard K. Sorabji, Emotions and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (London: Oxford University Press, 2000); John M. Cooper, Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999); Jacques Brunschwig and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds., Passions and Perceptions: Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Stephen Everson, ed., Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Juha Sihvola and Troels EngbergPedersen, eds., The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998). On

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thought agree that human actions are motivated by the states and dispositions of the mind or soul. They also agree that the principle obstacles to moral health are passions and desires. The nature of the soul becomes central to ethics because intellectuals assume that persons who have problems with these dispositions cannot behave in a way that is consistent with their own interests, much less the interests of other persons in their community. The phrase “moral psychology” captures this relation between morality and psychic states. The nature of the soul is not merely an esoteric concern but is key to identifying human problems and developing philosophical teachings meant to remedy them. The aim of such teachings is to enable persons to behave morally or better approximate blessedness or thriving (eu0daimoni/a).2 Passions and desires thus become important as intellectuals compete to explain and remedy human wickedness and suffering. While philosophers enter into high-level debates about moral psychology, a wide range of ancient writers use language, metaphors, and assumptions that seem to draw on philosophical discussions. This chapter, however, does not attempt to survey such literature, but to address the use and appropriation of certain specific intellectual traditions. I do not argue that there is a single, broad popular discourse that is just everywhere. Instead, I focus on Platonic traditions and show that intellectuals sustain a distinctive Platonic discourse about the soul that is appropriated by different types of intellectuals with distinctive interests and argumentative aims. This approach offers a way out of several problems that have proved resilient in the study of Paul. First and foremost, discourse allows for a fine-grained analysis of appropriation. I argue that a simple concept of philosophical or intellectual discourse best explains the relation between Platonic texts and patterns within these texts that are produced in diverse literary and historical contexts. On these terms, discourse accounts for the intuition that human beings use specific terms, metaphors, analogies, concepts, theories, and premises because they share a kind of practical knowledge about what popular views of the passions in the Classical period, see Kenneth J. Dover, Popular Greek Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1994); in Roman thought, Susanna Morton Braund and Christopher Gill, eds., The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). On passions in early Christianity, see Abraham J. Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989); Stanley Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994); “Paul and SelfMastery,” in Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook (ed. J. Paul Sampley; Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2003), 524–550; and Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 2000). 2 Following Nussbaum (Therapy of Desire, 15, n. 5) and others, I translate eu0d aimoni/a as “thriving” rather than “happiness.”

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they refer to and how to use them in a way that is recognizable to others. At the same time, this also accounts for the shifting and discontinuous ways that people use language. Second, this allows for a discussion of the ideas, concepts, beliefs, commitments, language, motivations, and practices of ancient persons without appealing to concepts like worldviews, perspectives, or cultures such as Jewish, Hellenistic, or Christian. Because discourse does not presuppose them, it can help one avoid reifying groups, communities, ethnicities, and cultures that are often imagined in terms of more or less rigid sets of shared beliefs, ideologies, and practices. Such analyses often mistake what Rogers Brubaker has termed “categories” for substantial things or substances and tend to take folk categories as secondorder scholarly ones.3 Finally, in considering Platonic discourse I also treat two competing theories of moral psychology, those of Aristotle and the early Stoics. Both are important because Platonists appropriate from these traditions even while engaged in polemics against them. Stoicism is especially relevant because many of the texts considered in this study are shaped by opposition to Stoic positions and because some scholars have claimed to find a Stoic moral psychology in Rom 7. The analysis of competing theories also allows for a kind of baseline explanation for why Platonism becomes the object of sustained interest. Plato’s writings do not sit in a museum that is occasionally visited by one or two intellectual elites who faithfully dictate their meaning. Rather, Platonism arises because intellectuals compete with one another over shared interests and stakes. In the process they present and misrepresent, develop and disagree with many aspects of his writings but all the while make Platonism into an object of sustained interest and relevance. Thus, it is possible to identify a Platonic discourse only because many intellectuals agree that it counts for something to be Platonist or to identify a position with Platonism, whether claiming it as one’s own or opposing it.4 3 Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 10; so also Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 220. 4 I have sought to make this notion of discourse compatible with social theories that take practices as a fundamental unit of social analysis, especially field analyses. This idea of discourse is somewhat analogous to shared practical skills as developed by theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Theodore Schatzki. See Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (ed. Randal Johnson; New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Bourdieu and J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Schatzki, The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change (University Park, Pa.: Penn State University Press, 2002); Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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As used here, a discourse is the writings that spring from a set of shared concepts, language, motifs, metaphors, and assumptions about their relationships that enable and constrain intellectual production. The principle analytic merits of this concept are that it is both fluid and specific. Whereas persons appropriate discourses creatively in new and different contexts, their intellectual productions are meaningful and intelligible because of certain shared assumptions that inform them. By focusing attention on the conditions of intelligibility, discourse allows for a more fine-grained analysis of the use and appropriation of language. This account of appropriation is important for the study of early Christianity because interpreters have often overplayed the points of discontinuity between Christian texts and other literary productions of the ancient Mediterranean, especially when it comes to philosophical traditions.5 As discussed in chapter 2, they often cast Paul’s thought as unique or radical without clearly defining criteria for taking any set of writings as similar or different or considering the ways they elaborate on common language and premises. The concept of discourse developed here allows for the appreciation of difference, newness, and creativity by articulating – and making a clear argument about – what those points of continuity are or are not.A useful debate about difference and change has taken place in the study of Philo’s use of middle Platonism.6 Scholars have asked, “Is Philo an authentic philosopher?” and most have concluded that though he puts Platonic traditions to interesting uses, Philo does not substantially alter, change, or develop the philosophical tradition itself.7 This conclusion is also consistent with Philo’s self-described ambition to reveal the philosophy latent in Jewish texts rather than to create something new. His lack of substantial innovation has even led some scholars of philosophy to view

1996); “Practiced Bodies: Subjects, Genders, and Minds,” in The Social and Political Body (ed. Theodore R. Schatzki and Wolfgang Natter; New York: Guilford, 1996), 49– 77. 5 See, e.g., the critical reviews of Engberg-Pedersen’s Paul and the Stoics by John Barclay (“Paul and the Stoics: An Essay on Interpretation,” Biblical Interpretation 9.2 [2001]: 233–236) and Philip Esler (“Paul and Stoicism: Romans 12 as a Test Case,” NTS 50 [2004]: 106–124). 6 Some early interpreters assumed that Philo’s religious identity as a Jew conflicted with his philosophical identity, but most scholars have long since jettisoned this idea. For a helpful overview of this and other basic positions, see David T. Runia, “Was Philo a Middle Platonist? A Difficult Question Revisited,” Studia Philonica Annual 5 (1993): 112–140, esp. 125–140. For some potential problems with Runia’s typology, see David Winston, “Response to Runia and Sterling,” Studia Philonica Annual 5 (1993): 141–146. 7 Runia does argue that Philo makes some minor contributions while he generally agrees that it is not Philo’s general purpose to do so (“Was Philo a Middle Platonist?” 134–140).

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him as an unoriginal and uninteresting thinker.8 Yet even those who cast Philo as an unremarkable hack do so by appealing to an agreed-upon set of criteria for evaluating his contribution or noncontribution to philosophy, namely, the question of whether or not a thinker develops some aspect of the tradition in a way that advances, refines, or alters it. The discussion has proceeded on the basis of well defined and widely shared criteria for what does and does not count as a new or substantive development. If an interpreter were to charge that in virtue of the fact that Philo integrates philosophy with religious narratives, he is an original or unique thinker, then this would be to change the specific point of reference for evaluating the issue of change and difference. This would also be a false proposition. Philo is neither the first nor the last intellectual in antiquity to use philosophy to interpret traditional religious texts. Even more broadly, he is neither the first nor the last writer to appropriate philosophy without sharing the interests of philosophers in systematically treating and developing the philosophy he appropriates. I develop the concept of a philosophical discourse here to explain the shared interests and assumptions that inform philosophical debates as well as the appropriation of some of those interests and assumptions by persons with different types of interests and argumentative aims. The goal will be to explain important points of continuity in ancient writings but also to avoid assimilating all ancient thought on passions and emotions into a systematic set of doctrines and beliefs or into a diffuse, inexplicably related set of ideas, statements, and claims that are just in the air that people breathe and so do not require robust explanation. In some respects this idea of discourse is similar to the one presupposed in Stanley Stowers’s work on the discourse of self-mastery, but I aim to define and defend its explanatory power more clearly than he has. Abraham Malherbe has also argued that Paul appropriates certain intellectual traditions in ways that may bear on this study.9 While the idea of popular philosophy that Malherbe has worked with deserves more sustained social analysis, this concept of discourse might ultimately compliment his startlingly clear and 8 See Runia’s critique of Lee on this point (“Was Philo a Middle Platonist?” 121– 123). 9 See especially Abraham Malherbe’s “Anti-Epicurean Rhetoric in 1 Thessalonians,” in Text und Geschichte: Facetten theologischen Arbeitens aus dem Freundes-und Schülerkreis: Dieter Lührmann zum 60 Geburtstag (ed. Stefan Maser and Egbert Schlarb; Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1999), 136–142; “Paul’s Self-sufficiency (Philippians 4:11),” in Friendship, Flattery, and Frankness of Speech (ed. John T. Fitzgerald; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 125–139; “Determinism and Free Will in Paul: the Argument of 1 Corinthians 8 and 9,” in Paul in His Hellenistic Context (ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 231–255; “Hellenistic Moralists and the New Testament,” ANRW 26.1 (1992): 267–333; the collected essays in Paul and the Popular Philosophers.

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convincing analyses of Paul’s appropriation of Greek intellectual traditions. Finally, the intellectual traditions considered here are fully implicated in complex schemes of power and hierarchy, including but not limited to sex and gender, mastery and slavery, political subordination and insubordination, and various forms of social capital involving money and other symbolic goods. Yet, this point is so broadly applicable that it has little explanatory power in and of itself. If my argument about Romans has substantial merit, it shows that Paul’s appropriation of intellectual traditions is more significant than most social analysis has found it to be. This suggests that the social analysis of Pauline Christianity might benefit from a turn toward the social explanation of intellectuals. Here, however, I develop the concept of discourse to explain central points of continuity in a certain set of ancient practices, namely, the discursive productions of intellectuals, including the apostle Paul. To make sense of the Platonic discourse that Paul uses in Rom 7 it is necessary to begin with Plato and Aristotle and explore the shared intellectual stakes that sustain a focus on the soul and are the basis for the production of the discourse. Part I of this chapter considers theories of mind and moral development in Plato, Aristotle, and the early Stoics. These theories of moral psychology will inevitably reflect broader features of philosophical thought on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. For the purposes of this study, however, it will suffice to briefly explore the theories of mind that inform their distinctive views of emotion and to explain the central role of emotions in moral actions and habits. I also argue that philosophers and moralists organize different moral types into a therapeutic spectrum or scale. This point is important because this study argues that Rom 7 not only manifests a particular model of moral psychology (a Platonic one) but also a specific moral condition (extreme immorality). Part II develops the concept of a moral or philosophical discourse by using three examples of its creative use and change by intellectuals. Focusing on examples drawn from Philo, Plutarch, and Galen, I show that these writers exploit plausible points of congruence and homology among different traditions as they elaborate Platonic discourse in new literary and argumentative contexts.

I. Mind and Emotion from Plato to the Stoics Under the influence of René Descartes, a common understanding of emotions in the modern period is that they are innate, unreflected, and instinctive drives. So, Juha Sihvola and Troels Engberg-Pedersen typify post-

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Enlightenment views of emotions as “irrational bodily and psychic movements which just happen to people because of their psychophysical constitution. According to these views, they are essentially passive reactions to external stimuli, which give rise to certain behavioral tendencies but cannot be much modified through teaching and argument.”10 Such drives are irrational in the sense that they are intrinsically incapable of thought, reason, and judgment and are therefore inaccessible to education or reform. In contrast, many ancient philosophers make emotions essential to perception and to the formation of judgments and so focus their efforts at moral improvement on reforming the emotions. But what are emotions if not instinctive and unreflected impulses? One way to answer this question is to consider emotions as desires with propositional content. The hungry person does not grab for an apple because she is hungry, but because she thinks that the propositions entailed in “that apple will satisfy my hunger” correctly apply to her particular situation. This is one explanation for the evaluative function of emotions, but ancient theories of emotions do not all agree that emotions have rational content. In fact, the Cartesian view of emotions has its closest analogue in antiquity in Plato’s theory that posits passions and appetites as irrational impulses and drives. Because philosophers take different positions on what constitutes an emotion, terms such as ‘passion’ or ‘emotion’ (pa/qoj) and ‘appetitive desire’ (e0piqumi/a) will not identify the same features of the psychic landscape in all accounts. To compound matters, not only do the theories of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans differ from one another, but specific terms such as ‘emotions’ or ‘passions’ are also difficult to translate into modern terms. I use the terms ‘emotions’ or ‘passions’ for anger, fear, and shame, which Plato and Aristotle allocate to the spirited part (qumo/j) and which moderns typically construe as emotions; I employ ‘desires’, ‘appetites’, or ‘appetitive desires’ to distinguish bodily appetites such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire. These classifications already demonstrate the inadequacy of modern terms for explaining the role of passions and desires in ancient theories of mind. There is no way out of the difficulty with translation except to elucidate their function in each theory of moral psychology. The Moral Psychologies of Plato and Aristotle For Plato, as for most philosophers in antiquity, being a person of moral virtue involves having certain dispositions with regard to passions and desires. Though philosophers clearly draw on popular moral traditions that 10

Introduction to Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, vii. Many Enlightenment thinkers, of course, were influenced by ancient philosophy of mind (Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire, 4–5).

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likewise attribute bad behaviors to the ill effects of passions, the systematic theories they develop give rise to their own distinctive traditions and discourses that shape later intellectual interests and arguments in important ways. The mature Plato of the Republic and the Timaeus influentially argues that the soul is composed of three distinct faculties: the reasoning, spirited, and appetitive parts, each of which is a distinct source of human motivation.11 In book 9 of the Republic, Plato explains the function of these faculties by developing an influential analogy of the soul’s parts as the inner person, the lion, and the many-headed beast (Rep. 9.588c– 591b).12 The whole soul occupies the area between the breast and belly, with the tiny inner person on top, a larger lion in the middle, and a much larger beast in the area of the belly and gut. The inner person is the reasoning faculty, whose function is to reason, make judgments, and form plans. The lion represents the spirited part, the seat of passions such as anger and fear, and is more responsive to reason than the appetites. The emotions of the spirited part are analogous to primitive moral responses that animals and children have; they are not intrinsically harmful, but they must be tamed by reason. The appetites, paradigmatically the desires for food, drink, and sex, are the most dangerous of the soul’s faculties. The manyheaded composite beast fittingly represents them as a multifarious and threatening monstrosity that is larger than the other parts and that occupies the lowest portion of the soul. Though appetites have objects such as food or a particular sexual partner, they ominously tend to excess because they desire the pleasure of satiety associated with these objects that is itself transient and unstable. The appetites, left to their own devices, would coopt or enslave the spirited part in a mad plan to go after greater and greater amounts of food, drink, and sex, and the person would become a glutton, drunkard, and a sexually licentious person.13 Writers often refer to people 11 See Sabina Lovibond, “Plato’s Theory of Mind,” in Everson, Psychology, 35–55; Cooper, “Plato’s Theory of Human Motivation,” in Reason and Emotion, 118–137; Price, Mental Conflict, 30–103. 12 Chapter 2 addresses Paul’s use of the Platonic figure of the inner person in Rom 7:22 (cf. 2 Cor 4:16). 13 The unjust man undertakes to “feed the multiform beast,” to “starve and weaken the human being within,” and “to leave the parts to bite and kill one another rather than accustoming them to each other and making them friendly” (Rep. 9.588e–589a). The just man has the opposite disposition of the soul:

Wouldn’t someone who maintains that just things are profitable be saying, first, that all our words and deeds should insure that the human being within this human being (o3q en tou~ a0nqrw&p ou o9 e0nto\j) has the most control; second, that he should take care of the many-headed beast as a farmer does his animals, feeding and domesticating the gentle heads and preventing the savage ones from growing; and, third, that he should make the lion’s nature his ally, care for the community of all his parts, and bring them

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in the grip of these desires as those who are ruled by their passions and appetites. In addition, the appetites rely on bodily senses such as sight, touch, and taste for information about what objects will produce pleasure. As a result, Plato and later Platonists often indict pleasures and the body in the work of the appetites, and in many instances they imagine the body as joining forces with the appetites in a war against reason. Plato also seems to presume that the lower faculties have some minimal capacity for rational functioning, such as having beliefs and exercising means-ends reasoning, since he attributes them the capacity to recognize a given object as pleasurable and make a plan to go after it.14 This accounts for those passages that suggest that passions and appetites can be made to harmonize with reason (Rep. 4.442c–d, 8.554c–e), but discussions of immoral types cast the appetites as extremely rebellious and disobedient. Plato’s model of the soul imagines self-mastery as the good and just rule of reason, the tiny inner person, over the inherently rebellious irrational faculties. The Phaedrus uses an influential charioteer analogy (253c–254e) to explain how reason should cultivate the appropriate strengths and weaknesses of the soul’s parts. Here the reasoning part is likened to a charioteer who must control two horses, the spirited and appetitive parts.15 Reason works to direct and control the irrational faculties, especially the appetites, by beating them into submission, and so the charioteer succeeds at maintaining control only if it acts constantly to weaken the appetitive horse by violently punishing it with whip and bit. The analogy expresses Plato’s view that the virtuous person is one who has cultivated the strength of the reasoning part and the weakness of the irrational parts. Though moral reform aims at the weakness of the irrational parts, Plato holds that none of these parts can be destroyed during life (Rep. 10.609c–d, 10.610a–611a). His early theory in the Phaedo holds that the soul is unified and immortal, but his Timaeus argues that it has three parts and that only the reasoning part is immortal. Though the irrational parts do not survive the death of the body, Plato and later Platonists insist that no part of the embodied soul can actually be destroyed.16 No matter up in such a way that they will be friends with each other and with himself? (Rep. 9.589a–b) Translations of the Republic are from Grube. 14 See Christopher Gill, “Did Galen Understand Platonic and Stoic Thinking on Emotions?” in Sihvola and Engberg-Pedersen, Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, 131–132. 15 For later appeals to this analogy, see, e.g., Plutarch, Virt. mor. 445c; Galen, Hip. et Plat. 4.2.27. 16 Price (Mental Conflict, 96, 103) argues that passages such as Rep. 8.560b–561a convey reason’s corruption, but the corruption and exile of reason makes better sense as

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how violently the charioteer treats the appetitive horse, it cannot destroy it, and, likewise, even in cases where the appetites rule in place of reason, they cannot destroy it. Thus, Plato’s theory makes internal conflict and struggle normative for the embodied soul. As a student and critic of Plato, the later Aristotle denies that the soul has ontologically distinct parts as well as its status as a distinct substance that is separable from the body.17 Whereas he does maintain that the intellect (nou~j) is separable, immortal, and divine, he famously claims that the soul relates to the body as form to matter.18 As Jonathan Barnes notes, this means that the soul is not as a “substance (like, say, the heart or the brain) but as an attribute (like, say, life or health).”19 Aristotle also holds that a person of moral virtue has a type of character such that he or she has the right emotions, in the right way, and at the right time. Yet, despite these points of departure, his moral psychology appropriates and adapts Plato’s tripartite theory in most other respects. Like Plato, Aristotle understands the soul as constituted by three subclasses of desire (o1recij) whose relation determines human actions and behaviors in a given practical setting. 20 Desires are thus responsible for all human action, whether that action is as simple as raising a hand or reaching for an apple or as complex as calculating a mathematical formula or reflecting on the nature of justice. As does Plato, Aristotle groups these desires as appetites (qumo/j), but in place of Plato’s reasoning part, Aristotle has the reasoning desire termed “wish” (boulh=sij).21 Like Plato, again, Aristotle blames immoral actions on literary license in service of the military analogy. The analogy requires reason’s weakness but not its fully conscious assent to the beliefs and goals of the appetites. 17 I draw on Price, Mental Conflict, 104–144; Cooper, “Some Remarks on Aristotle’s Moral Psychology,” in Reason and Emotion, 237–252; Stephen Everson, Aristotle on Perception (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997); Nussbaum, “Aristotle on Emotions and Ethical Health,” chap. 3 in Therapy of Desire, 78–101; Sorabji, “Body and Soul in Aristotle,” in Articles on Aristotle (ed. J. Barnes et al.; Psychology and Aesthetics 4; London: Duckworth, 1979), 42–64. 18 Though for Aristotle the soul is not an entity that can be separated from the body, he does distinguish between body and soul and understands the possession of soul (yuxh/) as distinguishing something as alive through its capacities for thought, perception, locomotion, nutrition, and growth (Everson’s translation of the capacities, in Aristotle on Perception, 4). To be alive something must have at least one of these capacities (De an. 2.2.413a22–25). 19 Barnes, “Aristotle’s Concept of Mind,” in Articles on Aristotle, 33. 20 As Nussbaum explains (The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986], 273–275) o0reci/j means literally a “reaching out for,” which conveys the sense in which these desires have objects such as food, sex, revenge, and justice and in which they are sources of movement and activity. 21 De an. 2.3.414b2, 3.9.432b3–6; Mot. an. 6.700b22, 7.701a36–b1; Eth. eud. 2.7.1223a21–b39, 2.10.1225b20–1227b12; Rhet. 1.10.1369a1–4.

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conflicts between rational and irrational desires. The desires of the qumo/j, for example, have beliefs and are capable of obedience to reason to some degree, whereas the appetites are more recalcitrant (Eth. nic. 7.6.1149a24– b35).22 In spite of the recalcitrance of appetite, Aristotle regularly appeals to the premise that nonrational desires can be persuaded by wish and so learn to obey reason (Eth. nic. 1.13.1102b13–1103a3). So, though the rational and nonrational desires pull against one another and create contradictions, Aristotle emphasizes that they can also work together. Thus, the summary statement that having a virtuous character is a matter of having the right emotions, in the right way, and at the right time can be elaborated: this state of affairs is obtained when, through training and habituation, the rational desires succeed at persuading the nonrational desires to pursue the proper course of action. Plato and Aristotle, in spite of their similar moral psychologies, have different conceptions of practical and intellectual knowledge and these shape their views on the role of passions and desires in constituting moral virtue.23 Plato insists that all forms of knowledge are tied together and can only be attained through knowledge of the forms, whether this knowledge concerns mathematics or practical decisions about how much food to eat in a particular context (Rep. 6.509b). In the embodied soul, the reasoning part is motivated to pursue wisdom, virtue, and rationality because it retains some recollection, however dim, of its original life in heaven where it beheld the forms (Phaedo 75a–77b). For Aristotle, however, all persons have practical knowledge that allows them to evaluate the world and improvise as the situation demands, whereas only a few have intellectual wisdom that allows for the contemplation of complex topics such as mathematics and cosmology. Practical reason develops in all persons as they mature because human beings naturally aim at the maximal satisfaction of desire. It turns out that maximizing desire is best obtained through the proper exercise of reason acting to bring all the desires into harmony. In principle, practical reason is available to any mature person because the stability of the soul and the achievement of moral virtue is just natural for mature human beings and is not motivated by celestial metaphysics as in Plato. This means that Aristotle’s theory differs from Plato’s with regard to the relation between nonrational and rational desires. In the soul of the Platonic person of virtue, reason wants little to do with nonrational desires, whereas the Aristotelian person of virtue has all of his or her desires harmoniously aiming at the same thing.

22

Price (Mental Conflict, 107) helpfully construes this as rationalization rather than rationality. See Eth. nic. 1.13.1102b13. 23 I rely here on Price (Mental Conflict, 129–131).

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An appreciation of Aristotle’s view of practical reason allows for a more complex explanation of why passions and desires play such a central role in his ethics. While for Plato passions and desires hinder reason in its upward pursuit to recollect the forms, for Aristotle they more regularly harmonize with reason and so contribute to moral virtue. In the man of moral virtue, irrational desires such as anger, fear, and hunger function in harmony with reason so that they desire their objects with a rationalized moderation. Such nonrational desires also play a central role in evaluating the proper course of action and thus have a positive function in constituting moral virtue. The discussion of anger in the Nicomachean Ethics offers a helpful example of this role: “A man is praised for being angry under the right circumstances and with the right people, and also in the right manner, at the right time, and for the right length of time” (Eth. nic. 4.5.1125b30– 32).24 A man who is wronged should justly be angry and desire revenge, and his anger informs both his perception of injury and his conviction that it is appropriate to react in one way or another. But, this anger must be expressed at the right time and in the right way. If he has an excess of anger, he may exact a type of revenge that is more extreme than the situation warrants, and if he does not have enough, his actions will be cowardly and lenient (Eth. nic. 4.5.1126a3–8). The goal of moderation or “hitting the mean” is thus central to Aristotle’s approach to emotion. 25 The project is not to keep the emotions at a simmer instead of a boil for pragmatic reasons, but rather to make good use of emotional responses because they allow people to evaluate and form judgments about their immediate environments. Thus, Aristotle defines the man of practical wisdom as the person who can best improvise.26 This improvisation is absolutely necessary because of the indeterminate and fluid nature of social life. Ethics, owing to the nature of its goal, must remain flexible with regard to rules and precepts because of the diversity and complexity of human life itself (Eth. nic. 2.2.1103b35–1104a10; cf. 2.7.1107a29–32, 5.10.1137b11–32). For Aristotle, the character of a person’s emotions is primarily determined by their experience of socialization within different social and political settings. In principle, then, they are mutable because they are primarily shaped by habituation. Though he holds that some human beings are hardwired to experience emotions in excess or deficiency (some people 24

Trans. Ostwald. So, Aristotle writes, “In regard to anger also there exists an excess, a deficiency, and a mean. Although there really are no names for them, we might call the mean gentleness, since we call a man who occupies the middle position gentle (prao/thta). Of the extremes, let the man who exceeds be called short-tempered and his vice a short temper, and the deficient man apathetic and his vice apathy (h9 de\ kaki/ a o0rgilo/thj, o9 d' e0llei/p wn a0o /rghto/j tij, h9 d' e)/l leiyij a0o rghsi/a)” (Eth. nic. 2.7.1108a4–9). 26 Eth. nic. 6.7.1141b13–23. Cf. Eth. eud. 1.5.1216b22–25. 25

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are more inclined to be hotheaded, others cowardly), this natural inclination is not very significant overall. Whereas Aristotle is very clear about the practical goals of ethics and politics, he takes a much less radical stance toward the problem of the emotions than do later philosophers.27 His surviving works do not have much to say about the moral reform of emotions or the therapeutic task of the philosopher. Though the Stoics develop some aspects of Aristotle’s theory of perception, they argue that passions are inherently bad and so advocate some form of extirpation. Stoic Passions: Chrysippus vs. Plato The Socratic maxim that knowledge is equivalent to virtue summarizes a core problem in philosophical debates about thought and action; this claim denies the possibility of contradiction between thought and action because a person who truly understands the good can never act against it. On this premise, immoral actions must in some way result from a failure of reason or mind. Against Socrates, Plato insists that contradictions occur when an irrational part of the soul wrests control from the mind, whereas the Stoics take the Socratic position against Plato. The early Stoic theory developed by Chrysippus holds that emotions are bad by definition because they involve false beliefs.28 As a result, he insists that the correction of these false beliefs through teaching functions to extirpate the passions, except for the few good passions (eu0paqei/a) that only the fully wise can have.29 The Stoic response to Plato’s theory is helpfully illustrated through appeals to the figure of Medea. Along with other characters from Greek and Roman tragedy and epic, Medea is made emblematic of the psychoethical 27

So, Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire, 100–101. See Cat. 9a28–10a10; Metaph. 5.21.1022b15–22; De an. 1.1.403a3–b20; Rhet. 2.2.1378a20–2.11.1388b30; Eth. nic. 2.5.1105b20–1106a12, 2.9.1109a20–b26, 3.1.1111b1, 9.8.1168b20; Eth. eud. 2.2.1220a36–b20; Poet. 1449b24–31. 28 Classic examples of the Stoic position are found in Cicero, Tusc. 3.71–76, 4.37–57; Seneca, De ira 1.9–10, 1.17, 3.3. I rely here especially on Tad Brennan’s essay “The Old Stoic Theory of Emotion,” in Sihvola and Engberg-Pedersen, Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, 21–70. Scholars distinguish the early Stoic theory of mind (sometimes termed the “orthodox” Stoic account) from later Stoic psychology associated with Posidonius, because Galen claims that Posidonius adopted a Platonic model of the soul. John Cooper’s recent essay (“Posidonius on Emotions,” in Sihvola and Engberg-Pedersen, Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, 71–111) contains a helpful discussion of Galen’s interests in representing Posidonius as having a Platonic psychology and a persuasive argument that Posidonius did not himself advocate such as psychology. See also Christopher Gill, “Did Galen Understand Platonic and Stoic Thinking on Emotions?” in Sihvola and Engberg-Pedersen, Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, 113–148. 29 Contrary to the influential critique of Augustine (Civ. 9.4–6), the Stoics do not imagine the wise man as an unfeeling robot but allow that the sage will have a limited number of good emotions.

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problem of a0krasi/a (moral weakness) by philosophers and moralists. Euripides’s Medea is a barbarian princess who falls in love with Jason and helps him win the Golden Fleece. She returns to Greece as his wife and has two boys, but when Jason later betrays her she responds by killing their children. These acts of revenge are excessive (and so, tragic), but Euripides also gives her a soliloquy just before she murders the boys. In this monologue, Medea wavers on whether or not to commit murder, but in the end she utters a cry that philosophers construe as “I know what I am about to do is bad, but anger is master of my plans, which is the source of human beings’ greatest troubles” (Med. 1078–1080).30 Philosophers frequently appeal to this deliberation in arguing for their respective theories of mind and ask, “How is it possible for Medea to understand that it is wrong to kill her children and yet still do it?” Platonists explain Medea’s lines by arguing that the faculties of the soul conflict such that she is torn in two directions at once. So, the second-century medical writer Galen draws on the charioteer analogy as he argues for a Platonic interpretation of Medea’s psyche: She knew what an unholy and terrible thing she was doing, when she set out to kill her children, and therefore she hesitated.… Then anger dragged her again to the children by force, like some disobedient horse that has overpowered the charioteer; then reason in turn drew her back and led her away, then anger again exerted an opposite pull, and then again reason. Consequently, being repeatedly driven up and down by the two of them, when she has yielded to anger, at that time Euripides has her say: “I understand what evils I am going to do, but anger prevails over my counsels.” (Hip. et Plat. 3.3.14–16)31

This deliberation exemplifies the battle between reason and the emotions of the spirited part of the tripartite soul, and Medea commits infanticide when reason finally loses this struggle. The Stoics respond to Plato by developing a unified, monistic theory of mind that understands immoral actions as the result of assents to false beliefs and irrational judgments.32 The psychological monism characteristic of Stoicism posits the mind as a central h9gemo/nikon (command center) with no irrational faculties threatening, as if the horses of the Phaedrus have dropped away leaving only the charioteer. As a consequence, they explain Medea’s wavering as the product of her approval of 30

See Christopher Gill’s translation in Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 223; cf. 216–226 for a persuasive argument against post-Kantian interpretations of these lines. 31 Trans. de Lacy; see also Hip. et Plat. 4.6.17–27, 4.2.27. For allusions to selfcontradiction in nonphilosophical literature, see Hecataeus of Abdera, (apud Diodorus Siculus) Bibl. 1.71.3 and Plautus, Trin. 657–658. 32 As A. A. Long notes in “Representation and the Self in Stoicism” (chap. 6 of Everson, Psychology, 102–120), however, many theories appear to be monist or dualist, depending on the angle of approach.

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different propositions at different moments. She holds inconsistent beliefs and judgments but is not internally conflicted as on Plato’s theory. So, Plutarch explains the Stoic position: Some people [meaning the Stoics] say that passion is no different from reason, and that there is no dissension and conflict between the two, but a turning of the single reason in both directions, which we do not notice owing to the sharpness and speed of change. We do not perceive that the natural instrument of appetite and regret, or anger and fear, is the same part of the soul, which is moved by pleasure towards wrong, and while moving recovers itself again. For appetite and anger and fear and all such things are corrupt opinions and judgments, which do not arise about just one part of the soul but are the whole commanding faculty’s inclinations, yieldings, assents and impulses, and, quite generally, activities which change rapidly, just like children’s fights, whose fury and intensity are volatile and transient owing to their weakness. (Virt. mor. 446f–447a)33

Fast, imperceptible alterations in judgment cause Medea to waver between competing options. Theoretically, if a Stoic teacher could have intervened and corrected her false beliefs about the appropriateness of infanticide in this context, then she would not have killed her children. For Stoics, the mind is fully rational by nature, but most people have trouble realizing their rational potential. All persons have the seeds of reason innate within them, and these should ideally mature automatically so that all become sages upon reaching adulthood. Socialization within corrupt societies, however, inhibits the maturation of reason by teaching false beliefs and values. Most people are so thoroughly damaged by growing up in corrupt social environments that they suffer from a multitude of false beliefs and, thus, of passions throughout their lives. These false beliefs inhibit the perfection of the mind and make the person miserable and wicked. The early Stoic theory entails a sharp critique of traditional values, and Zeno develops a utopian social program meant to enable each person to fully develop his or her reason as nature dictates. Zeno’s ideal society is integral to the development of Stoic thought because it justifies their theory of the fully rational structure of the human being. Absent such a community, however, later Stoic teachers aim at moral reform because this is a practical necessity in light of the corrupting nature of human societies. So, they advocate a positive program for moral reform that involves the correct recognition of three general categories: that which is true (virtue), that which is false (vice), and all other things that are matters of indifference. Though difficult to attain, correct knowledge should in theory lead to the extirpation of all passions (except the eu0paqei/a) and result in the full 33 Trans. Long and Sedley. See also Virt. mor. 441c–d, 446f–449d. So, the Roman Stoic Epictetus explains that Medea commits infanticide by appealing to her reasoning: “It is because the very gratification of her passion and the taking of vengeance on her husband she regards as more profitable than the saving of her children” (Diatr. 1.28.7–8).

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realization of the human reasoning capacity in that it operates in harmony with the rationality of the universe. Like Aristotle, the Stoics regard emotions as key components of cognition and perception. Passions are not instinctive drives and are not irrational in the sense of being opposed to reason or conscious reflection, but in the sense that they are bad judgments. Where on Plato’s theory passions and appetites are irrational in the sense that they are incapable of most reasoning functions, for the Stoics passions arise from false propositions and so involve the malfunction of reason. So, Chrysippus defines a passion as an impulse that results from assent to a false proposition, where assent is a distinctive stage of perception in which the mind accepts or rejects sensory impressions. Passions result from assents to impressions with propositional content, such as, “That apple over there will resolve my hunger,” and “therefore I should pick it up and eat it.” It should be noted, however, that the Stoics are also materialists and often discuss passions, impulses, and assents in physicalist terms. Because they view the body as constituted by different grades of matter, emotions involve the “swellings” and “contractions” of the mind.34 These movements are the physical manifestations of receiving impressions and assenting to propositions. In light of the role of passions and desires in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, it is notable that the other main philosophical school in the Hellenistic period, the Epicureans, also shares this interest. In fact, the famous and polemical association of Epicureans with hedonism derives from their quite distinctive conception of desire.35 Unlike the Stoics, who seek to stamp out the fires of emotion, Epicureans do not view passions and emotions as inherently bad. The problem is rather that most people mistakenly desire the wrong objects because of their upbringing in corrupt societies and thus have “empty desires” that are constant sources of suffering. Epicurean teachings thus focus on redirecting these desires to appropriate objects. Bad or empty desires are those that reach for objects that cannot provide stable satisfaction, such as immortality and wealth, which are difficult or impossible to attain; in contrast, good desires have a limit. An Epicurean maxim about food and satiety captures this view: “What is insatiable is not the stomach, as people say, but the false opinion concerning its unlimited filling” (Vatican Sayings 59).36 The belly has a natural limit, but because of false beliefs about its needs people gorge themselves. Another classic example of empty desire is the fear of death, as Epicurus

34

See the classic example in Galen, Hip. et. Plat. 4.1.14–4.2.44. See Nussbaum, “Epicurean Surgery: Argument and Empty Desire,” chap. 4 of Therapy of Desire, 102–139. 36 Trans. Long and Sedley. 35

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teaches that the false premise that death is to be feared inevitably produces a desire for immortality, and in turn needless suffering. The Therapeutic Spectrum With the notable exception of the early Stoics, most philosophers in the Hellenistic and Roman periods assume that whereas most (if not all) persons are wicked and immoral, they are wicked and immoral in different ways and to different degrees. To appreciate such types or models, it will help to explore notions of a therapeutic spectrum often manifest in the socalled therapeutic or medical approach to philosophical ethics. Philosophers of all kinds find the analogy of medicine extremely productive for describing their role as teachers and often make use of these analogies in articulating the problems and solutions that their philosophies propose.37 In particular, Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics often discuss false beliefs as analogous to a terrible disease and the philosopher’s ministrations as the best hope for a cure. Consider Cicero’s comments on the diseases of the soul in the Tusculan Disputations: But with sickness of the mind, no less than with those of the body, it is important to choose the right moment for treatment. Thus, when a character in Aeschylus’s play remarks And yet, Prometheus, I think you know that reason may be doctor to your wrath Prometheus replies, Yes, if it chooses well the time for treatment, and does not probe the wound that is inflamed. (Tusc. 3.76)38

Here diseases of the soul are analogous to those of the body, and the philosopher acts as a doctor for passions such as anger. Cicero and many others construe the objects of the philosopher’s practice as diseases of the soul and their remedies as different forms of teaching, exhortation, and admonition. So Porphyry quotes Epicurus as saying: “Empty are the words of that philosopher who offers therapy for no human suffering. For just as there is no use in medical expertise if it does not give therapy for bodily diseases, so too there is no use in philosophy if it does not expel the suffering of the soul” (To Marcella 31).39 Less polemically, Sextus Empiricus writes, “Being a lover of humanity, the Skeptic wishes to heal by argument, insofar as possible, the arrogant empty beliefs and the rashness of dogmatic people” (Pyr. 3.280).40 These analogies are encouraged by a 37

The most comprehensive discussion of medical analogies is Nussbaum’s Therapy of Desire. 38 Trans. Graver. Cf. Seneca, De ira 3.1.1, where martial metaphors dominate. 39 Trans. Long and Sedley. 40 Trans. Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire.

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basic congruence between the construction of the philosophical and medical professions; as medicine circularly constructs disease and health, sickness and cure, so philosophers and moralists similarly construct the object of their work, diseases of the soul, along with teachings meant to remedy them. Both professions also entail hierarchies based on knowledge and teaching, as medicine and philosophy each develop special types of knowledge and schemes of training and education to acquire it. In a sense, the model also legitimates the task of the philosopher by ascribing it a practical function. Philosophers consistently depict their role as therapeutic in the sense that they carefully diagnose the ethical problems of each person and prescribe healing remedies for their moral ills. In general, the objects of ethical therapies are moral-psychological problems having to do with passions and desires, whereas their remedies are different modes of moral instruction, such as exhortation and philosophical study. Philosophers debate whether and how to use therapies such as lenient and harsh forms of exhortation and rebuke, mutual self-correction, and doctrines and written teachings, but they share the goal of healing by curing or correcting passions and desires. In connection with this therapeutic approach to ethics, a therapeutic spectrum of different types emerges as an outgrowth of philosophical conceptions of moral progress, for moral philosophers maintain that ethics involves the careful consideration of the particular moral condition of each person and the application of diverse remedies as each case requires. Just as they organize remedies along a scale from harsh to lenient, they also organize moral types along a scale from most virtuous to most vicious.41 The early Stoics are the exception, since they claim that wisdom is all-or-nothing and so do not allow for slow growth, change, intervention, or gradual improvement.42 Later Stoics, however, do develop a theory of progress, and so they articulate a linear scale along which a person may move positively toward virtue or negatively toward greater vice and immorality. Clarence Glad’s work on adaptability in Epicurean and Christian psychagogy addresses some characteristics of this implicit spectrum. Glad explains how the so-called mixed method of exhortation styled itself around therapeutic demands: 41

For a similar spectrum in the context of rhetorical training, see Quintilian, Inst. 2.4.8–14. 42 The position is ridiculed by Plutarch (On Progress in Virtue) and Seneca (Ep. 94), who argue in favor of a therapeutic model for moral upbuilding. The model developed by Engberg-Pedersen (Paul and the Stoics [Louisville, Ky.: T&T Clark, 2000], 33–79) to analyze Paul’s letters uses this emphasis on being “struck” and immediately changed, which is characteristic of the early Stoics.

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Improvement depended on the severity of the illness, which in turn was contingent on how moralists assessed the severity of “sicknesses” such as lust, greed, avarice, ambition, notoriety, contentiousness, pretentiousness, anger and arrogance. The appropriate treatment depended on the “sickness” in question, defined in view of the human condition. Each sickness needed to be treated with different hortatory means, all of which presuppose the possibility of change.43

As Glad’s study makes clear, adaptability is basic to the very idea of moral education, and orators, rhetoricians, and epistolary theorists also adopt this versatile psychagogy. However, moral diagnosis and treatment presupposes a system for classifying and organizing moral problems and their remedies, and so the moralist’s therapeutic repertoire organizes diseases and treatments along a continuum that can be described and contested. Below, I discuss Aristotle’s systematic classification of moral types in the Nicomachean Ethics and then turn to later examples drawn from Plutarch, Seneca, and Philo of Alexandria. Aristotle’s Therapeutic Spectrum At the opening of book 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines three types of moral characters (h1qh) that are to be avoided. These are kaki/a, a0krasi/a, and qhrio/thj, and their opposites are a0reth/, e0gkra/teia, and swfrosu/nh.44 These types index gods, men, and beasts, as virtue gets one closer to the gods, and vice to brute animals. At the extreme ends of the spectrum, Aristotle describes virtue and vice as the upper and lower possibilities of the human animal. The basic spectrum arises here as follows: swfrosu/nh, total self-control: ascribed to persons of virtue who always do the good; associated with being closer to gods e0g kra/t eia, moral strength: ascribed to persons who do the good almost all of the time but are not fully consistent 45

43 Glad, Paul and Philodemus: Adaptability in Epicurean and Early Christian Psychagogy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 66. 44 The symmetry of these types is apparent in the pairs that emerge elsewhere in book 7: kaki/a /a0reth/, a0krasi/ a/e0g kra/t eia, and qhrio/t hj/swfrosu/nh. It should be noted that at the opening of book 7 (7.1.1145a14–20), Aristotle speaks of a0reth/ and e0g kra/t eia, and the place of swfrosu/ nh in this spectrum does not become clear until Eth. nic. 7.4.1147b26–1148b14, which clearly defines the relation between a0k rasi/a and a0kolasi/a , and between e0g kra/t eia and swfrosu/ nh. Similarly, Aristotle sometimes speaks of vice as if it were worse than beastliness (qhrio/t hj), and sometimes as an attribute of other types. For this reason I have not included vice in this spectrum. 45 Because the person suffering from e0g kra/t eia still occasionally goes astray, Engberg-Pedersen has suggested that Paul may have such a person in mind in Rom 2:14–16 (Paul and the Stoics, 214–215).

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a0krasi/a, moral weakness: ascribed to persons who are very inconsistent in doing the good; such persons waver but are still curable a0kolasi/a , moral failure: ascribed to entrenched characters who consistently do evil and are often said to be incurable qhrio/t hj, beastliness: ascribed to characters worse than those suffering from a0kolasi/ a ; associated with those closer to brute animals

Whereas much philosophical literature makes debates about a0krasi/a central, this is only one condition among many. Here, a0kolasi/a arises as a more psychically all-encompassing or entrenched type of a0krasi/a, where swfrosu/nh is likewise a more psychically entrenched form of e0gkra/teia. Aristotle’s sage has a vice-ridden other, as does the morally weak and the beastly man. Aristotle distinguishes degrees of moral goodness or badness by the consistency of a person’s moral and immoral actions. Thus, his spectrum organizes bad character types based on the degree to which the character is deep rooted and habitual and, as an outgrowth of this, on the degree to which such characters may be reformed or rehabilitated. The key to distinguishing less curable types of wickedness, for example, becomes whether or not the person still experiences choice, reflection, and regret about their bad acts. So he writes: The self indulgent (a0ko/lastoj), as we stated, is one who feels no regret (ou) metamelhtiko/j), since he abides by the choice he has made. A morally weak person, on the other hand, always feels regret (o9 d' a)krath\j metamelhtiko\j pa=j). Therefore, the formulation of the problem, as we posed it above, does not correspond to the facts: it is a selfindulgent man who cannot be cured, but a morally weak man is curable (a0 ll' o3 me\n a0ni/ atoj o3 d' i0ato/ j). For wickedness is like a disease such as dropsy or consumption, while moral weakness resembles epilepsy: the former is chronic, the latter intermittent (e1o ike ga\r h9 me\n moxqhri/a tw~n noshma/t wn oi[o n u9d e/rw| kai\ fqi/sei, h9 d' a0 krasi/a toi=j e0p ilhptikoi=j : h3 me\n ga\r sunexh\j h3 d' ou0 sunexh\j ponhri/a). All in all, moral weakness and vice are generically different from each other. A vicious man is not aware of his vice, but a morally weak man knows his weakness (kai\ o3lwj d' e3teron to\ ge/noj a0krasi/a j kai\ kaki/ aj: h9 me\n ga\r kaki/a lanqa/nei, h9 d' a0krasi/ a ou0 lanqa/ nei). (Eth. nic. 7.8.1150b29–37)

An a0krath=j can be rehabilitated because they are still capable of choice, whereas the a0kolasth=j cannot because they do not choose to act badly, they simply do so automatically (Eth. nic. 7.8.1151a11–14).46 As a result, the a0krath=j can be reformed and the a0kolasth=j cannot. In the same 46

In the next chapter I argue that the dilemma in Rom 7 is closer generically to the moral failure or habitual lack of self-mastery that distinguishes a0kolasi/ a from a0krasi/a. This will not map cleanly onto Aristotle’s categories, however, because the persona of 7:7–25 appears capable of regret, if not actual choice, but I show that some later traditions do incorporate self-reflection into depictions of such extreme types.

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way, the person of perfect self-mastery does not actively choose to act virtuously but simply does it and the a0kolasth=j and the qhrioth=j do not choose to act viciously, as their immorality has become entrenched or chronic. Though Aristotle discusses particular moral types, this does not mean that he understands the primary domain of ethics as the mind of the individual reflecting and making autonomous choices. In Aristotle’s typology, for example, conscious, reflected choice is only relevant to a small subset of these moral types, the e0gkrath=j and the a0krath=j. This formulation highlights important differences between ancient concepts of the person and some post-Enlightenment traditions which cast the self as an autonomous, self-legislating, fully self-conscious agent.47 Aristotle holds rather that moral dispositions are primarily determined by factors such as historical circumstances and the characteristics of social and political organizations, and he moves easily from discussing a particular psychological case to generalizing that case to a whole people (e.g., Eth. nic. 7.5.1149a4–20). While he notes that it is rare to find a people that is morally weak or beastly as a whole, in exceptional circumstances these may arise due to some sort of hereditary condition, sex, or disease: “But we are surprised if a man is overcome by and unable to withstand those [pleasures and pains] which most people resist successfully, unless his disposition is congenital or caused by disease, as among the kings of Scythia, for example, in whom softness is congenital, and as softness distinguishes the female from the male” (Eth. nic. 7.7.1150b12–16; cf. 7.5.1148b19–24). Similarly, he elsewhere generalizes a0krasi/a and a0kolasi/a to the so-called barbarian peoples: “it is just as rare that a brute (qhriw&dhj) is found among men. It does happen, particularly among barbarians, but in some cases disease and physical disability can make a man brutish” (Eth. nic. 7.1.1145a30–32). Here, moral characters are naturalized to groups of persons and in some cases also to a whole lineage. Though Aristotle emphasizes the importance of learned traits and habits in forming characters, when he does point to natural or hereditary traits he tends to appeal to constructions of the barbarian peoples as the characteristic immoral other.48

47

On ancient versus modern thought on the person, self, or personality, see Gill, Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy; “Is There a Concept of the Person in Greek Philosophy?” chap. 9 of Everson, Psychology, 166–193; “Peace of Mind and Being Yourself: Panaetius to Plutarch,” ANRW 36.7 (1994): 4599–4640; Long, “Representation and the Self in Stoicism,” chap. 6 of Everson, Psychology, 102–120. 48 See Stowers, Rereading Romans, 83; Caroline Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in Paul’s Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Denise Kimber Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race for Early Christian SelfDefinition,” Harvard Theological Review 94 (2001): 449–476.

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The Therapeutic Spectrum in Plutarch, Seneca, and Beyond A full examination of ideas about the therapeutic spectrum lies beyond the scope of this study, but a treatment of several Roman-period moralists shows that discussions of moral progress and education entail such a spectrum. Writing in the first and early second centuries C. E., Plutarch treats the notion of moral progress in his On Progress in Virtue. An avowed Platonist, Plutarch argues against the position of the early Stoics that attaining virtue is sudden and all-or-nothing, rather than a slow and arduous process: We observe that there are degrees in every kind of evil (kakou~) , and especially in the indeterminate (a0ta/ktw|) and undefined (a0o ri/s tw|) kind that has to do with the soul. (In the same way also there are different degrees of progress produced by the abatement of baseness [moxqeri/aj] like a receding shadow, as reason [lo/g ou] gradually illuminates and purifies the soul.) We do not, therefore, think that consciousness of the change is unreasonable in the case of persons who are, as it were, making their way upward out of some deep gorge, but that there are ways in which it can be computed. (Virt. prof. 76b–c)

Though this text offers no criteria for distinguishing degrees of evil or the degrees by which moxqhri/a abates, the analogies of slow illumination and travel out of a deep gorge convey the progressive movement of the student away from vice and toward virtue. Despite the fact that Plutarch does not explain what these degrees are, the essence of his argument is that there are, in fact, many different degrees of progress and backsliding. A spectrum or scale also arises implicitly and explicitly in Plutarch’s writings on the adaptability of philosophical teachers. His On Listening to Lectures explains that exhortation must be carefully adapted to the particular needs of each pupil. In a way that bears some resemblance to Aristotle’s distinctions between a0krasi/a and a0kolasi/a, he writes the following of extreme degeneracy: To hear a reprehension or admonition to reform character, delivered in words that penetrate like a biting drug, and not to be humbled at hearing it, not to run into a sweating and dizziness, not to burn with shame in the soul, but, on the contrary to listen unmoved, grinning, dissembling in the face of it all, is a notable sign of an illiberal nature in the young, dead to all modesty because of an habitual and continued acquaintance with wrongdoing, with a soul like hard and calloused flesh, upon which no lash can leave a weal (w3sper e0n sklhra|= sarki\ kai\ tulw& dei th|= yuxh|= mw&lwpa mh\ lamba/ nontoj). 49 (Rect. rat. aud. 46d )

The pupils’ the severity entiation of exhortation 49

responses to therapeutic interventions are key to identifying of the underlying problem, as the text presupposes the differmoral types and degrees of severity. Plutarch first discusses medicinally as something that ought to evoke a particular

See also Cicero, Tusc. 4.31–32, 4.58.

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response and then shifts to the metaphor of whipping impenetrable flesh. He does not explain whether this type can be rehabilitated, but he does imagine these moral types as falling along a continuum. Similarly, Philodemus’s fragmentary treatise On Frank Criticism explains the role of the Epicurean teacher: “[He] touches upon this one in accord with his character. For some are treated more pleasantly and more easily when their teachers are ignorant [of the conditions on which] they {the students} come together for what they do” (Fr. 8).50 He goes on to explain, “At times he will also practice frankness [simp]ly, believing that it must be risked [if] otherwise they {the students} do not pay heed. {[And]} those who are exceedingly strong, both by nature [and] because of their progress {he will criticize} with all passion and ” (Fr. 10). The Epicurean teacher is to adapt his treatments to the particular characteristics of each case and apply lenient or gentle therapies as the case may require. Philodemus also counsels the use of harsh criticism for the strong. Though the text breaks off, it is likely that the strong refers to a person whose vice is strong or deep-rooted. Other discussions of moral progress use analogies that involve movement, travel, and arduous journeys. So the Roman Stoic Epictetus, writing in the mid-first to second century C. E., also emphasizes the linearity of progress as he urges his student Arrian to choose progress in virtue over easy acceptance by dissolute friends. He counsels repeatedly, “No man is able to make progress when he is facing both ways” (Diatr. 4.2.4). This exhortation assumes that making progress is a matter of consistently moving either toward or away from vice and immorality. Thus, he exhorts again: But if that does not please you, turn about, the whole of you, to the opposite; become one of the addicts to unnatural vice (genou~ ei[j tw~n kinai/ dwn), one of the adulterers, and act in the corresponding fashion, and you will get what you wish. Yes, and jump up and shout your applause to the dancer. But different characters do not mix in this fashion; you cannot act the part of Thersites and that of Agamemnon too. If you wish to be a Thersites, you ought to be humpbacked and bald; if an Agamemnon, you ought to be tall and handsome, and to love those who have been made subject to you. (Diatr. 4.2.9–10)

This exhortation appeals to extremes, and the metaphors of directionality invoke literal movements toward or away from figures representing virtue and vice. Similarly, the Tabula of Cebes narrates progress from wickedness to virtue using the pictorial representation of a painting. The Tabula is an anonymous text likely dating to the first century C.E that uses a description of an elaborate painting to explain the many stages of moral develop-

50

Trans. Konstan et al.

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ment.51 Nesting representation within representation, the text uses a conversation about the proper interpretation of a painting as a device to explain the attainment of virtue as a quasi-epic journey. The painting has a series of nested enclosures, each with gates and women that play symbolic roles. Here progress is depicted pictorially as a long and intrepid journey past obstacles such as a0krasi/a, a0swti/a, a0plhsti/a, and kolakei/a, which are each represented by a different female figure. The Tabula depicts progress as a mythic journey toward a difficult and seldom reached goal. At the same time this story is, at its core, fundamentally about different moral dispositions, the difficulty of avoiding the deceits of desire and licentiousness, the role of education and knowledge, progress toward virtue, and obstacles to that progress. Writing in the first century C.E., Seneca discusses classes of moral types in several of his letters.52 His discussions of moral characters are especially helpful because they use criteria that are similar to Aristotle’s in Eth. Nic. 7. So, letter 75 describes three classes of persons making progress. The first contains those who have progressed enough to escape the “diseases of the mind, but not yet the passions” (Ep. 75.10); such persons have knowledge but are not wholly committed to it. This first class encompasses persons who have separated themselves from the general morass of human depravity but have only begun to make progress and are still in thrall to the passions. Seneca soon explains these diseases as severe and deep-rooted vices, whereas the vices are themselves chronic passions: “The diseases are hardened and chronic vices (morbi sunt inveterata vitia et dura), such as greed and ambition; they have enfolded the mind in too close a grip, and have begun to be permanent evils thereof (perpetua eius mala esse coeperunt)” (Ep. 75.11). The passions are “objectionable impulses of the spirit” that can become ingrained as diseases or chronic vices if not therapeutically treated in the right way (Ep. 75.12).53 Seneca goes on to describe the second class of persons as mostly free from the passions but still not con51 See John T. Fitzgerald and L. Michael White, The Tabula of Cebes (SBL Texts and Translation 24, Graeco-Roman Religion Series 7; Chico, Calif.: Scholars, 1983). For a more recent discussion and bibliography, see M. B. Trapp, “On the Tablet of Cebes,” in Aristotle and After (ed. Richard Sorabji; London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 1997), 159–180. 52 See Glad, Paul and Philodemus, 66–67; see also Epictetus, Diatr. 2.19.29, 3.2, 4.2; for a twofold classification see Diatr. 3.6.9–10. 53 So, Seneca adds: “But not even the third type is to be despised. Think of the host of evils which you see about you; behold how there is no crime that is not exemplified, how far wickedness advances every day, and how prevalent are sins in home and commonwealth. You will see, therefore, that we are making a considerable gain, if we are not numbered among the basest (pessimos)” (Ep. 75.15). See also Ep. 52.3–6 on Epicurus’s classification.

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sistently immune; the third class, in turn, has progressed further, “beyond the reach of many of the vices and particularly of the great vices, but not beyond the reach of all” (Ep. 75.14). The persons in the third class have escaped the excesses of greed and lust but not minor vices like anger or fear of death. This schema thus implies two more classes of people: those on the immoral end of the scale, sometimes referred to as “the basest” (Ep. 75.15), and those at the opposite end who are sages. Seneca’s classes of persons resemble Aristotle’s moral characters even though they do not map cleanly onto Aristotle’s typology. The similarity is evident in their respective criteria for distinguishing different types of moral badness and goodness. On the negative end of the spectrum, both distinguish types by the degree of chronic or hardened immorality and those making progress by the consistency of rational actions. So, Seneca writes elsewhere of the distinction between a person making progress toward wisdom and one who is fully wise as “the difference between a healthy man and one who is convalescing from a severe and lingering illness, for whom ‘health’ means only a lighter attack of his disease. If the latter does not take heed, there is an immediate relapse and a return to the same old trouble; but the wise man cannot slip back, or slip into any more illness at all” (Ep. 72.6). At both ends of the scale moral virtue and vice are psychically entrenched so that the wholly bad person is beyond cure while the sage is beyond relapse.

II. Patterns in the Appropriation of Philosophical Discourses So far this chapter has explored the moral psychologies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics and suggested that intellectual competition among different schools and thinkers helps to account for the sustained interest in passions and desires. This competition over shared stakes accounts for the focus on issues of moral psychology in the Hellenistic period, especially as the Stoics stake their claim on a theory of mind in opposition to Plato. Whatever constellation of factors enables any particular writer to engage with this discourse, it seems clear that for many philosophers knowledge of these theories counts for something. Consider, for example, the way that Cicero summarizes other theories as he writes on grief in the Tusculan Disputations: These then are the comforter’s responsibilities: to remove distress (aegritudo) altogether, or to cause it to subside, or to diminish it as much as possible, or to restrain it so that it cannot spread any further, or to divert it elsewhere. Some hold that the comforter has only one responsibility: to teach the sufferer that what happened is not an evil at all. This is the view of Cleanthes. Others, including the Peripatetics, would teach that it is not a great evil. Still others, for instance Epicurus, would draw attention away from evils and

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towards good things, and there are yet others who think it sufficient to show that nothing has happened contrary to expectation. And the list goes on. Chrysippus, for his part, holds that the key to consolation is to get rid of the person’s belief that mourning is something he ought to do, something just and appropriate. Finally there are those who bring together all these types of consolation, since different methods work for different people. (Tusc. 3.75–76)54

This text uses the comparison of Stoic, Peripatetic, and Epicurean theories to set the question of grief within the broader history of philosophy and so stakes a claim on particular types of knowledge and legitimacy. When writers like Cicero appeal to these theories and to the particular philosophers who propound them, they make this history of moral psychology of interest and relevance in very different types of intellectual, social, and political settings. A similar point could be made about the figure of the philosopher in Acts 17:18–34, where the writer of Luke-Acts has Paul debate Epicureans and Stoics in Athens. The moral psychologies explored previously are not merely important for the history of ideas, as artifacts in a museum of a bygone era. Rather, these specific theories, along with the premises and assumptions that enable them, produce a discourse that sustains their ongoing relevance. Despite the enormous amount of literature produced in the Hellenistic period concerning the constitution of the soul, discussion depended upon certain common assumptions. All schools of thought held that human behaviors and actions result from the function or malfunction of common human dispositions and capacities. All philosophical schools also blame immorality on passions and desires. For Plato, passions and appetites are rebellious drives; for the Stoics, passions are failures of reason; and for the Epicureans, passions and emotions are fundamentally good but misdirected desires. The philosophical writings explored so far also agree upon certain shared intellectual interests and stakes. This last point is extremely important because without this caveat the shared assumptions I have pointed to are largely consistent with popular Greek and Roman writings about the passions. Whereas all philosophical schools develop somewhat different theories of mind and emotion, the production of the theories is enabled and constrained by deep points of agreement. The writings that spring from these assumptions and constraints is what I mean by a discourse. One merit of this approach is that it avoids construing philosophical and moral traditions as inevitably unified, coherent wholes.55 The focus on 54

Trans. Graver. See also Tusc. 3.1–7, 3.12–13, 3.82–84. Though my use of the concept of discourse is indebted to Michel Foucault, I hold that certain shared assumptions enable and constrain the production of discourses in a way that Foucault does not. See Theodore Schatzki’s critique of Foucault for taking discourse as the sum of all made statements and propositions without any logic governing them, in “Practiced Bodies,” 57. 55

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common interests and assumptions highlights those points of continuity that enable writers to engage in ongoing debate and discussion while at the same time understanding the development, elaboration, and appropriation of these assumptions as highly fluid and indeterminate. As a result, points of continuity cannot be taken for granted but rather require argument and invite explanation. Philosophical positions and theories should not emerge as substantive things or hypostases but rather as unfolding and highly contingent productions of particular persons with particular sets of interests. At any point writers may consciously and unconsciously change, misrepresent, develop, and disagree with a theory, premise, or view. Understood in this way, the use of language neither requires totalizing agreement nor posits linguistic expressions as a fractious mélange of incongruous statements and claims. As applied to Platonism, this concept of discourse is helpful for analyzing the change and appropriation of Platonic moral traditions. My claim is not, for example, that Platonic discourse constitutes a static set of rules, doctrines, and concepts but rather that the assumptions and logics at the core of Platonic moral psychology are widely used as a starting point for later writers. As a result, insofar as these writings use Platonic assumptions and premises as an intellectual foundation, they make little sense without an appreciation for those features of Platonism. To make this point I have emphasized points of continuity, but it is equally as important to appreciate the fluid and changing use of discourses. I also draw a sharp distinction between the notion that a particular writer may fundamentally change and alter a discourse so as to create something totally new and the idea that a writer may appropriate or elaborate a discourse in some specific respect. As I intend it, discourse should obviate the former but treat the latter as ordinary. Because discourse is open ended, it presupposes creative elaboration, variation, creativity, and change as writers appropriate it in very different types of argumentative and literary contexts. By new contexts I mean not only differences in immediate social, political, and temporal settings, such as that between the former slave who becomes a philosopher and a Roman eques who holds political office, but also immediate literary and argumentative contexts, such as Galen’s use of Platonism to attack certain Stoic arguments (Hip. et Plat. 4–5) and Philo’s use of Platonism to interpret Gen 1:2 (Opif. 32–35) as distinct from his use of Platonism to interpret Gen 1:26 (Opif. 69–71). Such a notion of appropriation is particularly important in the study of Paul because interpreters have often found his thought to be radically new without clearly defining criteria for establishing newness and difference in linguistic expression or considering the degree to which creative elaboration is an ordinary feature of language. Below, I focus on the change and appropriation of Platonic discourse in the

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writings of Galen, Philo, and Plutarch, who integrate different literary and intellectual traditions on points where there happens to be some existing congruence. This is a simple point, but it is as true for the appropriation of Stoicism by self-described Platonists as for Jews attempting to assimilate the claims of philosophy to Jewish narratives and practices, and for Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine, who appropriate Platonism, Neo-Platonism, and Stoicism. Misrepresentation in Appropriation: Galen’s Platonism Platonic discourse is not a more or less stable entity that persists over time; rather, it endures only insofar as persons constantly reinvent it. Such reinventions need not bear any resemblance to what came before, though often they do. The case of Galen, a medical writer and Platonist of the second century C. E., demonstrates how one writer lays claim to the Platonic tradition while appropriating Platonic premises and arguments selectively. In books 4 and 5 of On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Galen shapes his presentation of Platonic moral psychology around what he takes as the failures and contradictions of Chrysippus’s Stoic theory. As a result, he primarily develops those elements of each theory that seem most contradictory so as to amplify difference and conflict. As Christopher Gill has shown, Galen accentuates a picture of the Platonic soul as a composite of competing, antagonistic faculties struggling for power and ignores texts that suggest psychological cohesion. Though many passages in the Republic cast the relation between the soul’s faculties as antagonistic and conflictual (Rep. 4.442a–b, 9.588b–589c, 9.591b; cf. Phaedr. 254a–e), a different picture also emerges elsewhere that emphasizes harmony and cohesion (Rep. 4.442c–d, 8.554c–e). So, Plato writes, “isn’t he moderate because of the friendly and harmonious relations between these same parts, namely, when the ruler and ruled believe in common that the rational part should rule and don’t engage in civil war against it?” (Rep. 4.442c–d). At times Plato seems to deny that the passions and appetites have any rational functions, but here he attributes them beliefs that can be brought into harmony with reason. As Gill points out, it is now generally agreed that Plato underdescribes the rational functions of the appetitive and spirited faculties that the argument of the Republic requires, taken as a whole. 56 The theory must ascribe some level of rationality to passions and appetites, as the appetites, for example, interact with the senses and must be capable of forming plans to go after the objects identified as pleasurable. Gill and others argue that Plato attributes some types of rational functioning to the 56 Ibid., 131–132. For additional sources, see Gill, “Did Galen Understand Platonic and Stoic Thinking?” 144, n. 97.

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lower faculties, especially having beliefs and exercising means-ends reasoning. This rational capacity accounts for the functions of the appetitive and spirited faculties and for the passages that depict the lower faculties as amenable to persuasion by reason. One implication of Plato’s discussions of harmony and agreement between the faculties is that Plato and Chrysippus are not as far apart as they may seem.57 Predictably, Galen avoids such discussions, insists on the irrationality of the lower faculties, and never explains how Plato’s theory coheres without ascribing rational functions to appetites and spirit. This selective appropriation of Platonism makes sense in light of Galen’s commitment to two basic claims about the weaknesses inherent in Chrysippus’s theory: that Stoic monism cannot adequately explain the contradiction between thought and action and that the view of passions as errors of reason is incoherent. Though neither critique is original, Galen’s strong commitment to both premises accounts for his selective representation of Plato’s theory. Since he is concerned to argue that passions are irrational, against Chrysippus, he avoids texts where Plato ascribes them rational functioning and amplifies those passages that cast them as nonrational. Similarly, his conviction that Stoic monism cannot account for conflict leads him to return constantly to the Platonic explanation for conflict as the product of warring faculties within the divided soul. Though Galen selectively represents Plato on these points, such alterations and changes are plausible elaborations of Plato’s thought. Despite the fact that Galen has shaped Plato’s theory to fit his argumentative aims, it is still recognizably Platonic. On my argument, this constitutes creative engagement with and elaboration of a Platonic discourse rather than the faithful adaptation of Plato’s thought. Platonic discourse attempts to capture the dynamic of constraint and possibility that makes Galen’s appropriation at once distinctive and identifiably Platonic. Galen’s critique of Chrysippus misrepresents and misunderstands the Stoic theory on many levels. As Gill points out, for example, Galen criticizes Chrysippus’s view of the passions as rational but in so doing ignores the different conceptions of rationality entailed in the theory.58 For Chrysippus, the passions are impulses produced by assents to false propositions, but these propositions are themselves rational, verbal impressions. As Gill summarizes, Chrysippus holds that passions are rational in a functional sense but not a normative one.59 Galen ignores these different senses of 57

Gill, “Did Galen Understand Platonic and Stoic Thinking?” 135. Gill suggests that Chrysippus could have developed his theory through a particular reading of Plato’s Republic. 58 Ibid., 115–116. 59 Ibid., 116.

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rationality and so renders Chrysippus’s theory incoherent. Such incoherence is, consciously or not, exactly what Galen is after. Similarly, he misrepresents Posidonius’s views in attempting to assimilate them to Platonism. Gill and John M. Cooper have made strong cases that it is unlikely that Posidonius did anything more than develop the Chryssipean theory of moral development to better account for why mature persons have difficulty letting go of false beliefs.60 In brief, Chrysippus holds that reason is latent in all human beings and that upon reaching adulthood it should mature and automatically produce a revaluation of goods. Though babies, children, and young adults are capable of reason about immediate goods such as health and self-preservation, upon maturation they should come to recognize that what they once took as necessary goods prior to maturity are really only preferred indifferents when compared with virtue. Most people, of course, do not mature in this way because their social environments corrupt them with false beliefs about the values of unnecessary preferables like wealth and honor. Posidonius probably developed Chrysippus’s theory of moral development by adding a class of stronger passions that develop before the person has fully matured. These passions are especially strong and recalcitrant and so can explain why mature persons have such difficulty letting go of their former beliefs and values, even once their rational capacities have developed. Yet in Galen’s hands, Posidonius becomes a Platonist for advocating a theory that at best may plausibly be construed as bipartite from a particular angle of approach. Galen’s presentation of Stoic and Platonic theories demonstrates how one writer sustains the relevance of the discourse as it suits his interests and aims many centuries later. Though he does in some ways change, alter, and misrepresent Plato, he does produce a theory that strongly resembles Plato’s and can plausibly be ascribed to him. This case shows how the agenda of an intellectual competitor shapes the use and appropriation of the discourse in one particular literary setting. Consideration of a particular context of intellectual competition allows for an explanation of one writer’s rationale. The example also highlights the distinction between developing an untenable theory and a plausible one. Although Galen’s argument fails the test of providing an illuminating or helpful critique of Chrysippus, this does not mean that it is an incoherent soup of statements and claims. In fact, Galen’s attempt to render his arguments about Platonism and Stoicism plausible is precisely what motivates the distortion and omission of rather obvious features of Stoicism that would undermine his position; it is also what motivates him to develop one particular aspect of Platonism while omitting those that might seem to support rival positions. 60

“Posidonius on Emotions,” in Sihvola and Engberg-Pedersen, Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, 71–111.

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This dynamic is what I mean by the change and appropriation of a discourse and the exploitation of plausible points of homology and congruence. The Appropriation of Platonic Discourse in Philo and Plutarch Philo of Alexandria’s stated aim is to show that philosophical truths are latent in the traditional writings of the Jews. Though he draws from different schools and traditions, he takes Platonism to be the best philosophy and consistently interprets the writings of the Pentateuch as allegories for Platonic theories, especially moral psychology and cosmology. Where Galen’s appropriation of Platonism drives a wedge between certain Stoic and Platonic traditions, Philo’s allegorical interpretations attempt to harmonize distinct intellectual traditions. In bringing philosophical traditions to bear on Jewish writings, Philo often exploits plausible points of homology and congruence between the respective traditions. So, the De opificio mundi attempts to wed the creation story of Genesis with that of the Timaeus, and Philo exploits the resemblance between these two sets of writings at all levels. Most generally, he makes much of the fact that both are accounts of creation where divine figures play central roles.61 This harmonizing strategy is also evident in his allegorization of specific verses, words, and his use of different philosophical traditions. For example, Philo argues that the term ge/nesij aptly characterizes the first book of the Pentateuch because the text concerns the creation of the changing visible and perceptible realm: “since everything that is an object of sensible perception is subject to becoming and to constant change, never abiding in the same state, [Moses] assigned to that which is invisible and an object of intellectual apprehension the infinite and undefinable as united with it by closest tie; but on that which is an object of the senses he bestowed ‘genesis’, ‘becoming’, as its appropriate name” (Opif. 12). Here, a Greek title is taken to signify a relevant aspect of Platonic metaphysics wherein the material world is sharply distinguished from the immaterial, the sensible from the insensible, and the visible from the invisible. Philo exploits plausible points of homology and congruence between the title, the valence of the word ge/nesij, and Platonic metaphysics. Whereas the Opificio mundi is largely opaque without an appreciation of the creation account of the Timaeus, Philo sometimes appeals to Stoic language and concepts. A harmonizing strategy also frequently accounts 61

Gregory Sterling makes a similar point: “For Philo Judaism and Platonism intersected at the most pivotal of all points, the understanding of God. It was on the basis of this similarity rather than dependence that Philo argued Middle Platonism and the Jewish Torah were but two expressions of the same reality” (“Platonizing Moses,” Studia Philonica Annual 5 [1993]: 103).

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for this appropriation of Stoicism. He writes, for example, that Moses’s exordium, “consists of an account of the creation of the world, implying that the world is in harmony with the law, and the law with the world, and that the man who observes the law is constituted thereby a loyal citizen of the world (kosmopoli/tou), regulating his doings by the purpose and will of nature, in accordance with which the entire world itself also is administered” (Opif. 3). This draws on the Stoic theory that a divine rationality pervades the universe and enables the highest virtue among humans: the harmony of human and cosmic rationality. The language about cosmopolitanism and the law of nature is also distinctively Stoic. Yet, as scholars have long noted, such uses of Stoicism do not make Philo a Stoic or indicate that he is a fundamentally inconsistent or eclectic philosophical thinker. Rather, the appeal to Stoic cosmology makes sense because it plausibly overlaps with Platonic metaphysics on this point. Scholars have even suggested that the early Stoics develop the theory of pneu~ma as a divine rational force pervading the universe from Plato’s Timaeus, where the lo/goj and world soul play similar roles.62 The idea of Platonic discourse developed here accommodates Philo’s appropriation of Stoicism to distinctively Platonic ends by identifying points of overlap and homology between theories, terms, and texts. So, John Dillon writes: Philo, like Antiochus, sees no contradiction in talking also of a division into the rational, spirited, and passionate parts, the tripartite division of Plato’s Republic (e.g. Spec. Leg. 4.92 where the influence of Rep. 4 is strong, and reinforced by the Phaedrus myth and Timaeus 69c; also Heres 225). He also feels free, as it suits him, to utilize the Stoic division into the hêgemonikon and the seven physical faculties, i.e., the five senses along with the faculties of speech and reproduction, e.g. Opif. 117, where he is in the process of extolling the hebdomad, and a group of seven dependent on a monad is what he wants. Again, at QG 2.59, he makes a tripartite division which is more Aristotelian than Platonic, distinguishing as the three parts the nutritive (threptikon), the sense-perceptive (aisthêtikon) and the rational (logikon). This is not chaotic eclecticism, however, as I have pointed out already in the case of Antiochus (above p. 102); for Philo each of these divisions expresses some aspect of the truth, but the most basic truth remains the division into rational and irrational. When the crunch comes, the spirit (thymos) and the passions (epithymia) are to be linked together in opposition to the Reason. 63

Dillon’s point about chaotic eclecticism is extremely important. Despite the fact that Philo sometimes appropriates from non-Platonic philosophical theories, there is a unifying logic to his thought on the nature of the soul. When the chips are down his moral psychology is Platonic. Philo exploits points of plausible homology between Platonism, Stoicism, and Jewish writings on many levels. His appropriation and intermin62

Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 80 BC to 220 AD (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), 175–176. 63 Ibid., 174–175.

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gling of Platonism with other traditions does not just happen because it is in the air he breathes. Rather, even when borrowing from rival schools, his elaboration of Platonic discourse exhibits an underlying agenda and rationale. Notice, for example, that he does not develop Stoic materialism in the above quoted texts or some other aspect of Stoicism that would more easily conflict with the points he wants to make about Platonic metaphysics. This is because the Stoics deny that the immaterial, intelligible realm of ideas exists and hold that everything that exists is a body. Many features of Stoic cosmology are incongruous with Plato’s metaphysics and in fact are developed in explicit opposition to it. Predictably, Philo adopts aspects of Stoicism that are at least plausibly compatible with Platonism. A similar agenda is also manifest among so-called allegorists such as Plutarch of Chaeronea. In his treatise On Isis and Osiris, Plutarch attempts to show that traditional Egyptian writings contain latent truths of Platonism: So in the soul intelligence and reason, the ruler and lord of all that is good (e0n me\n ou}n th|= yuxh=| nou~j kai\ lo/g oj o9 tw~n a0ri/stwn pa/ntwn h9 g emw_n kai\ ku/r ioj), is Osiris, and in earth and wind and water and the heavens and the stars that which is ordered, established, and healthy, as evidenced by seasons, temperatures, and cycles of revolution, is the efflux of Osiris and his reflected image (Osi/ridoj a0p orroh\ kai\ ei0kw_n e0m fainome/nh). But Typhon is that part of the soul which is impressionable, impulsive, irrational and truculent, and of the bodily part the destructible, diseased and disorderly (Tufw_n de\ th=j yuxh=j to\ paqhtiko\n kai\ titaniko\n kai\ a1logon kai\ e1m plhkton tou~ de\ swmatikou~ to\ e0p i/khron kai\ nosw~dej kai\ taraktiko\n) as evidenced by abnormal seasons and temperatures, and by obscurations of the sun and disappearances of the moon, outbursts, as it were, and unruly actions on the part of Typhon. And the name “Seth,” by which they call Typhon, denotes this; it means “the overmastering” and “overpowering,” and it means in very many instances “turning back,” and again “overpassing.” Some say that one of the companions of Typhon was Bebon, but Manetho says that Bebon was still another name by which Typhon was called. The name signifies “restraint” or “hindrance” (ka/q ecin h1 kw&lusin), as much as to say that, when things are going along in a proper way and making rapid progress towards the right end, the power of Typhon (th=j tou~ Tufw~noj duna/m ewj) obstructs them. (De Is. 371a–c)

Here, Osiris and Typhon represent truths about Platonic metaphysics and moral psychology. Osiris is at once the ruler of the soul and the ruler of the universe, because reason can be said to play both roles in Platonic metaphysics and moral psychology. Similarly, Typhon is the passionate, irascible part of the soul and the material world. Plutarch is like Philo in exploiting points of homology between certain traditions about the gods and the theories of Plato. The resemblance between Philo and Plutarch’s exegesis can be ascribed to their shared interests in allegorizing, but, considered as a harmonizing or synthesizing strategy, it is not so different from Galen’s efforts to make Posidonius out to be a Platonist in his moral psychology. In these cases, Galen, Plutarch, and Philo can be understood as appropriating and elaborating on a Platonic discourse and emphasizing similarities so as

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to synthesize this discourse with a variety of other traditions, discourses, or theories.

III. Conclusions This chapter has identified certain patterns in the use of moral discourse about passions and desires and then focused on the way writers appropriate a specifically Platonic subset of this broader discourse. By developing the concept of discourse I have tried to elucidate some of the conditions that make particular expressions meaningful and relevant. On one level, this is rather like pointing out that Philo and Plutarch do not make claims such as “unicorns do not talk on cell phones when walking on the moon.” Instead, they are like other writers who creatively use language, interests, and assumptions that are meaningful and relevant to them. But as an analytic tool, this idea of discourse has the simple but important virtue of explaining the relation between texts and patterns within texts without positing genetic relation. This is an old problem, but, lacking actual, physical texts and persons whose relation or nonrelation can be specified, scholars have not reached much agreement about what kinds of criteria should be applied in establishing such nongenetic relations. Some have appealed to ideas like ‘borrowings’, ‘commonplaces’, ‘popular usage’, ‘backgrounds’, or ‘topoi’ but often show little agreement about how much evidence is needed to establish a topos or worldview or how this evidence should be used. The analysis of discourse advanced here may provide a way of avoiding perennial constraints in the use of oppositional categories such as systematic/syncretistic thought, technical/popular philosophy, and Judaism/Hellenism. I have preferred to offer an alternative rather than address these oppositions directly, but these categories frustrate because they imply that groups, societies, and cultures are substantial entities that agree on what constitutes their reality to such an extent that they can be ascribed complex shared thought-worlds. One problem is that such approaches tend to treat ‘Hellenistic thought’ or ‘worldviews’ as minimally fluctuating substantial things, as if a large subset of ancient persons, often geographically and temporally disconnected, shared a single mind. Of course, I do not want to underemphasize the importance of shared common skills, languages, ideas, and assumptions, but concepts like popular thought and worldviews are often too blunt of a tool for the job of explaining such phenomena. In particular, they tend to reify both social formations themselves and their supposed cultures and ways of thinking.64 While much work in philosophy 64 See Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 7–27.

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and early Christianity has qualified and refined such categories, the concept of discourse developed here aims to obviate them.65 On this approach, it makes as little sense to posit something out there called ‘Platonism’ as it does to posit ‘Judaism’ or ‘Hellenistic culture’ as substantial entities that fluctuate minimally and evolve over time, bearing a striking and not accidental resemblance to the modern individual.

65 See, especially, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, ed., Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 2001).

Chapter 2

The Death of the Soul in Romans 7 Chapter 1 showed that ancient ethical discourse constructs passions and desires as a central problem to be therapeutically treated and entails a spectrum of moral types in need of treatment. This chapter focuses on one such moral type, the extremely wicked person. I argue that Rom 7 uses the conventions of Platonic moral psychology to depict a person suffering from extreme immorality described here as the death of the soul. This approach understands the monologue as elaborating on certain assumptions about the nature and attributes of the soul that are identifiably Platonic. A notion of Platonic discourse allows for an understanding of Paul as sharing certain interests and skills with his contemporaries and near contemporaries rather than as opposing various Greek traditions, as scholars have often found. A significant tradition of interpretation has opposed the idea that Paul appropriates a Platonic or even Hellenistic concept of soul. Instead, many scholars have found his thought to be polemically constructed against various Greek or Greek-influenced opponents or deriving from his supposed Jewish or Jewish-apocalyptic way of thinking. In a brief essay first published in 1932, Rudolf Bultmann argued that Rom 7 represents the human being whose existential split becomes manifest as they confront God and the reality of their own sinfulness.1 Though he entertains the idea that a Platonic model might be relevant to Rom 7, Bultmann quickly dismisses it, writing: “Just as his willing and doing are not distributed between two subjects – say, a better self and his lower impulses – but rather are both realized by the same I, so also are the ‘flesh’ and ‘mind’ (or the ‘inner man’) not two constituent elements out of which he is put together.

1 Bultmann, “Romans 7 and the Anthropology of Paul,” in Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann (trans. Schubert Ogden; New York: Meridian Books, 1960), 147–157; this view of Pauline anthropology permeates his Theology of the New Testament (trans. Kendrick Grobel; New York: Scribner, 1951). For helpful criticisms, see Robert H. Gundry, Sôma in Biblical Theology with an Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), esp. 3–8 on Bultmann’s holism; David E. Aune, “Human Nature and Ethics in Hellenistic Philosophical Traditions and Paul: Some Issues and Problems,” in Paul in His Hellenistic Context (ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 298–299.

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Man is split” [emphasis original].2 In part, Bultmann’s theology of sin motivates this rejection of the divided soul. Plato’s tripartite soul does not simply explain why persons are immoral, but also provides a foundation for a theory of moral education and improvement. Though the Platonic traditions posit self-mastery as an arduous and seldom reached goal, the intrinsic goodness and rationality of the reasoning part allows the future sage to intuit this goal and make progress toward it with the right kind of training (Alcinous, Did. 31.2). The intrinsic goodness of reason on Plato’s theory is at odds with Bultmann’s claims that, in Rom 7, even the speaker’s acts of seeing the good and wanting to do it are acts of selfreliance that are sinful. The difference is that on Plato’s model the human being can theoretically attain virtue and even likeness to God because of this endowment of reason, whereas Bultmann works from the AugustinianLutheran axiom that the human being before God is sinful, through and through. Bultmann’s dismissal of Platonism is curious given the prominent language of division and conflict in the monologue, but his Theology of the New Testament explains this division as that between subject and object rather than between ontologically distinct parts.3 So, Bultmann famously understands Pauline anthropological terms as aspects or ways of being; he writes of sw~ma (body), “man is sôma when he is objectivized in relation to himself by becoming the object of his own thought, attitude, or conduct.”4 Three interrelated features of Bultmann’s Christian self are especially anachronistic: first, the idea of the self as a unified and uniquely individual center of consciousness; second, the related view of the subject as ontologically stable in its unique subjective experience; and third, the claim that the famous Cartesian split between self and other, subject and object, automatically arises from points one and two. The Cartesian knowing subject, because of its uniquely interior realm, comes to understand itself as cut off from the world of objects and paradoxically comes to know itself as an object. Later philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, endow this thinker with a special capacity for self-legislation and autonomy and on this basis allow the subject to adopt a special individual stance or commitment. The existentialist decision or commitment thus grows out of this legacy.5 As developed by Bultmann, Christianity drives the self toward this choice or commitment in answer to the crisis of the subject. He construes Paul’s anthropology as a monistic, ontologically stable inner realm of 2

Bultmann, “Romans 7,” 151. Aune, “Human Nature and Ethics,” 291–312. 4 Bultmann, Theology, 1.202–3. 5 Christopher Gill, Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 6–7. 3

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consciousness endowed with the capacity for autonomous choice and decision of the existentialist type so that he can retrieve a supposedly original and historical core for his existentialist Christian theology. Bultmann justified his view of Pauline anthropology by developing an influential historical position that understands Paul’s thought as polemically constructed against so-called gnostic dualists. Reflecting contemporary interests in supposed gnostics and gnostic opponents, Bultmann made gnosticism out to be a systematic philosophical-mystical system that sometimes manifested itself in so-called mystery religions and occasionally infected some forms of Judaism.6 The major anthropological insight that he derived from this formulation was that gnostics conceive of the true self as radically different from the body. This anthropological dualism supposedly fits with a cosmic dualism because the true self is really a spark of light that originated in an immaterial divine realm but has been cast into the evil material world and trapped inside a body. Bultmann thus construes gnostic dualism as involving an animated struggled between the body and the true self, the divine realm and the evil, demonic cosmos, the creator and redeemer gods. This view of gnosticism was also implicated in a theory of Christian origins, as Bultmann argued that Christianity from its beginnings was loyal to Jewish monotheism and so rejected gnosticism, with its twin gods.7 Because gnostic anthropology is tied to cosmology, Christians supposedly reject anthropological dualism as well. The result is an influential position that Paul’s anthropology is nondualistic, derived from Bultmann’s particular assessment of gnosticism and his view of the evolution of Christianity out of Judaism. A number of scholars have taken issue with Bultmann’s existentialist reading of Rom 7, but Ernst Käsemann’s critique has proved very important for the history of scholarship. Käsemann rejected Bultmann’s existentialist reading and attempted to install a supposedly apocalyptic interpretation of Paul’s anthropology in its place.8 He countered: “Anthropology is here the projection of cosmology.… Because the world is not finally a neutral place but the field of contending powers, mankind both individu6 Bultmann typifies gnosticism as “a dualistic redemption-religion which invaded Hellenism from the orient” (Theology, 1.109) and this view underlies his more developed analysis elsewhere (e.g., Theology, 1.164–183). 7 E.g., ibid., 1.168. 8 Käsemann, “On the Subject of Primitive Christian Apocalyptic,” in New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 108–137; “On Paul’s Anthropology,” in Perspectives on Paul (trans. Margaret Kohl; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 1–31; and Commentary on Romans (trans. and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980), esp. 131–185. Käsemann’s position develops that of Martin Dibelius in Die Geisterwelt in Glauben des Paulus (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1909). For Bultmann’s response, see “Ist Apokalyptik die Mutter der christlichen Theologie?” in Apophoreta: Festschrift für E. Haenchen (BZNW 30; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1964), 64–69.

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ally and socially becomes an object in the struggle and an exponent of the power that rules it.”9 For Käsemann, Rom 7 describes the human being whose body has been invaded by a hostile apocalyptic power named “sin.” Whereas Bultmann understood sin as a mode of being, Käsemann insisted that it was a demonlike external force. Those who have brought this theory to its logical conclusion have also claimed to find many other powers, such as flesh, death, law, grace, mercy, and faith.10 The notion of sin as a power enjoys broad approval, at least in part, because it can plausibly account for the active and seemingly personal language about sin in Rom 5–8. Though the evidence for such views is treated in more detail below, it should be noted in advance that there is very little historical evidence to encourage such a reading. With the possible exception of 1QS 3, there are very few texts that unambiguously depict demons or beings entering the body from outside and controlling the person in the way the theory envisions. Not only is there little evidence that this is a characteristic feature of apocalypticism, but as Bruce Kaye and Stanley Stowers have argued, Paul’s characterization of sin in Rom 6–8 can be adequately explained as an instance of metaphor and personification.11 Nevertheless, the theory is extremely popular and can be found in most major commentaries and numerous other studies of Paul’s thought. While Käsemann rejects the existential-psychological reading outright, Robert Jewett criticizes Bultmann on different grounds in his Paul’s Anthropological Terms. Here, Jewett develops the idea of gnostic opponents but argues against Bultmann that a struggle with opponents lies behind virtually all of Paul’s anthropological terms.12 Such conceptions of gnosticism have disintegrated in recent decades, but the hypothesis of opponents lives on and exemplifies certain persistent problems with conceptualizing the use and appropriation of language.13 In the case of Rom 7, Jewett finds 9

Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, 150. So, J. Louis Martyn holds that flesh and spirit are powers (see “Apocalyptic Antinomies,” in Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul [Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1997], 111–123), and Martinus C. de Boer argues that death is also a power (The Defeat of Death: Apocalyptic Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 [JSNT supp. ser. 22; Sheffield: JSOT, 1988]). 11 Kaye, The Thought Structure of Romans with Special Reference to Chapter 6 (Austin, Tex.: Schola, 1979), esp. 30–47; Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), 179–189. 12 Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms (AGJU 10; Leiden: Brill, 1971). 13 See Michael A. Williams, Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2003). For recent arguments to the effect that Paul works out his anthropology in opposition to different types of Corinthian opponents, see T. K. Heckel, Der Innere Mensch: Die paulinische Verarbeitung eines platonischen Motivs (WUNT 2.53; Tübingen: Mohr 10

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that Bultmann wrongly elided the mind, the inner man, and the “I” as if they all referred to the same part of the person; Jewett instead claims that the identification of the true self with the speaking “I” was a gnostic premise that Paul opposed. On this reading, the mind, the inner person, and the “I” all refer to different things: But whereas Bultmann immediately jumped to the gnostic conclusion [that the “I” was the true self] on the basis of Romans 7, Paul himself does not allow his formulation to provide any support whatever for this interpretation. The identity of the nou~j and the e1sw a1nqrwpoj remains implicit only. In Rom 7:23 he differentiates between the “I” and the “mind” in the use of the possessive pronoun so that “my mind” is strictly paralleled in its distance from the person himself by “my flesh” (v. 18) and “my members” (v. 23). In Rom 7:25b the distinction between the “I” and the “mind” is even more emphasized by the use of au0to\j e0g w…. douleu/w with the word “mind” in the dative. This distinction is also expressed by the double description of the self’s division, first by means of the pronoun “I” (Rom 7:14ff.) and then by means of the inner man and mind categories (Rom 7:22f.). Throughout this passage, Paul’s desire to avoid the gnostic identification of the self with the “mind” is evident. His desire to answer the theological questions posed by the law-abiding Jew’s conflict with the divine righteousness forces him to use the gnostic idea of the divided self. But the integration of this idea into this argument causes shifts in connotation for every single category.14

First, this theory of Paul’s polemical fragmentation relies on a hypothesis about opponents that can be neither proved nor disproved. The result is a highly speculative explanation for the historical context that gives rise to the monologue of Rom 7, one that renders the text a sui generis product of a unique polemical moment. Second, though Jewett highlights the variation in Paul’s use of anthropological terms, he ignores the common linguistic practice of using different terms, metaphors, and statements in discussing the same entity, idea, or phenomenon. He also disregards the wealth of evidence for the way moral writers used terms and metaphors in order to retrieve a supposed Jewish tradition, insisting that “he [Paul] cannot say the ‘true self’ is the mind, for he retains the assumption that the kardi/a is the center of the person and that the mind is somehow distinct from that ‘I’.”15 An example from Philo demonstrates how different terms and metaphors serve the description and elaboration of Platonic moral psychology. In the Allegorical Laws, Philo introduces the tripartite soul and then explains the location of its different faculties: “Our soul consists of three parts, and has one part given to reasoning (logistiko/n), a second to high Siebeck, 1993), 77–79; Hans Dieter Betz, “The Concept of the ‘Inner Human Being’ (o( e1sw a1nqrwpoj) in the Anthropology of Paul,” NTS 46 (2000): 335–339, discussed below. 14 Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms, 389. 15 Ibid.

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spirit (qumiko/n), a third to desire (e0piqumhtiko/n)” (Leg. 3.115). Philo here uses standard Platonic terms for the faculties of the soul, but he goes on to elaborate on the location and function of these parts, using different terms and metaphors: If, therefore, O mind (dia/noia), thou art ever inquiring what quarter pleasure (h9donh\) has for her portion, do not consider the place occupied by the head, where the reasoning faculty (to\ logistiko/n) resides, for thou wilt assuredly not find it there, since reason is at war with passion (ma/xetai o97 lo/g oj tw|~ pa/q ei), and cannot remain in the same place with it. For when reason prevails (kratou~ ntoj) pleasure is gone, and when pleasure conquers (nikw&shj), reason is an exile. But look for it in the breast and belly, where high spirit (qumo\j) and desire (e0p iqumi/a) are, portions of the irrational (me/rh7tou~7a0lo/g ou): for in the irrational is to be found alike our faculty of choice (h9 kri/sij) and the passions (ta\ pa/q h). Well, there is nothing to prevent the mind (nou~j) from going out from the purely intellectual interests which are proper to it and giving itself up to its inferior (tw~n nohtw~n kai\ oi0kei/w n e0p ibolw~n e0k doqh=nai tw~| xei/roni). This happens when war prevails in the soul (yuxh=j krath/sh| po/lemoj); for then reason, that is in us not as a combative (ma/x imon) but as a peaceful inmate, cannot fail to become a prisoner of war (dorua/lwton). (Leg. 3. 116–117)

The text associates the reasoning faculty with dia/noia, lo/goj, nou~j, and th\n nohtw~n (intellectual interests). This is not a nonsensical hodgepodge of terms but a descriptive elaboration of the qualities, functions, and attributes of the reasoning part that is the seat of reason, intelligence, and judgment. Further, the term nou~j is often used as a synonym for the reasoning part. Likewise, the spirited and appetitive faculties are variously related to h9donh/, pa/qh, qumo/j, e0piqumi/a, me/rh tou= a0lo/gou, and tw|~ xei/roni (the inferior). According to Platonists, pleasure (h9donh/) works deceitfully on the senses to provoke the appetitive faculty; pa/qh, qumo/j, and e0piqumi/a are regular terms for passions, high spirit, and appetite; the appetitive and spirited faculties are by definition irrational and regularly described as such; and both the appetitive and spirited parts are commonly designated together as the worse part of the soul, in contrast to reason, the better part. Though Philo uses different terms here, he does not use them to describe essentially different things, but rather different aspects of the faculties related to their special activities and functions. To find that this amounts to inconsistency would be to miss the broader model that ties together the different faculties and explains their interrelation. Hans Dieter Betz, in his recent essay, “The Concept of the ‘Inner Human Being’ (o9 e1sw a1nqrwpoj) in the Anthropology of Paul,” argues that Paul develops his anthropology in explicit opposition to a dualistic Hellenism.16 Using a variety of argumentative strategies, Betz finds that Paul has a nondualistic view of the human being. The contours of this supposed dualism are as follows: 16

Betz, “The Concept of the ‘Inner Human Being’,” 315–341.

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The immortal soul was thought of as temporarily residing on the body as in a kind of shell, garment or “dwelling-place.” The famous Platonic dualism of the immortal soul incarcerated or entombed in the mortal body is the consequence. In one way or another, all ancient Greek and Roman anthropology and ethics is based on this dualism. Since Socrates, “caring for the soul” (yuxh=j e0p imelei~sqai) became the focus of the intellectual and ethical life, implying also the devaluation of anything related to the body with its desires and pleasures. The “self” thus becomes separated from the body; it can even enter into opposition to the body.17

Insofar as Betz uses dualism in a weak sense as the mere distinction between body and soul, he fails to identify anything distinctive about Platonic and Hellenistic views of the soul because virtually all ancient thought defines the soul as the difference between a living person and a corpse. When dualism is meant more strongly it is historically inaccurate.18 Plato and other writers sometimes construe the body as a corpse or prison of the soul, but when used as a summary of the Platonic view this statement seriously misrepresents Plato’s theory. Vague ideas of dualism mask the complexity of Plato’s thought as well as ancient conceptions of the person generally. Further, texts such as 2 Cor 5:1–10 describe the body as an “earthly tent” that will be destroyed, Rom 8:23 alludes to a future “redemption of our bodies,” and 1 Cor 15:42–50 ends with the climactic statement “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Cor 15:50). If by “dualism” Betz means that Hellenistic writers value the soul and mind over the body, then these texts seem to render Paul a dualist since they cast the body and flesh as a temporary dwelling that will be transformed at the parousia into something better. Ultimately, Betz’s project recasts Bultmann’s position regarding the unity of the person in Paul’s thought. Whereas Bultmann opposed this anthropological holism to a supposed gnosticism, Betz differentiates this over and against a supposed Hellenistic dualism. So, he asserts that in Rom 7: There is no principal, ontological dualism between “body” and “soul;” the concept of yuxh/ being absent rules out a dualism of the Platonic kind.… The nou~j is the element of the e1sw a1nqrwpoj that sees and is able to understand the human predicament, but it is neither divine in nature nor ontologically separate from the body. Therefore, abandoning the inferior part to save the superior e1sw a1nqrwpoj is not what Paul has in mind. Rather, the entire a1nqrwpoj must be saved, and that is the sw~m a. 19

17

Ibid., 323. On Plato’s complex view of the body/soul relation, see A. W. Price, Mental Conflict (London: Routledge, 1995), 36–40. 19 Betz, “The Concept of the ‘Inner Human Being’,” 337–338. 18

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This reading makes little sense without an appreciation of Bultmann’s position that Paul conceives of the person as ontologically stable.20 Betz carefully avoids claiming that Paul opposes gnostic dualism, most likely because of the robust critique that such conceptions of gnosticism have sustained.21 He appeals instead to Plato’s theory of the soul’s immortality and attempts to argue for a strong dualism on this basis. In doing so, Betz conflates two very different aspects of the Platonic tradition: the interaction between soul and body during life and the separation of the immortal part of the soul from the body at death. The formulation thus avoids the anachronism of appealing to later gnostic dualisms but arrives at a similar reading of Paul’s anthropology by taking a Platonic premise out of context. Taking this as evidence of a strong dualism misrepresents Plato and later Platonisms and conflates several different aspects of Paul’s discussion as well, for Rom 7 does not address the body/soul relation after death but rather during life, and texts such as 1 Cor 15:42–50 and Rom 8:23 address the future transformation of the body, not its death. Further, Paul need not use the term yuxh/ to indicate that he has a concept of soul. To say so would be like claiming that a man cannot refer to his wife as ‘Suzie’, ‘Suze’, ‘my spouse’, ‘my better half’, or ‘my old lady’ without being a polygamist. Betz also dismisses the relevance of Hellenistic literature on the grounds that it cannot be tied to Paul by direct genetic links. So, for instance, he dismisses the language of the inner person, writing: “The problem with this tradition-historical approach is that there is no evidence of a straight line of tradition from Plato to Paul. Undeniably, Philo of Alexandria appropriated Plato’s concept, but he did not use precisely the same terms. He used a variety of similar ones as compared with Plato in Rep. 9.”22 Betz is right to bring out the absence of direct links, but if the only criterion for establishing relation is evidence of genetic connections from one writer or text to another, then there is little point to historical analysis because we have almost no data of this type. In contrast, this study imagines Paul as appropriating Platonic traditions, analogies, terms, or phrases because he is a human being who inhabits certain shared intellectual interests and skills. In an important essay, “Human Nature and Ethics in Hellenistic Philosophical Traditions and Paul: Some Issues and Problems,” David Aune argues that the study of Paul’s anthropology has been confounded by a number of Bultmannian premises. His analysis takes Hellenistic theories very seriously and offers many sharp critiques of Bultmann and his heirs, 20

So Betz (ibid.) cites Bultmann’s analysis with approval. See Williams, Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’; King, What Is Gnosticism?; Aune, “Human Nature and Ethics,” 295–296. 22 Betz, “The Concept of the ‘Inner Human Being’,” 319. 21

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but Aune ultimately develops a picture of Hellenistic thought as so diverse that it defies explanation. His alternative, then, posits vast discontinuities: While it is no longer possible to speak of the Pauline view of human nature, neither is it possible to speak of the Platonic, the Aristotelian, or the Stoic conceptions of human nature [emphasis original]. Plato’s view of human nature, elements of which were drawn from both philosophical and popular traditions, changed radically during his lifetime and were never forced into a single coherent system. The most obvious change was from his view of the yuxh/ as a simple substance in the Phaedo, to the tri-partite division of the yuxh/ in the Republic. In the Phaedo alone the term yuxh/ is used with a relatively extensive variety of connotations: (1) the element within us whose good condition constitutes our true well-being; (2) the “true self” or “real person” (115b–116a); (3) the intellect, reason or thinking faculty (65b–c; 76c); (4) the “rational self” in contrast to emotions and physical desires (94b–d); (5) the “life principle” or “animating agent” (64c; 72a–d; 105c– d); (6) generic “soul stuff” in contrast to individual souls, just as matter may be contrasted to individual bodies (70c–d; 80c–d). These various meanings of yuxh/ cannot be understood within a single consistent framework. How can the soul “bring life” to the body (105c–d), “rule and be master” of the body (80a; 94b–d), and yet be a “prisoner” within the body (82e–83a)? According to Plato, the soul wore the body like clothes to be discarded (Phaedo 87b), the soul is woven through the body (Tim. 36e), or a person is a soul using a body (Alc. maj. 129c–e). One of the persistent problems with Plato’s conception of the soul-body relationship (and one which was attacked by both Stoics and Epicureans) was the assumption that the incorporeal could somehow associate with the corporeal to form a single substance – a human person. 23

I am sympathetic with Aune’s concerns with positing Greek philosophical views as overly systematic, but he underplays points of continuity in the philosophical schools to such an extent that he misrepresents them. He presents a picture of Plato’s theory as hopelessly fragmented and concludes that because the term yuxh/ is used in different ways in different contexts, there is no relatively consistent theory. Certainly Plato’s theory is complex and develops throughout his writings, but in most of the examples that Aune cites the soul has consistent attributes and characteristics. When read in context, for example, it is not contradictory to claim that the soul gives life to the body, rules and masters the body, and is held a prisoner within the body; the first is a standard view of the soul, the second depicts the soul’s ideal relation to the body, and the third expresses the view that its incarnation in the body separates its immortal part from its heavenly origins. These are different attributes and characteristics, but they do not exclude one another. As Richard Sorabji also points out, even the shift from the unitary immortal soul of the Phaedo to the tripartite soul with an immortal reasoning part in the Republic and Timaeus simply recasts the

23

Aune, “Human Nature and Ethics,” 292–293.

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unified soul of the Phaedo as a future ideal.24 Further, though Aune is correct that it is impossible to speak of “the Platonic, the Aristotelian, or the Stoic conceptions of human nature,” as if these were intellectual hypostases floating in space, it is certainly the case that it counts for something when writers lay claim to Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic conceptions of human nature and these writers show broad agreement about what makes a theory recognizable as Platonic, Aristotelian, or Stoic. Attention to such minimal points of agreement will help to elucidate a distinctive Platonic discourse that can in turn account for certain underlying patterns in the way writers creatively appropriate Plato’s view of the soul.

I. The Death of the Soul in Philo of Alexandria In a variety of exegetical and philosophical contexts, Philo of Alexandria dramatizes a struggle between the good and bad parts of the soul. In fact, he understands most Jewish narratives as allegories for moralpsychological states and possibilities. In keeping with his Platonism, Philo frequently depicts the soul as a site of struggle between rational and irrational parts and often describes this conflict using metaphors and analogies having to do with warfare, rule, slavery, and imprisonment.25 In doing so, he fits with a tradition that goes back to Plato, who regularly elaborates on inner-soul conflict using extended analogies and metaphors in service of description. So, for example, Plato writes in the Republic: Moderation is surely a kind of order, the mastery of certain kinds of pleasures and desires (h9 swfrosu/nh e0sti\n kai\ h9 donw~n tinwn kai\ e0p iqumiw~n e0g kra/teia). People indicate as much when they use the phrase “self-control” (krei/ttw dh\ au(t ou~) and other similar phrases.… The expression is apparently trying to indicate that, in the soul of that very person, there is a better part and a worse one and that, whenever the naturally better part is in control of the worse, this is expressed by saying that the person is self-controlled or master of himself. At any rate, one praises someone by calling him self-controlled. But when, on the other hand, the smaller and better part is overpowered by the larger, because of bad upbringing or bad company, this is called being self-defeated or licentious and is a reproach (e0n au)tw~| tw~| a0nqrw&p w| peri\ th\n yuxh\n to\ me\n be/ ltion e)/n i, to\ de\ xei=ron, kai\ o(/tan me\n to\ be/ltion fu/sei tou~ xei/ronoj e0g krate\j h]|, tou~to le/g ein to\ krei/t tw au9t ou~, e0p ainei= gou~n: o(/tan de\ u(p o\ trofh=j kakh=j h)/ tinoj 24

Sorabji, “Emotional Conflict and the Divided Self,” in Emotions and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), 310. 25 See John Dillon’s The Middle Platonists: 80 BC to 220 AD (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), 139–183, and the important essays on Philo’s Platonism by Gregory E. Sterling, David T. Runia, David Winston, Thomas H. Tobin, and John Dillon collected in Studia Philonica Annual 5 (1993): 95–155. Additional studies of Philo are cited below where relevant.

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o9m ili/a j krathqh|= u9p o\ plh/q ouj tou~ xei/ronoj smikro/t eron to\ be/ltion o)/n, tou~to de\ w(j e0n o0nei/dei ye/g ein te kai\ kalei~n h(/ttw e9autou~ kai\ a)ko/l aston to\n ou(/t w diakei/m enon). (Rep. 4.430e–431b)26

Here, swfrosu/nh captures the control and mastery of pleasures and appetites as well as the dominance of the better over the worse part of the soul. The terms for qu/moj and the reasoning faculty do not appear here, but they are represented by appropriate metaphors or implied in formulations such as the “better/best part” (to\ be/ltion) and the “worse part” (to\\ xei=ron). Plato also lumps the qumo/j together with the appetites as a single entity that opposes reason because this is a logical implication of the division between rational and irrational parts.27 Though Plato extols the dominance of reason over the irrational passions, he also alludes to its logical antithesis: the dominance of the irrational passions. Philo’s exegesis of Exodus 4:1–5 similarly reflects variation in terms and metaphors as well as an interest in the kinds of antithetical moral types implicit in Plato’s moral economy: The lover of virtue runs away from passion (tou~ pa/qouj) and pleasure (th=j h9donh=j). But, mark you, God does not applaud his flight. For while it well befits thee, O my mind, who art not yet made perfect (teleiwqei/sh|) , to get practice by flying and running away from the passions (tw~n paqw~n), it befits Moses, the perfect one, not to desist from the warfare against them, but to resist them and fight it out (tw|~ pro\j au0ta\ pole/m w| kai\ a0ntistatei~n au0t oi~j kai\ diama/ xesqai). Otherwise, finding nothing to alarm or to stop them, they will make their way up to the very citadel of the soul (th=j yuxikh=j a0kropo/lewj), and storm and plunder the whole soul after the fashion of a lawless ruler (e0kpoliorkh/sei kai\ lehlath/sei tura/nnou tro/p on th\n yuxh/n). Wherefore also God bids him “lay hold of the tail.” This means, “Let not pleasure’s opposition and her savagery daunt thee (to\ a0nti/dikon th=j h9donh=j kai\ a0ti/q ason au0th=j mh\ fobei/tw).” (Leg. 2.90–92)

Philo operates with a Platonic logic here inasmuch as he connects the good part of the soul with virtue, the mind, the whole soul, and the soul’s “citadel,” whereas its opponents are the passions, pleasures, and a “lawless ruler.” The “citadel of the soul” (th=j yuxikh=j a0kropo/lewj) is a meta26 27

Translations of the Republic are from Grube. This conflation is standard in Platonism. See, e.g., Galen:

The irrational power in us (a1logoj e0 n h9m i=n du/n amij) draws the person who feels the need to each of the desired objects, while reason pulls in the opposite direction and checks the untimely motion (th\n ou0k e0n kairw~| fora/n). And often the conflict (ma/xh) between the two becomes violent (i0sxura\) , thus indicating clearly that the nature of the contending powers in us is two-fold.… But as it is, since there are two powers that pull the human being, since there is an irrational (power) that desires the drink and a rational (power) that holds the irrational in check, in that sort of situation temperance (swfrosu/nhj) and self-control (e0g kratei/a j) have their origin. (Hip. et. Plat. 5.7.22–25; trans. de Lacy).

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phor for reason or mind that appears in the Republic (8.560b) and the Timaeus (70a), and the “lawless ruler” (tura/nnou) represents the passions in an allusion to the tyrannical man from the Republic. A range of metaphors and analogies describe antagonism between good and bad faculties, from struggle and flight to warfare, treachery, and plundering, but all of them depict a struggle for dominance. Despite the varied ways that Philo describes this moral-psychological drama, the basic model is consistent in depicting an ongoing struggle between the good mind and the evil passions. Such variation appears frequently in Philo’s writings that refer to the good part of the soul as the reasoning faculty, the mind, or the inner person but just as often appeal to the soul generally in contexts that oppose the ‘good’ soul to the ‘evil’ body. Conversely, he identifies the bad faculties with passions, desires, and appetites but also simply with vice, the ‘evil’ body, and the flesh. Philo’s use of different terms and metaphors constitutes creative elaboration on Platonic discourse that furthers description and exhortation. The exhortations in the above text ominously invoke the possibility that the passions and pleasures might succeed at storming the “citadel of the soul.” A number of Philonic writings treat such a condition and sometimes describe this as the death of the soul.28 Though this use of metaphors is somewhat unusual, death and dying in these contexts describe a moralpsychological phenomenon that is consistent with a Platonic understanding of extreme wickedness and immorality.29 Consider Philo’s explanation of God’s warning to Adam and Eve that they will die if they eat from the tree of life: That death is of two kinds, one that of the man in general, the other that of the soul in particular. The death of the man is the separation of the soul from the body, but the death of the soul is the decay of virtue and the bringing in of wickedness (o9 de\ yuxh=j qa/natoj a0reth=j me\n fqora/ e0sti, kaki/aj de\ a0na/ lhyij). It is for this reason that God says not only “die” but “die the death,” indicating not the death common to us all, but that special death properly so called, which is that of the soul becoming entombed in passions and wickedness of all kinds (o3j e0sti yuxh=j e0ntumbeuome/nhj pa/q esi kai\ kaki/aij a9p a/saij). And this death is practically the antithesis of the death which awaits us all. The latter is a separation of combatants that had been pitted against one another, 28

I draw on the excellent essay by Dieter Zeller, “The Life and Death of the Soul in Philo of Alexandria: The Use and Origin of the Metaphor,” Studia Philonica Annual 7 (1995): 19–55, and have benefited greatly from his thorough treatment of relevant texts, many of which I treat below. Some of these texts are also treated by Karina Martin Hogan in “The Exegetical Background of the ‘Ambiguity of Death’ in the Wisdom of Solomon,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods 30 (1999): 1–24. 29 Zeller, “The Life and Death of the Soul,” 23, argues that Philo’s use of the metaphor is driven by exegetical interests, because it occurs almost exclusively in the Allegorical Commentary and the Quaestiones.

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body and soul, to wit (e0kei~ noj me\n ga\ r dia/k risi/j e0sti tw~n sugkriqe/ntwn sw&m ato/j te kai\ yuxh=j). The former, on the other hand, is a meeting of the two in conflict (ou[t oj de\ tou0nanti/o n su/nodoj a0m foi~ n). And in this conflict the worse, the body, overcomes (kratou~ntoj me\n tou~ xei/ronoj sw&m atoj), and the better, the soul, is overcome (kratoume/nou de\ tou~ krei/t tonoj yuxh=j). (Leg. 1.105–107)

This text depicts the body negatively as aligned with the passions, appetites, vices, and the worse part, whereas it associates the soul with virtue, reason, mind, and the best part. The body/soul relation at death contrasts sharply with the body/soul relation entailed in the death of the soul. Philo does not make use of simplistic body/soul dualisms to describe soul-death because, as a Platonist, he holds that the soul is integrated with the body during life. More specifically, he amplifies the alliance between the irrational faculties and the body so as to make the body into a virtual cocombatant against reason. Soul-death, then, expresses the bad outcome of the perpetual war within the embodied soul. In the above quoted text, Philo describes soul-death alternately as “the decay of virtue and the bringing in of wickedness” (o9 de\ yuxh=j qa/natoj a0reth=j me\n fqora/ e0sti, kaki/aj de\ a0na/lhyij), and the soul entombed in “passions and wickedness of all kinds” (o3j e0sti yuxh=j e0ntumbeuome/nhj pa/qesi kai\ kaki/aij a9pa/saij).30 The former uses an invasion metaphor to convey the corruption of the good part of the soul by the bad, whereas the latter depicts the soul as entombed by passions and vices. Wickedness is personified as a being that works together with passions to entomb the soul, because passions are the root cause of wickedness and vice. At the same time, Philo associates the soul with virtue, because the mind is the seat of reason and so responsible for virtuous behavior. Philo elsewhere justifies such alteration in the use of the term yuxh/ for the rational part of the soul and for the whole soul, writing: “We use ‘soul’ in two senses, both for the whole soul and also for its dominant part, which properly speaking is the soul’s soul” (e0peidh\ ga\r yuxh\ dixw~j le/getai, h3 te o3lh kai\ to\ h9gemoniko\n au0th=j me/roj, o3 kuri/wj ei0pei~n yuxh\ yuxh=j e0sti) (Her. 55).31 The claim that “the worse, the body, overcomes, and the better, the soul, is overcome” reintroduces a body/soul dualism but does not imply strict separation, as it simply completes the analogy with bodily death. These analogies and metaphors cohere in the sense that they describe the attributes and characteristics of the rational and irrational parts of the soul in an especially wicked person. Philo’s subsequent discussion continues to renarrate the basic psychological drama developed previously: the soul is trapped and “killed” by the passions and desires that have risen to dominate reason. So, he continues: 30

See Zeller, “The Life and Death of the Soul,” 40–45. Compare Rep. 4.439a–b, where Plato attributes hunger to the whole soul rather than the appetites. 31

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But observe that wherever Moses speaks of “dying the death,” he means the penaltydeath (qa/naton to\n e0p i\ timwri/a|) , not that which takes place in the course of nature. That one is in the course of nature in which soul is parted from body; but the penaltydeath takes place when the soul dies to the life of virtue, and is alive only to that of wickedness (o3t an h9 yuxh\ to\n a0reth=j bi/o n qnh|/skh|. to\n de\ kaki/ aj zh|= mo/non). That is an excellent saying of Heraclitus, who on this point followed Moses’ teaching, “We live,” he says, “their death, and are dead to their life.” He means that now, when we are living, the soul is dead and has been entombed in the body as in a sepulcher; whereas, should we die, the soul lives forthwith its own proper life, and is released from the body, the baneful corpse to which it was tied. (Leg. 1.107–108)

Here again soul-death functions as a metaphor for describing the defeat of reason. As a result of this defeat, reason is completely disempowered in that it is unable to effect its good judgments. This is precisely why Philo connects soul-death with vice and wickedness, because such a condition renders the mind incapable of putting its good judgments and plans into action. The result is terrible levels of vice and immorality. This text also demonstrates that life and death must be carefully read in context, because a person may be said to die with respect to virtue and live with respect to vice, whereas living to vice is itself a kind of death.32 Life and death function in these contexts as flexible metaphors for moral-psychological states and conditions. Philo appeals to the language of death and dying frequently in his treatises, but he does not always present a full-scale analysis on par with the exegesis of Gen 2:17. For example, he attacks Sophists by asking, “May we not go further and say that in your souls all noble qualities have died, while evil qualities have been quickened (te/qnhke ta\ kala/, zwpurhqe/ntwn kakw~n)? It is because of this that not one of you is really still alive” (Det. 74–75). The claim that good and evil are located within the soul makes sense given that a Platonic moral economy makes the rational and irrational parts responsible for good and evil conduct. Here, those who are truly dead kill the good (te/qnhke ta\ kala/) so that the bad comes to life (zwpurhqe/ntwn kakw~n). Relatedly, Philo comments elsewhere: “The High Priest, so Moses says, ‘shall not go in to any dead soul’ [Lev 21:11]. Death of soul is a life in the company of vice (qa/natoj de\ yuxh=j o9 meta\ kaki/aj e0sti\ bi/oj), so that what is meant is that he is never to come in contact with any polluting object, and of these folly always stinks” (Fug. 113–114). This text reinterprets death impurity as the contamination of the soul by vice and foolishness. Philo also develops soul32 Philo can speak positively of dying to bodily life, as in Mos. 1.279; Gig. 14; cf. Ebr. 70; Fug. 90; being truly alive in Leg. 1.32, 1.35, 2.93, 3.52–53; Det. 70–71; Post. 12, 45; Migr. 21; Her. 201; Congr. 87; Mut. 213; Somn. 2.64; Virt. 17; QG 1.16, 1.70, 2.45, 4.46, 4.238; truly dead in Det. 70–71; Her. 53, 201; Leg. 3.35, 3.72; Spec. 1.345; cf. Plato, Gorg. 492e.

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death in relation to pleasure by casting pleasures as the death-bringing serpents of Num 21:6 (Leg. 2.77–78, 2.87), God’s punishment of Er (Leg. 3.73–76), and in an allegory on Methusaleh (Post. 73). The allegorical exegesis of serpents as pleasures is the most developed: For this reason, too, when the part of us that corresponds to the turbulent mob of a city, pines for the dwelling in Egypt, that is, in the corporeal mass (tw~| swmatikw~| o1g kw|) , it encounters pleasures which bring death (h9donai~j peripi/p tei qa/n aton e0p agou/saij), not the death which severs soul from body, but the death which ruins the soul by vice (yuxh=j u9p o\ kaki/a j fqora/n). For we read, “And the Lord sent among the people the deadly serpents, and they bit the people, and much people of the children of Israel died” [Num 21:6]. For verily nothing so surely brings death upon a soul as immoderate indulgence in pleasures (a0m etri/ a tw~n h9donw~n). That which dies is not the ruling part in us, but the part that is under rule, the part that is like the vulgar herd. And so long will it incur death, as it fails to repent and acknowledge its fall. (Leg. 2.77–78)

The “part of us that corresponds to the turbulent mob of a city” echoes Plato’s Republic and allegorizes the appetites of the tripartite soul. It longs for the body, Egypt, and falls in with pleasure. The alliance of the appetites with the body makes sense in light of Philo’s Platonism, as does blaming pleasure itself as the instrument of death. In fact, Philo often personifies pleasures as serpents and whores that work as evil, malevolent, and deceptive forces.33 Philo understands pleasures, like the appetites, as instrumental in vice and immorality, so that soul-death is both “death which ruins the soul by vice” (yuxh=j u9po\ kaki/aj fqora/n) and “immoderate indulgence in pleasures” (a0metri/a tw~n h9donw~n). In the above text, the language about death also shifts as Philo argues that what truly dies is the lower parts, not the ruling (rational) element. The text first conveys the corruption of the whole soul but then shifts to the perspective of the soul’s relation to God. On these terms, the lower parts die in the sense that they become alienated from God (cf. Leg. 2.78–81). Here it is suggested that the condition is not necessarily permanent, as the soul can “repent and acknowledge its fall,” which may imply the view that souls in such a state cannot reflect or regret their condition. Philo and other writers, however, take inconsistent positions on the issue of reflection and regret. Whereas here Philo implies that such souls do not view their plight as bad (i.e., they do not repent), he elsewhere claims that reason does understand and regret its plight even in the most extreme cases (e.g., Conf. 119–121). A range of texts from Philo use the analogy of soul-death to describe extreme wickedness. So, Philo reads Methusalah as follows: What issue awaits him who does not live according to the will of God, save death of the soul? And to this is given the name Methuselah, which means (as we saw) “a dispatch of death.” Wherefore he is son of Mahujael [Gen 4:18], of the man who relinquished his 33

E.g., Leg. 2.74–98.

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own life, to whom dying is sent, yea soul-death, which is the change of soul under the impetus of irrational passion (h3 kata\ pa/q oj a1 logo/n e0 stin au0th=j metabolh/) . (Post. 73)

Similarly, Philo reads God’s question to Adam “where are you?” in Gen 3:9 as a question about the state of the soul that refuses the tree of life (wisdom): “Didst thou gorge thyself with ignorance and corruption, preferring misery the soul’s death (kakodaimoni/an to\n yuxh=j qa/naton) to happiness the real life (eu0daimoni/aj th=j a0lhqinh=j zwh=j prokri/nasa)?” (Leg. 3.52–53). While these texts do not elaborate at length on the moral psychology of soul-death, they do show a consistent use of life and death analogies to convey moral-psychological states and possibilities. Though elaborated in different ways, the underlying drama is consistent: the faculties of the divided soul struggle, and when one dominates this can be construed as killing or putting to death the opposing faculty or faculties. The texts explored so far focused primarily on the death of the rational faculty, but Philo also uses the same analogies to argue the reverse: “For when the mind has carried off the rewards of victory (nikhth/ria), it condemns the corpse body to death (qa/naton katayhfi/zetai tou~ nekrou~ sw&matoj)” (Leg. 3.74). Here, death functions positively to convey the victory of reason over the irrational parts.34 Though philosophers and moralists demonstrate an interest in the moralpsychological condition that Philo describes as soul-death, few if any precedents can be found for describing reason’s defeat as a kind of death. Dieter Zeller, in his essay on the subject, compares Philo’s use of death analogies with philosophical and moral literature from the Orphics to the Neoplatonists. In an attempt to locate the origins of the metaphor, Zeller catalogs numerous appeals to the body as a corpse and a range of exhortations about those who are “truly dead” in contrast to those who live an authentic life, but none of these texts use death analogies and metaphors in a way comparable to Philo. For example, pre-Socratics such as Heraclitus depict the body as a “tomb” of the soul;35 Aristotle describes the soul as 34 Cf. “For the soul that has extirpated from itself the principle of the love of virtue and the love of God, has died to the life of virtue. Abel, therefore, strange as it seems, has both been put to death and lives: he is destroyed or abolished out of the mind of the fool, but he is alive with the happy life in God” (Det. 48). Hogan, “The Exegetical Background,” 12, n. 40, relates this text to the Rabbinic exegetical technique of interpreting Cain’s murder of Abel as a form of suicide by reading Gen 4:8 as kai\ a0p e/kteinen au0t o/n, “he slew himself.” See also Conf. 161; Agr. 171; Leg. 3.32–35; Ebr. 140. For discussions of Cain’s punishment, see Praem. 67–73; Virt. 200; Fug. 60; Conf. 122; Det. 177–178. 35 See the Pythagorean tradition: Sextus Empiricus, Pyr. 3.230: “When we live our souls are dead and buried within us”; cf. Philo, Somn. 1.139. Plato alludes to the position of earlier writers in the Cratylus (400c) and Gorgias (492e–493a), writing in the Gorgias that “I shouldn’t be surprised that Euripides’s lines are true when he says, ‘But who

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chained to a corpse in the Tyrrhenian torture (Protr. Fr. 10b Ross); Cicero reflects on the idea of the “true life of the soul”;36 Stoics are fond of the maxim that one day in the life of the sage is equivalent to the whole life of a bad man, and a similar trope appears among popular philosophers that Zeller terms “the living dead.”37 The narrator of the Letter of Aristeas claims that a good king should focus on goodness by “setting justice before him continually in everything, and thinking that injustice is negation of life” (Ar. 212)38; some Rabbinic writings pick up the same idea (b. Ber. 18a–b); and post-Pauline writers use the language of life and death to describe the transformation of the Christ-believer. 39 Despite a range of similar allusions and metaphors, there is not a single text prior to Philo that develops death and dying as Philo does. Zeller provides a partial explanation for this by suggesting that Platonic writers may have avoided using this language because it would seem at odds with the theory of the soul’s immortality. The premise that no part of the soul can be destroyed (or destroy another part) during life is basic to Plato’s view of the soul and the theory of moral education that follows from it (Rep. 10.609c–d, 10.610a– 611a). Zeller goes on to suggest, “The ‘death of the soul’ thus appears as the logical climax of its illness in authors who care less about its immortality.”40 This is as close as Zeller comes to explaining the underlying moralpsychological condition that Philo identifies with the metaphor. This position must be supplemented and qualified as follows: Plato and later Platonists do not typically use death metaphors in the way that Philo does, but they show an interest in the condition that he presents as the death of the soul. Where Zeller highlights the divergence between Plato and Philo in their use of metaphor, I show that the underlying phenomenon that Philo often (but not always) describes as soul-death is consistent with Platonic conceptions of the worst or most miserable type of person. Extreme Immorality in Platonic Discourse Book 9 of the Republic presents an extended discussion of the very worst or most miserable type of person: the tyrannical man. This is the last and worst type in a series of increasingly corrupt characters that each correlate to types of government. Following the discussion of the kallipolis and the knows whether being alive is being dead and being dead is being alive?’ Perhaps in reality we’re dead. Once I even heard one of the wise men say that we are now dead and that our bodies are our tombs” (trans. Cooper). Cf. Phaedr. 250c. 36 Cicero, Tusc. 1.75, Republic 6.14, Sen. 77; cf. Josephus, B. J. 7.344. 37 E.g., Seneca, Ep. 60.4, Tranq. an. 5.5. 38 Trans. from Charlesworth. 39 See Col 2:13; Eph 2:1, 2:5; cf. Eph 5:14; Migr. 122; QG 2.12; Her. 58. 40 Zeller, “The Life and Death of the Soul,” 47.

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character of the philosopher king, books 8 and 9 of the Republic describe the increasing decline and corruption of this best character and city (Rep. 8.544d–545d). Closest to the philosopher king is the timocratic person ruled by the spirited part that desires victory and honor (8.550b), next is the oligarchic person ruled by their necessary appetites (8.554a), then the democratic person ruled by unnecessary appetites (8.561a–b), and worst of all the tyrannical soul ruled by lawless and unnecessary appetites (9.571a).41 The discussion of the tyrannical man in book 9 is an extended analysis that uses the figure of the worst imaginable type of person to explain how moral development might go awry so that the worst parts of the soul rise to dominate the best part. Plato begins by appealing to the evidence of dreams to prove that all persons have evil and lawless appetites: Some of our unnecessary pleasures and desires seem to me to be lawless (deino/n ti kai\ a1g rion kai\ a1 nomon e0p iqumiw~n ei1 doj). They are probably present in everyone, but they are held in check by the laws and by the better desires in alliance with reason. In a few people, they have been eliminated entirely or only a few weak ones remain, while in others they are stronger and more numerous (kolazo/m enai de\ u9p o/ te tw~n no/m wn kai\ tw~n beltio/nwn e0p iqumiw~n meta\ lo/g ou e0n i/w n me\n a0n qrw&p wn h1 panta/p asin a0p alla/t tesqai h1 o0li/g ai lei/p esqai kai\ a0sqenei=j, tw~n de\ i0s xuro/t erai kai\ plei/o uj). “What desires do you mean?” Those that are awakened in sleep, when the rest of the soul – the rational, gentle, and ruling part – slumbers. Then the beastly and savage part, full of food and drink, casts off sleep and seeks to find a way to gratify itself. You know that there is nothing it won’t dare to do at such a time, free of all control by shame or reason. It doesn’t shrink from trying to have sex with a mother, as it supposes, or with anyone else at all, whether man, god, or beast. It will commit any foul murder, and there is no food it refuses to eat. In a word, it omits no act of folly or shamelessness (ta\ j peri\ to\n u(/p non, h]n d' e0g w&, e0g eirome/naj, o(/tan to\ me\n a)/l lo th=j yuxh=j eu(/dh|, o(/son logitiko\n kai\ h(/m eron kai\ a)/r xon e0kei/ nou, to\ de\ qhriw~de/ j te kai\ a)/g rion, h! si/t wn h! me/q hj plhsqe/n, skirta|= te kai\ a0p wsa/m enon to\n u(/p non zhth=| i0e/n ai kai\ a0p opimpla/n ai ta\ au(t ou~ h)/q h: oi]sq' o(/ti pa/nta e0n tw~| toiou/t w| tolma=| poiei=n, w(j a0p o\ pa/shj lelume/non te kai\ a0p hllagme/non ai)s xu/nhj kai\ fronh/s ewj. mhtri/ te ga\r e0p ixeirei= n mei/g nusqai, w(j oi)/etai, ou0 de\n o0k nei~, a)/ llw| te o9tw|o u=n a0nqrw&p wn kai\ qew~n kai\ qhri/w n, miaifonei=n te o9t iou~n, brw&m ato/j te a0p e/xesqai mhdeno/j : kai\ e9n i\ lo/g w| ou)/t e a0noi/ aj ou) de\n e0l lei/p ei ou)/t ' a0naisxunti/ aj). (Rep. 9.571b–d)42

During sleep the appetites (“the beastly and savage part”) get away from both reason and the emotions of the spirited part (“the better desires,” such as shame). Whereas all persons have these terrible and lawless appetites in their souls, they are not normally manifest in all persons in the same way during waking hours; rather, certain conditions must hold for the appetites to fully realize their rebellious potential. The discussion of the tyrannical 41 Plato later qualifies this claim by arguing that the worst condition arises when a tyrannical man actually does rule a city as a tyrant. 42 Philo (Leg. 3.234) and Plutarch (Virt. vit. 100f–101b) allude to this text.

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man that occupies most of book 9 explores the rise of the appetites to dominate the soul during wake and sleep. Plato’s tyrant-to-be is a degenerate son whose father serves as a poor example of moral behavior. Yet, he also receives a perverse miseducation at the hands of advisers seeking to rule through the tyrant. These “tyrant makers” actively foster the worst part of him, the appetites: “When those clever enchanters and tyrant-makers have no hope of keeping hold of the young man in any other way, they contrive to plant in him a powerful erotic love (e0rwta/), like a great winged drone, to be the leader of those idle desires that spend whatever is at hand” (prosta/thn tw~n a0grw~n kai\ ta\ e3toima dianemome/nwn e0piqumiw~n, u9po/pteron kai\ me/gan khfh=na/ tina) (Rep. 9.572e–573a). The analogy of rebellion requires the figure of a leader, a single monstrous appetite that acts as political and military commander and makes war against the reasoning part. Throughout this analysis the appetites are anthropomorphized as evil soldiers that obey a single monstrous appetite, variously represented as a large winged bee, a ruling passion, a bodyguard, or an “erotic love.” 43 So, Plato writes: And when everything is gone, won’t the violent crowd of desires that has nested within him inevitably shout in protest (ta\j e0p iqumi/aj boa=n pukna/ j te kai\ sfodra\j e0nneneotteume/n aj)? And driven by the stings of the other desires and especially by erotic love itself (which leads all of them as its bodyguard), won’t he become frenzied and look to see who possesses anything that he could take, either by deceit or force? (tou_j d' w(/sper u9p o\ ke/ntrwn e0 launome/nouj tw~n te a)/l lwn e0p iqumiw~n kai\ diafero/ntwj u(p ' au)t ou~ tou~7 1E rwtoj, pa/s aij tai~j a)/ llaij w(/sper dorufo/roij h9g oume/nou, oi0stra=n kai\ skopei~n ti/j ti e1 xei, o3n dunato\n a0f ele/sqai a0p ath/s anta h1 biasa/m enon). (Rep. 9.573e)

Here Plato explains the rebellion of the appetites by anthropomorphizing them as deceptive and violent beings engaged in a fierce battle for rule of the soul. The monstrous ruler of the appetites emerges as if to answer the question “if reason is not in control, who or what is?” Yet, no scholar of

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Advisers encourage this monstrous leader of the appetites by enticing it with pleas-

ures: When the other desires – filled with incense, myrrh, wreaths, wine, and the other pleasures found in their company – buzz around the drone, nurturing it and making it grow as large as possible, they plant the sting of longing in it (po/q ou ke/ntron e0m poih/swsi tw~| khfh=ni). Then this leader of the soul adopts madness as its bodyguard and becomes frenzied. If it finds any beliefs or desires in the man that are thought to be good or that still have some shame, it destroys them and throws them out, until it’s purged him of moderation and filled him with imported madness (a0p oktei/nei te kai\ e1cw w)q ei= par' au(t ou~, e9w j a1n kaqh/rh| swfrosu/nhj, mani/ a j de\ plhrw&sh| e0p aktou~) . (Rep. 9.573a–b)

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ancient philosophy would argue that Plato actually views this bodyguard as external to the person, as it clearly represents the appetites. When the rise of the appetitive ruler is complete, the tyrant has within him a tyrannical ruling passion: Now, however, under the tyranny of erotic love, he has permanently become while awake what he used to become occasionally while asleep, and he won’t hold back from any terrible murder or from any kind of food or act. But, rather, erotic love lives like a tyrant within him, in complete anarchy and lawlessness as his sole ruler, and drives him, as if he were a city, to dare anything that will provide sustenance for itself and the unruly mob around it (ou)/t e tino\j fo/nou deinou~ a0fe/ cetai ou!t e brw&m atoj ou!t ' e1rgou a) lla\ turannikw~j e0n au)tw~| o971E rwj e0n pa/sh| a0n arxi/a| kai\ a0nomi/a| zw~n, a3te au)to\j w2n mo/narxoj, to\n e1xonta/ te au)to\n w#sper po/ lin a1 cei e0p i\ pa=s an to/lman, o3q en au(to/n te kai\ to\n peri\ au(to\n qo/rubon qre/yei). (Rep. 9.574e–575a)

Despite being in such a state, however, the mind continues to function even though the passions and appetites prevent it from putting its good judgments into action. So, Plato compares the soul of the tyrannical man to the tyrannical form of rule: Then, if man and city are alike, mustn’t the same structure be in him too? And mustn’t his soul be full of slavery and unfreedom, with the most decent parts enslaved and with a small part, the maddest and most vicious, as their master? (kai\ tau~ta au)th=j ta\ me/rh douleu/ein, a3p er h]n e0p ieike/stata, mikro\n de\ kai\ to\ moxqhro/t aton kai\ manikw&t aton despo/z ein;) “It must.” What will you say about such a soul then? Is it free or slave? “Slave, of course.” And isn’t the enslaved and tyrannical city least to do what it wants? (ou)kou~n h3 ge au} dou&lh kai\ turannoume/nh po/lij h3kista poiei~ a3 bou&letai;) “Certainly.” Then a tyrannical soul – I’m talking about the whole soul – will also be least likely to do what it wants and, forcibly driven by the stings of a dronish gadfly, will be full of disorder and regret (kai\ h9 turannoume/nh a1ra yuxh\ h3kista poih/sei a3 a1n boulhqh|=, w#j peri\ o3lhj ei0p ei=n7yuxh=j : u9p o\ de\ oi1s trou a0ei\ e9 lkome/nh bi/a| taraxh=j kai\ metamelei/ aj mesth\ e1stai). (Rep. 9.577d–e)

There are two important points that these texts elucidate. First, the dominant metaphors for the relation between reason and the appetites are slavery and mastery, political power and rule. These metaphors and analogies layer and build on each other, but the central point remains clear: reason has been utterly defeated by the irrational parts. Second, Plato insists that reason does not sanction bad actions but rather states twice that this person is “least likely to do what it wants.”44 Whereas scholars have often identified self-contradiction with a0krasi/a, this texts shows that such contradiction can be ascribed to more severe forms of immorality. Drawing on the tyrannical man from the Republic, Plutarch explains how the irrational faculties rise to dominate the soul in On Virtues and Vices. Here Plutarch personifies and anthropomorphizes the appetites simply as “vice” and emphasizes its devious and manipulative activities: 44

So also Gorg. 466d–e; cf. Rep. 4.445b.

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For by day vice, looking outside of itself and conforming its attitude to others, is abashed and veils its emotions, and does not give itself up completely to its impulses (tai=j o9rmai~j), but often times resists them and struggles against them; but in the hours of slumber, when it has escaped from opinion and law (do/caj kai\ no/m ouj) and got away as far as possible from feeling fear or shame, it sets every desire stirring (ki/nei), and awakens (e0p anegei/rei) its depravity and licentiousness (kako/h qej kai\ a0ko/l aston). It “attempts incest,” as Plato says [Rep. 571d], partakes of forbidden meats, abstains from nothing which it wishes to do, but revels in lawlessness so far as it can, with images and visions which end in no pleasure or accomplishment of desire, but have only the power to stir to fierce activity the emotional (pa/q h) and morbid propensities (ta\ nosh/m ata duname/noij). (Virt. vit. 101a)

This text echoes Plato’s claim that the lawless appetites stir up the irrational faculties of the soul during sleep. Plutarch uses vice to personify the appetites that desire the unstable pleasures of forbidden food and sex and so “end in no pleasure or accomplishment of desire.” Vice also operates as a malevolent being that lies in wait for an opportune time to rebel from reason and incite the bad desires of the soul. Elsewhere, Plutarch depicts vice as a force that invades the soul. In the short treatise Can Vice Cause Unhappiness? he writes, “vice, without any apparatus, when it has joined itself to the soul, crushes and overthrows it, and fills the man with grief and lamentation, dejection and remorse” (Am. Prol. 498d). Plutarch goes on to personify vice as a godlike entity that he sets in a court beside fortune, framing the treatise as a debate regarding which is worse, with vice, of course, winning the day. Plutarch’s personification of an actual faculty of the soul (the appetitive part) by appealing to an abstraction (vice) lacks some of the creative luster of Plato’s indwelling tyrant. Nevertheless, the discussion works with the Platonic premise that passions and desires cause vice and immorality. The second-century C.E. medical writer Galen considers a similar type of extreme immorality in his treatise The Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul’s Passions. Galen is an avowed Platonist, and though influenced by other philosophical currents he is particularly close to Plato in his tripartite theory of the soul. In keeping with his Platonism, Galen provides instructions on how one is to bring about harmony within the soul by manipulating the irrational parts so that they become weak: “the appetitive power does not follow reason because it is obedient but because it is weak” (e3pesqai tw~| logismw|~ di’ a0sqe/neian, ou0k eu0pei/qeian).45 The discussion then focuses on the person in whom the appetitive power has become strong enough to take control of reason: And moreover, the ancients had a name in common use for those who have not been chastised and disciplined in this very respect: that man, whoever he is, in whom it is clear that the reasoning power has failed to discipline the appetitive power is called an intrac45

I have modified the translation of Harkins.

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table or undisciplined man (kai\ tw~n mh\ pro\j r9h ma/twn kolasqe/ntwn au0to\ dh/ pou tou/t oij palai\ su/nhqe/j e0stin, w(j a0ko/lastoj o3de tij a1nqrwpo/j e0stin, e0f’ ou{ dhlono/ti th\n e0p iqumhtikh\n du/ namin ou0k e0ko/l asen h9 logistikh/) .46

Here, a0kolasi/a describes the person ruled by the worst of the soul’s faculties: the appetites. Galen goes on to warn of the appetites in an exhortation to his imagined reader: Strive to hold this most excessive (or violent) power in check before it grows and acquires unconquerable strength (i0sxu\n dusni/khton). For then, even if you should want to do so, you will not be able to hold it in check; then you will say what I heard a certain lover say – that you wish to stop but you cannot (e0q e/lein me\n pau/sasqai, mh\ du/nasqai de\) – then you will call on us for help but in vain, just as that man begged for someone to help him and to cut out his passion (pa/q oj e0kko/yai). For there are also passions of the body which because of their greatness are beyond cure (tw~n tou~ sw&m atoj paqw~n e1nia dia\ me/g eqo/j e0stin a0 ni/ata). Perhaps you have never thought about this. It would be better, then, for you to think now and consider whether I am telling the truth when I say that the passionate power often waxes so strong that it hurls us into love beyond all cure (e0p iqumhtikh\n du/n amin ei0j a0 ni/aton e1rwta polla/ kij e0m balei~n), a love not only for beautiful bodies and sexual pleasures but also for voluptuous eating, gluttony in food and drink, and for lewd, unnatural conduct.47

Consistent with the image of Plato’s tyrannical man, the text cautions that the appetitive faculty is the most dangerous of the soul’s irrational parts and ominously warns of the worst-case-scenario, in which reason becomes totally disempowered. The narrator warns of self-contradiction (“you will say…. you wish to stop but you cannot”) and so typifies the classic plight of self-contradiction in the second person as a form of direct exhortation. The complaint “even if you should want to” expresses the regret of the reasoning part, as does the lover who says (implicitly), “I wish to stop but I cannot,” and the analogy with the man who begs for help. Though this text puts the internal monologue of self-contradiction into the second person, it shows that the internal conflict between wanting and doing, reason and appetite, can be ascribed to more extreme types of immorality. Here, passions have overpowered the reasoning faculty, but reason continues to bewail and bemoan its plight. Though discussions of extreme immorality in Plato, Plutarch, and Galen often use very violent metaphors and analogies, none of these writers consistently uses the analogies of death and dying. Plato sometimes ap46 Kühn, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, 5.28–29; Harkins, Galen, 47. See R. J. Hankinson, “Galen’s Anatomy of the Soul,” Phronesis 36.2 (1991): 197–233; “Actions and Passions: Emotion, Affection, and Moral Self-Management in Galen’s Philosophical Psychology,” in Passions and Perceptions: Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (ed. Jacques Brunschwig and Martha C. Nussbaum; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 184–222. 47 Kühn, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, 5.29; Harkins, Galen, 48.

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peals to violent military metaphors, especially in the case of the tyrannical man: “If it [the drone] finds beliefs or desires in the man that are thought to be good or that still have some shame, it destroys them and throws them out, until it’s purged him of moderation and fills him with imported madness” (a0poktei/nei te kai\ e1cw w)qei~ par' au9tou=, e3wj a1n kaqh/rh| swfrosu/nhj, mani/aj de\ plhrw&sh| e0paktou~) (Rep. 9.573b). The language of invasion and killing is prominent, but it appears here in service of an extended military analogy. Galen describes the desiring faculty as violent and warns that it may hurl the mind into pleasures when it gains “unconquerable strength,” but he does not describe this as the death of the soul. As Zeller suggests, the simplest explanation may be that these writers avoid this language because it might seem to undermine Plato’s formal position that no part of the embodied soul can be destroyed.48 That is, though only the reasoning part of the tripartite soul is immortal, Plato denies that the reasoning part can be killed or destroyed by the passions and appetites and vice versa.49 Plato may claim that a part of the soul is strong or weak, and he sometimes appeals to the language of passions and appetites multiplying or specific appetites being destroyed, but strictly speaking the faculties of the embodied soul must be basically stable. If they were not, then a reasonable conclusion might be that the passions and appetites are extirpated entirely in the soul of the fully virtuous and wise person, a position close to that later advocated by the Stoics. Philo is the first known writer to use the language of death and dying to describe the rule of passions and appetites over reason. These discussions, however, should be understood as elaborations of Platonic metaphors and analogies that describe a particular outcome of the perpetual conflict and opposition within the soul. For this reason he is careful to define the death of the soul not as the “separation of combatants” but as the “meeting of the two in conflict” such that the worse part overcomes the better (Leg. 1.106). Though Philo often uses these metaphors to allegorize life and death language in the Septuagint, he also appeals to analogies drawn from slavery, warfare, and imprisonment to describe similar moral-psychological extremes. For instance, after Philo presents an extended analysis of Noah’s supreme self-control, he develops the opposite condition at length:

48 E.g., “Now, if the soul isn’t destroyed by a single evil, whether its own or something else’s, then clearly it must always be. And if it always is, then it is immortal ” (Rep. 10.610e). 49 Alcinous (Did. 25.5) states that the question of whether irrational souls (i.e., not the irrational parts of the soul, but the souls of irrational persons) are immortal is a matter of some dispute. See John Dillon’s helpful elucidation in Dillon, trans. and comm., Alcinous: The Handbook of Platonism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 153–156.

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But there is a different mind which loves the body and the passions and has been sold in slavery to that chief cateress (th|= a0rximagei/ rw| tou~ sugkri/m atoj) [Gen 39:1] of our compound nature, pleasure (h9donh|=) . Eunuch-like it has been deprived of all the male and productive organs of the soul, and lives in indigence of noble practices, unable to receive the divine message, debarred from the holy congregation [Deut 23:1] in which the talk and study is always of virtue. When this mind is cast into the prison of the passions (to\ desmoth/rion tw~n paqw~n), it finds in the eyes of the chief jailor (tw~| a0rxidesmofu/l aki) a favour and grace, which is more inglorious than dishonour. For, in the true sense of the word prisoners are not those who after condemnation by magistrates chosen by lot, or it may be elected jurymen, are haled to the appointed place of malefactors, but those whose character of soul is condemned by nature (w{n h9 fu/sij katedi/kase yuxh=j tro/p wn), as full to the brim of folly (a0frosu/nhj) and incontinence (a0kolasi/a j) and cowardice (deili/ aj), and injustice (a0 d iki/ aj) and impiety (a0sebei/ aj) and other innumerable plagues. (Deus 111–112)

The passions are allied negatively with the body and pleasure, and they cause alienation from God and virtue (and from the sex organs of the soul).50 The text also personifies pleasure as a ruler that holds the mind as its slave, a situation subsequently described as the imprisonment of the mind. The passions are personified both as a jailor and the jail itself, and this use of personification becomes even more explicit as Philo continues: The overseer (e0p i/t ropoj) and warder (fu/ lac) and manager (tami/a j) of them, the governor (h9g emw_n) of the prison, is the composite whole and concentration of all vices crowded together and diverse, woven together into a single form (su/sthma kai\ sumfo/rhma kakiw~n a0q ro/w n kai\ poiki/lwn, ei0j e3n ei]d oj sunufasme/nwn e0sti/n), and to be pleasing to him is to suffer the greatest of penalties. (Deus 113)51

Philo explains his use of metaphor and analogy very clearly: the chief jailor represents the passions that hold reason a captive in their prison. Such a figure allows Philo to ascribe a kind of order and intention to the work of the lower faculties. In summary, the metaphor of the good or bad part of the soul “killing” the other part conveys the outcome of conflict within the Platonic soul, whether good or bad. So, Philo depicts this conflict as a violent struggle and its outcome as defeat or victory, followed by the subsequent rule of the victor. A variety of metaphors convey the continued coexistence of the passions and the mind in such a state, from death to prison and enslave50 The claim that the soul is deprived of reproductive organs probably alludes to Aristotelian or Stoic theories that give the soul a distinct generative faculty or capacity. Here it is an aside used to characterize the soul as de-sexed. For gendered language in Philo’s moral psychology, see, e.g., Somn. 2.184; Deus 137. 51 Translation modified from the Loeb edition. This text echoes the Republic: “And isn’t this the kind of prison in which the tyrant is held – the one whose nature is such as we have described it, filled with fears and erotic loves of all kinds?” (a]r' ou]n ou)k e0n toiou/t w| me\n desmwthri/w | de/detai o9 tu/rannoj, fu/s ei w!n oi[o n dielhlu/q amen, pollw~n kai\ pantodapw~n fo/bwn kai\ e0rw&t wn mesto/j ) (Rep. 9.579b).

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ment. These analogies show that the closer a part of the soul comes to victory, the more extreme and violent the imagery tends to become. Philo’s writings show tremendous variation in the use of moralpsychological metaphors and analogies, but this variation is unsurprising given how frequently he develops moral-psychological interpretations of Jewish narratives and legal traditions. In Philo’s hands, for example, specific figures such as Adam, Cain, and Abel come to signify moralpsychological states and possibilities, but so also do God’s punishments for human disobedience, festivals such as Passover, and mythic events such as the crossing of the Red Sea. However, this appropriation of Platonic moral psychology does not produce a chaotic, impenetrable morass of unrelated concepts and assumptions lumped together as ammunition in a Jewish culture war. Rather, Philo demonstrates skill enough to integrate philosophical theories, arguments, premises, and assumptions into the interpretation of Jewish writings so as to produce what is, at the very least, a highly philosophical understanding of Jewish traditions and writings. For instance, consider the synthesis implied in the following text: “Is not then the true life the life of him who walks in the judgments and ordinances of God, so that the practices of the godless must be death? And what the practices of the godless are we have been told. They are the practices of passions and vices” (Congr. 86). This text integrates the premise that obedience and disobedience to God are the upper and lower limits of virtue and vice, so that virtue makes one an intimate of God while vice alienates.52 There are important differences between the writings of a Jewish Platonist bent on allegorizing Jewish traditions in philosophical terms and other types of ancient intellectuals. Yet, these differences do not evidence some unique ethnic religiosity or piety. Jews and Christians were not the only persons in the ancient Mediterranean to show an interest in gods and nonobvious beings such as angels and demons. Philosophers are, by later standards, engaged in writing something like theology, and Philo exploits this to such an extent that the god of the Opificio mundi so strongly resembles the god of Plato that it can hardly be understood apart from it.53 Here, as in discussions of soul-death, Philo uses Platonic philosophy to distinctive literary ends, but the creative appropriation of philosophy should not be confused with the creation of something radically new and uniquely

52 E.g., Fug. 55–61; Fug. 58 defines the deathless life as “to be possessed by a love of God and a friendship for God with which flesh and body have no concern.” 53 On monotheistic and quasi-monotheistic traditions in Greek (especially philosophical thought), see M. L. West, “Towards Monotheism,” in Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (ed. Polymnia Athanassiadi and Michael Frede; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 21–40 and Michael Frede, “Monotheism and Pagan Philosophy in Later Antiquity,” in Pagan Monotheism, 41–67.

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religious. This distinction will be helpful below in considering the question of whether Paul appropriates Platonic discourse.

II. The Life and Death of the Soul in Romans 7:7–25 Despite tremendous progress in interpreting Rom 7, the first part of the monologue continues to be a kind of thorn in the side of historical explanation.54 Rom 7:7 asks, “Is the law then sin?” but proceeds to tell of the life and death of a first person narrator. The speaker explains, “At one time I lived apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came to life and I died” (7:9), and repeats again in verse 11 that sin used the commandment to “deceive and kill me.” Interpreters have had difficulty contextualizing the argument about sin and law, the metaphors of death, the status of the speaker “apart from the law,” and also with explaining the fit with the literary and argumentative structure of letter. Platonic depictions of extreme immorality allow for an interpretation of 7:7–25 that holds together many difficult aspects of the text. This tradition provides a context for understanding the metaphors of life, death, slavery, warfare, and imprisonment; the representation of sin as an external force; the identity of the speaker; and the specific moral problems the speaker ascribes to itself. Philosophical theories of mind entail a complex series of interrelated concepts, ideas, and assumptions, and the divided soul is no exception. For heuristic purposes I emphasize four related Platonic features of the text that I then treat in detail below. None of these, however, can be understood in isolation from the larger moral-psychological complex that gives the text coherence. First, Rom 7 uses sin to represent the irrational parts of the

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On 7:7–13 as convoluted, see L. Ann Jervis’s comments that the text is placed “in the midst of one of the most contorted, dramatic and opaque passages” in “‘The Commandment Which Is for Life’ (Romans 7:10): Sin’s Use of the Obedience of Faith,” JSNT 27.2 (2004): 193. In a different way, Heikki Räisänen (Paul and the Law [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986], 140–161, esp. 154) and E. P. Sanders (Paul and Palestinian Judaism [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977], 550–552) have both made the relations between sin, death, and law in Rom 7 central to their arguments that Paul is incoherent on the law and on Judaism. The incoherence thesis is early attested by Alfred Loisy, who describes “the sin-engendering nature and purpose of the law (Gal 3:22–25) as incomplete and false” and remarks that Rom 6–8 is “a fantastic argument, a massive and magical conception of sin, of the redemption and of the Spirit, a system constructed in the air, which is too often celebrated for a psychological value of which it is in reality almost completely void” (L’Épître aux Galates [Paris: Nourry, 1916], 232; cited and translated by Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 13–14).

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soul in a way consistent with many discussions explored previously. Plutarch and Philo use vice and Plato and Philo appeal to the idea of a single monstrous ruler that opposes the mind; similarly, sin in 7:7–25 activates desire, deceives, kills, makes war, imprisons, and enslaves. The representation of the passions as sin and the activities attributed to sin are consistent with basic Platonic assumptions. Second, the speaker in Rom 7 is best understood as reason or mind because the speaker displays knowledge, good judgment, reflection, and voice. This identification is especially clear in the use of the phrase e1sw a1nqrwpoj in Rom 7:22, which is a Platonic analogy for the reasoning faculty (Rep. 9.588c–591b) that functions appropriately in context as a synonym for nou~j. Third, the language of body, members, and flesh in Rom 7 coheres with Platonic moral psychology in identifying the body as the location of sin and the passions. Platonic traditions implicate the bodily senses in the struggle between the appetites and reason and render the body an ally of the appetites. Discussions of extreme immorality amplify this conflict with the body and often make the body or flesh into an evil co-conspirator with the appetites. This makes sense of the antagonism that the speaker evokes throughout the monologue in its relation to the body, flesh, and members, but especially in the final cry, “who will rescue me from this body of death?” The “body of death” conveys the terrible alliance of the body, passions, and desires that have succeeded in dominating the mind. The cry thus restates the central point of the monologue: the mind has been utterly defeated by the irrational passions. Fourth, 7:14–25 presents a specifically Platonic explanation for selfcontradiction. Rom 7 describes and redescribes the problem of doing the opposite of what the mind knows to be right some eleven times in twenty verses and consistently explains it as produced by an outside force, sin. The language conveys division, alienation, and conflict between good and bad parts of the soul. The Rhetorical Structure of Romans 7: Stowers and Gill on Apostrophe and proswpopoii/a More successfully than any other scholar of early Christianity, Stowers has demonstrated the importance of ancient rhetorical techniques such as apostrophe, proswpopoii/a (speech-in-character), and the dialogical style for interpreting Romans.55 He has shown that Paul uses apostrophe and 55 See Stowers, “Apostrophe, prosôpopoiia, and Paul’s Rhetorical Education,” in Early Christianity and Classical Culture: Comparative Studies in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe (ed. John T. Fitzgerald, Thomas H. Olbricht, and L. Michael White; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 351–369; “Romans 7:7–25 as a Speech-in-Character (proswpopoii/a),” in Paul in His Hellenistic Context (ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen; Minneapolis: Fortress,

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proswpopoii/a in Rom 7:7–25 to present what he terms a psychological monologue. The technique of proswpopoii/a introduces fictive and stereotyped characters to further description, argument, and instruction. While the technique is manifest in Rom 2:1–11, 2:17–4:12, and chapter 6, Rom 7 differs in that it presents an extended inner monologue of such a character. In Rom 2–6, Paul uses proswpopoii/a to objectify fictive straw men who become objects of exhortation and with whom he engages in conversation. In Rom 7, however, an interlocutor carries on an extended dramatic discussion primarily with itself, though it does respond to questioning in 7:13 and is the object of exhortation in chapter 8. The use of proswpopoii/a throughout Romans reflects the variation and creativity taught in rhetorical handbooks. For example, Quintilian explains: We display the inner thoughts of our adversaries as though they were talking with themselves (but we shall only carry conviction if we represent them as uttering what they may reasonably be supposed to have had in their minds); or without sacrifice of credibility we may introduce conversations between themselves and others, or of others among themselves, and put words of advice, reproach, complaint, praise or pity into the mouths of the appropriate persons. (Inst. 9.2.30)

Similarly, Aelius Theon counsels the use of proswpopoii/a for states of mind: “Different ways of speaking would also be fitting by nature for a woman and for a man, and by status for a slave and free man, and by activities for a soldier and a farmer, and by state of mind for a lover and a temperate man, and by their origin the words of a Laconian, sparse and clear, differ from those of a man of Attica, which are voluble” [emphasis original] (Exercises 8.116).56 Both writers teach that the convention should be used as fits particular literary and argumentative contexts, whether this produces adversarial interlocutors for use in dialogues, evokes particular scenes from tragedy and epic, or depicts the self in dialogue revealing its own state of mind. The dialogical style throughout Rom 2–8 and the form 1995), 180–202; Rereading Romans; The Diatribe and Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Chico, Calif.: Scholars, 1981). 56 Trans. Kennedy. Apthonius also writes: Some characterizations are pathetical, some ethical, some mixed. Pathetical are those showing emotion in everything; for example, the words Hecuba might say when Troy was destroyed. Ethical are those that only introduce character; for example, what words a man from inland might say on first seeing the sea. Mixed are those having both character and pathos; for example, what words Achilles might say over the body of Patroclus when planing [sic.] to continue the war; for the plan shows character, the fallen friend pathos. (Preliminary Exercises, 11.35R; trans. Kennedy) Aelius Theon also remarks, “This exercise is most receptive of characters and emotions” (Exercises 8.117; trans. Kennedy); see also Hermogenes, Preliminary Exercises, 9.20– 22.

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of the internal monologue of 7:7–25 is consistent with the teachings of rhetorical handbooks on proswpopoii/a and the uses of the technique in ancient literature. The rhetorical structure of Rom 7:7–25 can be summarized as follows. 57 First, there is an abrupt change in authorial voice at 7:7. This is a form of enallgê or metabolê that signals a shift to a new topic or life situation. 58 Second, the tenses in 7:7–8:2 reflect the formal characteristics of proswpopoii/a, as the interlocutor speaks of its past in 7:7–13, the present in 7:14–25, and the future in 7:24–8:2. Though rhetoricians usually recommend beginning with the wretched present and then turning to the past, Hermogenes and Aphthonius indicate that there is flexibility in the order of tenses.59 Third, many ancient writers use proswpopoii/a to present an inner moral-psychological monologue. This is suggested by Quintilian’s comment that “we display the inner thoughts of our adversaries as though they were talking with themselves,” but this is also manifest among the moral writers explored in chapter 1 who make broad use of tragic soliloquies in debating theories of mind. Finally, the cry “Wretched man that I am (talai/pwroj e0gw_ a1nqrwpoj), who will rescue me from this body of death?” (7:24) has strong parallels in philosophy and tragedy. Seneca’s Medea cries, “What, wretched woman, have I done?” (Med. 990); Ovid has Medea characterize herself as “wretched” (infelix) (Metam. 7.18); and Epictetus introduces a fictive “I” that cries, “I want something, and it does not happen; and what creature is more wretched (a0qliw&teron) than I? I do not want something, and it does happen; and what creature is more wretched (a0qliw&teron) than I?” (Diatr. 2.17.18). Thus, Stowers concludes, “One finds a remarkable intersection of style and content in Romans 7, an intersection of the techniques of prosôpopoiia and motifs and style of the tragic monologue as mediated by the tradition of moral psychology.”60

57

Stowers, Rereading Romans, 269–272. Stowers equivocates about how to identify the speaker at 7:7a: “I find the identity of the speaker at 7:7a unclear. Perhaps it is Paul, perhaps the person characterized in what follows, perhaps an anonymous objector” (Rereading Romans, 270). Yet, Gill’s analysis of apostrophe in Seneca’s Medea (“Two Monologues of Self-division: Euripides, Medea 1021–80; and Seneca, Medea 893–977,” in Homo Viator: Classical Essays for John Bramble [ed. M. Whitby and P. Hardie; Bristol: Classical, 1987], 33) clarifies, as he shows that in the Roman period such dialogical speeches tend to merge the voice of the narrator and the interlocutor. 59 Hermogenes, Preliminary Exercises, 9.21–22; Apthonius, Preliminary Exercises, 11.35R. 60 Stowers, Rereading Romans, 271. Stowers’s argument is complemented by Gill’s work on dramatic monologues in “Did Chrysippus Understand Medea?” Phronesis 28 (1983): 136–149 and “Two Monologues of Self-Division,” 25–37. 58

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Many types of ancient literature use characters from tragedy and epic, but the life of Medea is exceptional as at least seventeen writers from Greek and Latin epic and poetry wrote on Medea.61 Though many of these texts are not extant, Seneca’s Medea exemplifies key characteristics of such interior monologues and shows how a particular philosophical, and specifically Stoic, theory of mind shapes the representation of Medea. In his play, Medea cries just prior to the infanticide: My anguish has been Practicing on those crimes: what mighty deed could unskilled hands, could the madness of a girl achieve? Now I am Medea; evils have increased my talent: I’m glad, I’m glad I tore off my brother’s head, I’m glad I cut up his limbs, and robbed my father of his secret relic, I’m glad I armed the daughters to destroy the old man. Look for your opportunity, anguish: for every crime you will have hands that are well trained. What target will you launch yourself at, rage, what missiles will you aim at your treacherous enemy? My mind has secretly made some hideous decision, and does not yet dare confess it openly to itself. (Med. 907–919)62

Here Medea is more fixed and determined than in other portrayals, as she boldly declares her commitment to her past evil acts and welcomes her anger and rage to future ones. The comment “my mind has secretly made some hideous decision” implies regret and perhaps even impotent protest, but the monologue displays little of the anguished self-division so central to other representations. This demonstrates the creative license and adaptation that characterizes uses of the monologue. Medea reflects here on her history and her present situation, addresses specific passions as personified forces, and speaks to and about her mind in the third person. Though she speaks about her mind as if standing outside it, this is literary license that heightens the dramatic climax of the monologue by articulating Medea’s own state of mind with ominous clarity.63 Similarly, the personification of 61 Howard Jacobson (Ovid’s Heroides [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974], 109–123) discusses the popularity of Medea in the Greek and Roman literary imagination. For example, though Ovid explicitly discusses her in the Heroides and the Metamorphosis (and in his own lost Medea), he makes allusions to her in most of his works (e.g., Metam. 6.629–635 [Procne], 8.470–511 [Althea]). See also Plautus, Pseud. 868–872; in philosophical contexts, Plutarch, Virt. mor. 446a; Cicero, Sen. 23.83; and the discussion of Gill, Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy, 216–239. 62 Trans. Hine. See also Seneca, Phaed. 592–599; Ag. 131–144; Tro. 642–662; Her. 307–314; Thy. 419–422, 434–439. 63 Gill explains:

Of these forms of self-address, one pattern, which recurs in the speech (‘quid, anime, cessas?’, etc.) is clearly modelled on the Greek formula of the appeal to the qumo/j or

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specific emotions (here, anguish and rage) casts them as independent forces on a battlefield. Rom 7:7–25 does not contain direct addresses to specific passions like the ones Medea makes in Seneca’s play, and the speaker regrets its plight while Seneca’s Medea celebrates it, yet certain similarities between the texts show common patterns in the adaptation of the inner monologue to suit different literary aims. Most prominently, the speaker of Rom 7 explains its present state by appealing to the past (7:7–13), present (7:14–25), and terrible future (7:24); it speaks about its mind in the third person (7:22–23); and, as argued below, it also personifies passions and desires as evil forces within the soul and blames them for bad actions. Likewise, Seneca’s Medea reflects on the past, present, and future, represents anguish and rage as missiles responsible for her bad acts, and, while she strongly approves of these acts early in the monologue, toward the end she wavers slightly as she addresses her mind in the third person: “My mind has secretly made some hideous decision, and does not yet dare confess it openly to itself.” In a different but related context, Seneca gives Phaedra a monologue that personifies reason and furor as forces compelling her against her better judgment: “I know what you say is true, nurse; but madness (furor) forces me to follow the worse path.… What could reason (ratio) do? Madness has conquered and rules me, and a mighty god (Amor) controls my whole mind (tota mente dominatur)” (Phaedra 178–179, 184– 185).64 As in the case of Medea, Phaedra speaks about her reason and mind as if standing outside them. Sin as a Representation of the Passions Platonic partition generates a wealth of metaphors and analogies for describing the ongoing struggle within the divided soul. The tripartite theory is advanced in the Republic and Timaeus, but later Platonists make this kardi/ a, especially as used in Euripides’ Medea in her final self-incitement to matricide. The second pattern, which is not Euripidean, consists of the apostrophe (or near apostrophe) of passions and virtues. This is a common figure in Silver Age Latin poetry, but one which is pervasive in this speech, and which contributes to its selfconscious, indeed self-analytic, character. That character is firmly established in the opening section by the fact that Medea incites herself especially by reference to her own past history, here interpreted as being one of unrelieved violence. (“Two Monologues,” 31–32) On standing outside oneself in Plato, see Price, Mental Conflict, 56–57. 64 On this passage see Christopher Gill, “Passion as Madness in Roman Poetry,” chap. 10 in The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature (ed. Susanna Morton Braund and Christopher Gill; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 213–241. See also Hip. et Plat. 3.3.14–17; Plato, Leg. 1.644d–645a; Rep. 8.550a–b, 8.553b–d.

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well known as the main Platonic position against the Stoics. So, Plutarch explains that even a self-controlled person still grapples with the rebellion of the lower faculties: “Nor has the desiderative part (to\ e0piqumou~n) of the soul become obedient and compliant to the intelligent part, but is vexed and causes vexation and is confined by compulsion and, though living with reason, lives as in a state of rebellion against it, hostile and inimical” (lupou~n kai\ lupou\menon kai\ kaqeirgo/menon u9p’ a0na/gkhj w3sper e0n sta/sei dusmene\j kai\ pole/mion sunoikei~) (Virt. mor. 445d). While Platonists are not alone in using metaphor and personification, the use of figures such as a ruling passion, a giant bee, and vice arises out of certain shared assumptions about the soul’s parts and their division and conflict.65 These figures convey the quasi-independence, danger, and insatiable thirst for unstable pleasures that characterize the appetitive part of the soul. So, Philo writes: Our soul, we are told, is tripartite, having one part assigned to the mind (nou~j) and reason (lo/g oj), one to the spirited (qumo/j) element and one to the appetites (e0p iqumi/a). There is mischief working in them all, in each in relation to itself, in all in relation to each other, when the mind reaps what is sown by its follies and acts of cowardice and intemperance and injustice, and the spirited part brings to the birth its fierce and raging furies and the other evil children of its womb, and the appetite sends forth on every side desires ever winged by childish fancy (tou_j u9p o\ nhpio/t htoj a0ei\ kou& fouj e1 rwtaj), desires which light as chance directs on things material and immaterial. (Conf. 21)

Here, agricultural and birth analogies convey the immoral acts that result from the successful rebellion of the irrational faculties. The spirited part produces evil children such as rage, where the appetites have winged, childish desires that recall the bees of Plato’s Republic. Especially in the context of open appetitive rebellion, these figures emerge as perverse, monstrous counterrulers that wage war, imprison, enslave, and kill. Discussions of extreme immorality explored previously have shown a consistent pattern in the use of personification and metaphor for the irrational parts, especially the appetites. So, Plato explains the transition from the timocratic to the oligarchic man: “Don’t you think that this person [the timocratic man] would establish his appetitive and money-making part on the throne, setting it up as a great king within himself, adorning it with golden tiaras and collars and girding it with Persian swords? ‘I do’. He makes the rational and spirited parts sit on the ground beneath appetite, one on either side, reducing them to slaves” (Rep. 8.553c–d). The king represents the appetites that rule over reason and spirit. The analogy elaborates on the divided soul whose parts relate hierarchically even in cases where the appetites rule in reason’s place. The enslavement of reason alongside the spirited part also reflects Plato’s characterization of the 65

Cf. the metaphors used by Epictetus in Diatr. 4.1.147.

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spirited part (qumo/j) as less unruly and more congenial to reason. This is why the appetitive horse of the Phaedrus is the focus of the charioteer’s violent discipline much more than the spirited horse (Phaedr. 253c–255e). As an outgrowth of this understanding of the soul, Philo represents pleasure variously as a serpent (Leg. 3.160), as a deceptive, conniving, and evil wife (Sacr. 20–25), and the passions as a jail, jailor, and various magistrates and rulers (Deus 113). Philo also allegorizes the pharaoh as the leader of the passions, exploiting the homology with an evil appetitive ruler (Leg. 3.13, 3.212), and allegorizes the Red Sea as the onrush of the passions stemmed by Moses. Like Plutarch, he also uses vice and wickedness to personify passions and desires, as he describes soul-death, for instance, as “the soul becoming entombed in passions and wickedness of all kinds” (o3j e0sti yuxh=j e0ntumbeuome/nhj pa/qesi kai\ kaki/aij a9pa/saij) (Leg. 1.106). Paul’s use of sin to represent the irrational passions and appetites is closest to Plutarch (Virt. vit. 101a) and Philo’s use of vice. The role of sin in Rom 7 and elsewhere in chapters 6–8 fits with Platonic traditions that represent the passions and desires of the soul as an evil ruler that wrests control of reason to disastrous ends. Like the writers discussed previously, Paul need not consciously invoke a specific concept, image, or text that uses exactly the same language to represent the desires of the soul. At a minimum, his repertoire of intellectual skills need only contain a very basic set of assumptions about the divided soul and the nature of the faculties. Rom 7 identifies the passions as sinful (7:5; ta\ paqh/mata tw~n a9martiw~n), makes the law instrumental in causing sin (7:5, 7:7–13), and attributes to sin the activities of seizing an opportunity (7:8, 7:11; a0formh\n labou~sa), inciting desires (7:8; kateirga/sato e0n e0moi\ pa=san e0piqumi/an), coming to life (7:9; a0ne/zhsen), deceiving (7:11; e0chpa/thsen), killing (7:11; a0pe/kteinen), working death “in me” (7:13; katergazome/nh qa/naton), enslaving (7:14; peprame/noj u9po\ th\n a9marti/an), and dwelling “in me” (7:17, 7:20; oi0kou~sa e0n e0moi\), and in 7:23 and 7:25 the speaker claims that it is at war with sin (a0ntistrateuo/menon), made a captive by sin (ai0xmalwti/zonta/), and serves as a slave (douleu/w) to the “law of sin.” The role of sin here is like that of pleasures, vices, and various figures explored previously. So, Philo warns, “lest the mind should unawares be made captive and enslaved” (laqw_n o99 nou~j ai0xma/lwtoj a0ndrapodisqei\j), by pleasure (Sacr. 26); Plato’s appetitive king rules and enslaves (Rep. 8.553d); his lawless appetitive ruler gets away from reason and commits every type of vice and immorality (Rep. 9.571d), leads other desires, slays, deceives, and incites the other appetites to open rebellion with the result that it comes to master and enslave the mind (Rep. 9.577a–e); Galen warns that “the appetitive power

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often waxes so strong that it hurls us into love beyond all cure” (e0piqumhtikh\n du/namin ei0j a0ni/aton e1rwta polla/kij e0mbalei~n);66 and Plutarch’s vice stirs the appetites up and “awakens” (e0panegei/rei) depravity and wickedness (Virt. vit. 101a). This tradition sometimes personifies pleasures because they are the external objects of the appetites, senses for conveying these objects to appetite, or vices that are themselves the bad acts that arise from the work of the appetites, but a Platonic logic underwrites all of them. Taking sin in Rom 7 as a representation of the evil passions means that Paul personifies the bad outcome of the work of the appetites (sin) and represents it as an indwelling appetitive ruler. Such a move, however, has precedents in Plutarch and Philo, who both use vice in this way. This interpretation explains the active role of sin in the monologue and also finds support in 7:5: “When we were in the flesh our sinful passions were aroused by the law in our members to bear fruit to death” (o3te ga\r h]men e0n th|= sarki/, ta\ paqh/mata tw~n a9martiw~n ta\ dia\ tou~ no/mou e0nhrgei~to e0n toi~j me/lesin h9mw~n, ei0j to\ karpoforh=sai tw~| qana/tw|). On these terms, 7:7–25 elaborates on the premise about the role of passions, sin, and law spelled out in verse 5. Understanding sin in 7:7–25 as representing the passions allows for a more coherent reading of its attributes and characteristics in the monologue and contextualizes this idea of sin within a contemporary moral discourse. This interpretation of sin in Rom 7 contrasts sharply with a number of other approaches, especially the notion that Paul understands sin as a socalled apocalyptic power. Though Paul does not confine his interest in sin to uses of the term a9marti/a, a simple statistical analysis shows a remarkable concentration of the term in Rom 5–8.67 With fifty-eight uses of the terms in the letters as a whole, forty-eight of them occur in Romans and forty-one of these in chapters 5–8. Many interpreters understand sin here not only in terms of bad behaviors – immoral acts, disobedience to God – but as a materially embodied “cosmic” entity that fights against God and invades each human being. Such theories explain the distinctive attributes and characteristics of sin in these chapters by giving it substantial reality as a hostile, quasi-demonic power. So, 5:12 introduces the idea of sin entering the world (ei0j to\n ko/smon ei0sh=lqen), where it increases (e0pleo/nasen) in 5:20 and rules in 5:21 (e0basi/leusen). At the same time, chapters 6–8 tell the story of sin and salvation in distinctively “personal” and bodily terms. Rom 6:12, for example, exhorts the baptized, “do not let sin rule in your mortal bodies to make you obey its passions,” chapter 7 depicts sin as dwelling inside the body where it kills, imprisons, enslaves, 66 67

Kühn, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, 5.29; Harkins, Galen, 48. See Kaye, Thought Structure of Romans, 30–38.

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and makes war, and chapter 8 announces that Christ has “condemned sin in the flesh” (8:3). Scholars explain the active role of sin by appealing to Paul’s supposed apocalypticism so that Rom 6–8 tells the story of how the baptized person participates in a cosmic battle between God and sin. Martin Dibelius inaugurated this approach, and it enjoys broad approval because of its ability to explain the active role of sin in Rom 5–8.68 In spite of the approach’s capacity to explain the various roles of sin in these chapters, there is little historical evidence to support such an understanding of sin. Scholars regularly invoke the theory as conclusively establishing a supposedly apocalyptic framework for Paul’s thought, but one searches in vain for the cache of historical texts that would provide a situated, contextual explanation for Paul’s language about sin in these terms. Even where Jewish literature is invoked to support the notion, closer analysis of the texts often undermines the theories as typically formulated.69 For instance, Jewish literature on demonic and apocalyptic beings tends to show clear signals when introducing them, and, with the possible exception of 1QS 3, none of these texts unambiguously depicts external beings as entering the body and controlling the person in the way envisioned by these approaches.70 Consideration of Jewish literature on the 68 Dibelius, Die Geisterwelt in Glauben des Paulus; see the discussion of Käsemann above. So, James D. G. Dunn simply asserts that Rom 7:8 “denotes sin as a personified power oppressing human experience in the following verses – so experience/know sin as a force operating on and within the decisions of everyday. But hardly to be excluded is the sense of sin as the act (here the act of coveting) – experience/know in the sense of practice as a conscious and all-too-deliberate action” (Romans [Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1988], 1.378). For an extensive treatment, see J. Christian Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 135–181. 69 Walter Wink’s Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) is exemplary in its use of evidence. Attempting to counter Wesley Carr’s (Angels and Principalities: The Background, Meaning, and Development of the Pauline Phrase hai archai kai hai exousiai [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981]) strong argument that a0rxh/ and a0r xw~n refer either to earthly powers (kings or princes) or to heavenly angels or hosts in God’s court, Wink supplies a list of passages that supposedly argue the opposite (Naming the Powers, 151–156). This seeming word study gives the appearance of historicity by citing a list of texts under headings like “archê and archôn of evil powers or fallen angels” and “archê and archôn of Satan.” A more careful treatment of these texts, however, undermines rather than supports these assertions about the so-called powers and many of the writings come from the second century or later. See also the older studies, such as G. E. B. Caird, Principalities and Powers: A Study in Pauline Theology (London: Oxford University Press, 1956). 70 Good examples of texts that combine human moral agency with extra-human agency are found in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. Though probably late, T. Dan focuses on the problem of anger in the soul, alternately associating this with Beliar and the passions, as “anger and falsehood together are a double-edged evil, and work together to perturb the reason. And when the soul is continually perturbed, the Lord withdraws from it and Beliar rules it. Observe the Lord’s commandments, then, my

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origins of evil makes this point well. Though texts such as 1 Enoch and Jubilees give a prominent role to evil angels such as the Watchers and Beliar, these beings are never made the proximate cause of all human wickedness. Rather, the texts limit their role by blaming both humans and nonhumans.71 Thus, the activities of the Watchers and Beliar only partially explain the origins of evil and certainly do not account for all subsequent human wickedness, for which humans are fully responsible.72 This role makes sense because one possible implication of blaming nonhuman entities for all human wickedness and immorality could be that there is no point in urging good conduct, instruction in the law, or moral responsibility. Yet, this is just what 1 Enoch and Jubilees and so many other texts do teach: be good and obey the law because God will hold persons accountable for wickedness and transgressions. Even 1QS 3, which claims that the dominion of an Angel of Darkness is such that “all their [humans’] afflictions and their periods of grief are caused by the dominion of his enmity; and the spirits of his lot cause the sons of light to fall” (1QS 3:23–24), soon equivocates about whether this angel is responsible for all sin: “until now the spirits of truth and injustice feud in the hearts of man” (1QS 4:23).73 The text does not support the pictures of sin invoked in the powers theories, its apocalyptic horizon, or its supposed connection to Paul. In addition, texts such as 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and 1QS 3 introduce nonhuman forces by identifying and naming them. The Watchers, Beliar, and the Angel of Darkness, for example, do not appear out of nowhere with names like law, grace, righteousness, or sin. Rather, the texts introduce them by giving them distinctive names and often explain their role in human history or provide some other distinguishing details. In taking sin as a material force, such interpretations also tend to deny the use of personification and metaphor to Paul and various other Jewish writers.74 For instance, though a children, and keep his law. Avoid wrath, and hate lying, in order that the Lord may dwell among you, and Beliar may flee from you” (T. Dan 4:7–5:1). See also T. Asher 1:5–9; T. Issachar 7:7; T. Reub. 5:6. Trans. from Charlesworth. 71 See 1 Enoch 15.8–10, 69.4–12; Jub. 10.1–9; Wisdom of Solomon 2:23–24, 6:17– 20; cf. 1:13–14. For opposition to this idea, see 1 Enoch 98.4, which claims that evil is man’s own fault and cannot be blamed on extra-human forces, as also Sir 21:27, 25:24; cf. 15:17; Pseudo-Philo Antiqu. 3.1–3. Though late, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch combine a view of Adam as originator of evil with an emphasis on human agency. See 4 Ezra 7.46–61; 2 Baruch 54.14–16, 54.19. 72 John Collins makes this point forcefully in “The Origin of Evil in Apocalyptic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Seers, Sibyls, and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 287–300. 73 Trans. García Martínez and Tigchelaar. 74 De Boer argues that death is also a power (The Defeat of Death), but almost all of the texts he cites in support of this view are more easily understood as personifying death. For critiques that emphasize Paul’s use of metaphor and personification, see

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range of writings personify sin, as in Sirach, “A lion lies in wait for prey; so does sin for evildoers” (27:10), and 1 Enoch, “sin and darkness shall perish forever, and shall no more be seen from that day forevermore” (92.5), to take such statements as evidence for a view of sin as an evil demonic overlord denies these writers the use of very basic literary skills.75 Two further historical arguments regarding sin in Rom 7 warrant further consideration: the connection to so-called confession literature associated with some texts from Qumran and to references to the idea of an evil impulse found in some Jewish literature. Mark A. Seifrid has made the most forcefully argued case for the former position.76 Texts such as 1QH 9:21– 27 offer a first person narrator that discusses human sin and iniquity in a direct address to God. Yet as noted in the introduction, this literature cannot account for basic features of Rom 7, but this divergence allows Seifrid to insist that Paul’s refashioning of this tradition “has features which make it unique to Paul.”77 Without further evidence for support, the supposed connection to what Seifrid understands as an “early Jewish confessing egô” appears tenuous and forced. A number of scholars argue that Rom 7 evidences a Jewish tradition concerning the person’s good and evil impulses. Leander Keck advocates this position, drawing on Roland Murphy and Joel Marcus.78 Yet, not only is there little evidence, but texts that do refer to good and evil inclinations do not show consistent patterns in the use of language, images, assumptions, or arguments that would warrant taking this language as a distinct tradition or discourse and would justify Stowers, Rereading Romans, 179–189; Kaye, Thought Structure of Romans, 30–47. See also Carr, Angels and Principalities; G. Röhser, Metaphorik und Personifikation der Sünde (WUNT 2.25; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987). 75 As an alternative, E. P. Sanders (Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 71–72) appeals to similar notions without situating this idea of sin within an apocalyptic frame of reference. While he never claims that sin is a force like Satan, Sanders develops a view of sin as an independent power ruling a domain that is outside God’s control; this amounts to something similar without drawing the direct connection or contextualizing Paul’s language. The implication is that sin here is an utterly new intellectual creation, the product of Paul’s special religious genius. 76 Seifrid, “The Subject of Rom 7:14–25,” Novum Testamentum 34 (1992): 313–333, as Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 465–466, discussed in the introduction. Peter Stuhlmacher combines the Jewish confessional and evil impulse interpretations, in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary (trans. Scott J. Hafemann; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1994), 109– 110. 77 Seifrid, “The Subject of Rom 7:14–25,” 322. 78 Keck, “The Absent Good: The Significance of Rom 7:18a,” in Text und Geschichte: Facetten theologischen Arbeitens aus dem Freundes und Schülerkreis, Dieter Lührmann zum 60 Geburtstag (ed. Stefan Maser and Egbert Schlarb; Marburg, Ger.: Elwert, 1999), 66–75; Murphy, “Yeser in the Qumran Literature,” Biblica 39 (1958): 334–344; Marcus, “The Evil Inclination in the Letters of Paul,” Irish Biblical Studies 8 (1986): 8–21; “The Evil Inclination in the Epistle of James,” CBQ 44 (1982): 606–621.

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connecting it to Romans. The references to the human being’s good and evil inclinations in Genesis, Sirach, writings from Qumran, and even the much later Rabbinic texts appear rather as folk theories of human motivation. Marcus’s evaluation of e0piqumi/a as an evil impulse in James 1:14–15 and Philo’s writings also seriously misunderstands the uses and meanings of the term.79 Marcus seems to assume that the author of the letter of James thinks and writes using concepts that come only from Jewish or Christian texts and that the exegete’s task is to string them together across time without pausing to consider the particular interests, motivations, arguments, or social and intellectual contexts of any one writer. The result is a synthesis and harmonization of many different Jewish and Christian writings but not an explanation of them. Though it seems highly likely that some writers might connect the idea of good and evil impulses with passions and desires, to establish this would require evidence and argumentation. The proposal offered here understands sin in light of particular discourses alive in Paul’s day. Though arguably sin could function both as a personified representation of the passions and as an invading “power,” there is little historical evidence to support the powers theories as usually formulated. My argument has focused principally on a discourse about moral behavior and its underpinnings in moral psychology because these can hold together sin’s attributes and characteristics throughout this text. I do not claim that this necessarily excludes all other ways of understanding sin; Paul often seems to appropriate from and synthesize different traditions and discourses. However, the powers theories require more definition and historical justification if they are to merit serious consideration. In fact, as currently formulated, these seem to reflect the old opposition between Bultmann’s “demythologizing” approach and Käsemann’s “mythological” or apocalyptic one translated into an opposition between Greek moral thought and Jewish apocalyptic. An exemplary case of this tendency appears in Beverly Roberts Gaventa’s recent critique of Stanley Stowers and Troels Engberg-Pedersen on the grounds that they “consider sin strictly as a feature of human activity or human experience” rather than understanding it in its proper apocalyptic context.80 On this view, to render Paul’s thought “thoroughly apocalyptic” means to set it against a backdrop of warring cosmic forces and powers. Yet once “apocalypticism” is freed from its moorings in a long-lived but ill-defined and under-evidenced 79 Marcus, “Evil Inclination in the Epistle of James,” 606–621, drawing on Harry A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947), 2.288–90. 80 Gaventa, “The Cosmic Power of Sin in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Towards a Widescreen Edition,” Interpretation 58, no. 3 (2004): 231.

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theory, there is no reason to suppose such a dichotomy between the behaviors of persons and the apocalyptic framework of Paul’s thought. In fact, it makes sense that issues such as good and bad behavior and obedience and disobedience to God would gain immediacy in light of God’s impending eschatological judgment of the world for those behaviors (so, Rom 2:6– 11). In any case, I can find no justification for the view that a Pauline view of sin as having to do with (bad) human behaviors conflicts with the notion that Paul’s mission and thought is shaped by his apocalyptic commitments. Losing the War: Reason Killed, Enslaved, and Imprisoned in Romans 7 Discussions of extreme immorality among Platonists allow for an understanding of the speaker in Rom 7 as the good part of the soul: the mind or reason. This identification makes sense in light of the attributes and capacities ascribed to the “I” throughout the monologue, the perspective that the speaker invokes in relation to sin, passions, body, flesh, and members, and the specifically Platonic language about the mind in Rom 7:22–23. In 7:7–13 the interlocutor speaks in the first person about its own life and death. Scholars have often construed the a9marti/a nekra/ in 7:8 along the lines of “sin was rendered inoperative or ineffective.” So Joseph Fitzmyer translates the phrase as “sin is as good as dead” and James Dunn takes sin as “ineffective or powerless.”81 Yet, despite the dense clustering of death metaphors in 7:7–25, few scholars have attempted to historicize this use of metaphor.82 The discourse of soul-death elucidates the death

81 Dunn, Romans, 1.381; Fitzmyer, Romans, 462. Troels Engberg-Pedersen construes death in Rom 7:7–25 as a metaphor for a certain state of mind (Paul and the Stoics [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 2000], 369–370, n. 29). That state of mind is, for Engberg-Pedersen, the reality of self-contradiction. The analysis offered here compliments Engberg-Pedersen on this point but diverges in many other respects. 82 C. Clifton Black’s essay (“Pauline Perspectives on Death in Romans 5–8,” JBL 103.3 [1984]: 413–433) is a notable exception, but he concludes that there are at least sixteen distinct meanings of death in the ancient writings that bear on Rom 5–8. Others have explained the death metaphors by connecting them with what they take to be the meaning of death in other parts of the letter. Such arguments rely on coherence but do not usually provide an explanation that draws on sources outside Paul’s own writings. Dunn, for example, appeals to the letter itself instead of comparison with other historical sources that might illuminate his reading (Romans, 1.383); C. E. B. Cranfield distinguishes moral death and corruption: “Though he continues to live, he is dead – being under God’s sentence of death (cf. v. 24b). Physical death, when it comes, is but the fulfillment of the sentence already passed. It needs scarcely be said that the death referred to here is, of course, something entirely different from the good death of 6:2, 7, 8; 7:4” (The Epistle to the Romans [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979], 352); similarly, Fitzmyer writes: “This death is instead the condition resulting from sin as a violation of the law. Through formal transgressions, human beings are consigned to the domination of thanatos (5:12, 17a, 21)” (Romans, 467–468). Although plausible, these readings often

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metaphors here as radical forms of disempowerment that convey the mind’s domination by passions. The result, as 7:14–25 makes painfully clear, is that the mind cannot put its good judgments into action. Rom 7 ascribes knowledge, reason, good judgment, and voice to the speaking “I.” The statements and claims throughout reflect both knowledge of the good and a desire to put this knowledge into action, but this is especially clear in 7:14–25. Though the interlocutor claims to be confused in 7:15 (“I do not understand my own actions”), the subsequent discussion moves toward greater and greater understanding as it states some eleven times that it knows the difference between good and evil, it wants to do what is good, and though it recognizes the goodness of God’s just and holy law it is powerless to put these good, reasoning desires into action because sin frustrates it at every turn. Such a progression from seeming contradiction and confusion toward clarity follows a well-worn pattern in the moral literature so that these traditions explain the seeming confusion in statements about what the speaker does and does not know or do. Whereas the speaker claims confusion in 7:15 (o3 ga\r katerga/zomai ou0 ginw&skw), it also seems to make itself the subject of action while simultaneously alienating itself from that action by appealing to its true intentions (ou0 ga\r o3 qe/lw tou~to pra/ssw, a0ll’ o3 misw~ tou~to poiw~). How can the same “I” function as the subject of the wanting and doing here? This is precisely the issue that philosophers and moralists regularly raised in order to elaborate on one or another theory of moral psychology. The Roman Stoic Epictetus, for example, has an interlocutor ask, “Cannot a man, then, think that something is profitable to him, and yet not choose it?” Here the interlocutor posits a contradiction between knowing and doing as an entrée into the Stoic solution to a much-debated set of issues with the constitution of the mind. In keeping with his Stoicism, Epictetus responds by denying that such a phenomenon is actually possible. The interlocutor then asks again, this time with reference to the Medean monologue, “How of her who says, ‘Now, now, I learn what horrors I intend: but passion overmasters sober thought’ (qumo\j de\ krei/sswn tw~n e0mw~n bouleuma/twn)?” (Diatr. 1.28.7). To this, Epictetus responds: “It is because the very gratification of her passion and the taking of vengeance on her husband she regards as more profitable than the saving of her children. ‘Yes, but she is deceived’. Show her clearly that she is deceived, and she will not do it” (Diatr. 1.28.7–8). This response explains away the problem by posing the Stoic solution: the mind is not literally divided against itself because there is just a single mind persuaded of something false.

paraphrase the text and fail to contextualize the metaphors by using other literature to elucidate their possible meanings.

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The above text from Epictetus introduces the possibility of contradiction between thought and action to initiate a discussion about how the Stoic theory of moral psychology resolves this contradiction. Paul’s text similarly raises the problem of self-contradiction in 7:15 but develops an analysis of the plight (though, importantly, not the solution) that makes most sense in light of Platonic explanations rather than Stoic ones. In other words, the monologue uses statements that render the identity of the “I” ambiguous to initiate a discussion about the moral-psychological basis for this apparent contradiction. So, Plutarch and Galen challenge the alternative Stoic accounts by claiming that Platonism better explains this contradiction. Plutarch attacks Stoic monism by asking, “how is it possible for the same man to be both better and worse than himself, or to be master of himself and at the same time be mastered, if in some way or other each man were not by nature double and had not both the worse and the better within himself?” (pw~j ga\r oi[o/n te to\n au0to\n au0tou~ krei/tton’ ei]nai kai\ xei/rona h1 kratei~n a3ma kai\ kratei~sqai, mh\ tro/pon tina\ dittou~ pefuko/toj e9ka/stou kai\ to\ me\n xei~ron e0n e9autw|~ to\ de be/ltion e1xontoj) (Virt. 450d–e). Plutarch poses the problem of how to attribute such different commitments to a single mind and then uses Platonic division to resolve it. He continues: This being the case, he who holds the worse in subjection to the better is self-controlled and better than himself, but he who permits the better part to follow and be in subjection to the intemperate and irrational part of his soul is called worse than himself and incontinent and in a state contrary to nature (ou3tw ga\r o9 me\n tou~ belti/o noj u9p hko/w | tw~| xei/roni xrw&m enoj e0g krath\j e9autou~ kai\ krei/ttwn e0 sti/n, o9 de\ tw~| a0kola/stw| kai\ a0lo/g w| th=j yuxh=j e9p o/m enon periorw~n kai\ u9p hretou~ n to\ krei~t ton h3ttwn e9a utou~ kai\ a0krath\j le/g etai kai\ para\ fu/sin diakei/m enoj). (Virt. 450e)

This statement develops the Platonic premise that self-contradiction arises when passions get the better of reason (the better and worse parts). Whereas the text makes the disposition of the rational part constitutive of the person’s true “self,” it also construes the rational and irrational parts as the better and worse parts of the person and assumes that the relation between these parts determines the overall assessment of a person’s character as self-controlled or wicked. Similarly, Galen attacks the Stoic view by asking, “How could anything disobey itself or reject itself or fail to follow itself?” (Hip. et Plat. 4.2.27). Though a number of further examples could be cited to make the point, the above texts should suffice to show that writers use the seeming contradiction between knowing and doing to pose a set of problems that they then resolve using one theory or another. Without an appreciation for the use of such internal monologues among moral writers, however, many of the statements in 7:14–25 plainly contradict. The text states, for example,

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that the “I” both knows and does not know what it does; further, though it makes the “I” the agent of action (“I do that which I do not want to do”; 7:15), it later alienates the “I” from that action (“It is no longer I that does it, but the sin which lives in me”; 7:17). The seeming ambiguities in these statements about what this speaker does or does not know and do are precisely the types of contradictions and ambiguities that moralists sought to resolve with their theories. This analysis helps to make sense of why the voice of 7:15 complains, “I do not understand my own actions; I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Just as Ovid’s Medea cries, “I see the better, and approve of it, but I do the worse” (Metam. 7.10), the voice of 7:15 claims to be alienated from its own actions. Though strictly speaking there are contradictory claims about the “I” in both cases, these statements raise a series of problems that the monologue of 7:15–25 seeks to explain. Unlike the cry of Ovid’s Medea, however, Rom 7:15 invokes the problem and then goes on to solve it in keeping with Platonic tradition. Like the moral literature, the monologue similarly appeals to internal states and dispositions to explain the true nature of the problem. While verses 15 and 16 claim confusion about what the speaker knows and does, the monologue from 17 onward arrives at increasing clarity about the cause of this terrible situation: reason is imprisoned and enslaved by the passions because sin, with its terrible fleshly alliance, dominates and controls the speaking “I.” On these terms, 7:15 claims confusion and contradiction that is increasingly resolved as the “I” comes to understand that it does not really do these things after all. Whereas Medea’s affliction passes once the heat of anger abates, the interlocutor of Rom 7 arrives at the conclusion that its situation is hopeless. So, the final cry, “who will rescue me from this body of death?” (ti/j me r9u/setai e0k tou~ sw&matoj tou~ qana/tou tou&tou) (7:24), encapsulates reason’s total disempowerment and sets up the argument that God has allowed for a new way through Christ (8:1–13). Though Rom 8:1 and the following verses pose a solution to the moral dilemma that differs in very significant ways from that of philosophers and moralists, Platonic traditions provide a context for making sense of the plight developed at length in 7:14–25. The speaker in 7:7–25 describes a condition consistent with that of the Platonic reasoning faculty trapped by the lawless passions and desires and so unable to effect its good judgments. So, Plato writes of the tyrannical soul, “Then a tyrannical soul – I’m talking about the whole soul – will also be least likely to do what it wants and, forcibly driven by the stings of a dronish gadfly, will be full of disorder and regret” (kai\ h9 turannoume/nh a)/ra yuxh\ h(/kista poih/sei a3 a1n boulhqh=|, w(j peri\ o(/lhj ei0pei=n yuxh=j: u9po\ de\ oi)/strou a0ei\ e9lkome/nh bi/a| taraxh=j kai\ metamelei/aj mesth\ e)/stai) (Rep. 9.577e). Simi-

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larly, Galen (Diagnosis of the Soul’s Passions) warns that the appetitive faculty might become strong enough to render the mind powerless and reduce it to a voice bewailing its incurable plight.83 Despite initial confusion, the speaker in 7:14–25 repeatedly demonstrates that it has knowledge of the good and wants to put it into action but is unable to do so. Following the initial statement of contradiction in 7:15, the speaker moves more and more toward an explanation that fits with Platonic assumptions about the nature of the soul: “Now if I do not do what I want, then I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do this, but sin which dwells in me” (ei0 de\ o3 ou0 qe/lw tou~to poiw~, su/mfhmi tw~| no/mw| o3ti kalo/j. nuni/ de\ ou0ke/ti e0gw_ katerga/zomai au0to\ a0lla\ h9 oi0kou~sa e0n e0moi\ a9marti/a) (7:16–17). This explanation introduces an outside cause of bad actions, sin, and so rescues the “I” from responsibility for it. Just as Galen insists that “it is the action or affection (e1rgon h1 pa/qhma) of some power other than the rational” (Hip. et Plat. 4.2.27) and Plutarch explains that the only way to account for such contradiction is to posit a double nature, Rom 7:14–25 introduces the divided soul in a way that blames passions for bad acts. In keeping with the Platonic premise that passions intermingle with and use the body or flesh, 7:14 and the following verses continually alienate sin from reason and locate it in the flesh, body, and members. The speaker restates this explanation in verses 19 and 20 and summarizes again, “it is no longer I that does it, but sin which dwells in me”; this is the voice of reason explaining that it cannot put its judgments into action because of the work of sin. So verses 21–25 tell the same story as 14–20 but heighten the sense of desperation as Paul reintroduces God and God’s law into the divide between the work of sin and the wants and desires of reason: “Now if I do what I do not want, it is not longer I that do it, but the sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do good, evil lies close by. For I delight in the law of God in my inner person, but I see another law in my members making war with the law of my mind, making me a captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (ei0 de\ o3 ou0 qe/lw [e0gw_] tou~to poiw~, ouke/ti e0gw_ katerga/zomai au0to\ a0lla\ h9 oi0kou~sa e0n e0moi\ a9marti/a. eu9ri/skw a1ra to\n no/mon, tw~| qe/lonti e0moi\ poiei~n to\ kalo\n, o3ti e0moi\ to\ kako\n para/keitai· sunh/domai ga/r tw~| no/mw| tou~ qeou~ kata\ to/n e1sw a1nqrwpon, ble/pw de\ e3teron no/mon e0n toi~j me/lesi/n mou a0ntistrateuo/menon tw~| no/mw| tou~ noo/j mou kai\ ai0xmalwti/zonta/ me e0n tw~| no/mw th=j a9marti/aj tw~| o1nti e0n toi~j me/le/sin mou) (7:20–23); “with my mind I myself serve as a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I serve as a slave to the law of sin” (a1ra 83

Kühn, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, 5.28–29; Harkins, Galen, 48.

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ou]n au0to\j e0gw_ tw~| me\n noi6 douleu/w no/mw| qeou~ th= de\ sarki\ no/mw| a9marti/aj) (7:25). This approach to the monologue also helps to makes sense of the “other law” in verse 23 as the principle of contradiction itself. Some scholars have maintained that 7:23 introduces an alternative construal of the law so that God’s good law is distinct from the “law of sin and death” (tou~ no/mou th=j a9marti/aj kai\ tou~ qana/tou), designated as such in 8:2. In contrast, the analysis of self-contradiction in 7:14–25 proposed here complements the alternative understanding of no/moj in 7:23 and 8:2 as “principle.”84 Taking the “other law” in the members as a wordplay that conveys the principle of self-contradiction also makes sense in light of the way verse 21 sets up the connection between 7:14–20 and issues with the law: “I find it to be a law that when I want to do what’s right, sin lies close at hand” (eu9ri/skw a1ra to\n no/mon, tw~| qe/lonti e0moi\ poiei~n to\ kalo\n, o3ti e0moi\ to\ kako\n para/keitai). On these terms, this “other law” is just the principle of contradiction belabored in 7:14–25: even though the mind wants the good, sin frustrates it at every turn. The language of mind (nou~j) and inner person (to\n e1sw a1nqrwpon) in 7:22–23 also fits with Platonic assumptions.85 Because this reading construes the speaker as reason, the mind, or the inner person, it requires that the mind stand outside itself and reflect on itself in the third person, as in the statements “I delight in the law of God in my inner person” (to\n e1sw a1nqrwpon) (7:22) and “I myself serve God’s law with my mind” (7:25). This too is consistent with interior monologues that use similar patterns of disassociation between the mind and the person as a whole without implying that something other than the mind reflects and speaks. So, Seneca’s Medea seems to stand outside herself and speak about her mind in the third person, as if she and her mind were different: “My mind has secretly made some hideous decision, and does not yet dare confess it openly to itself” (Med. 917–919). This is a literary device born of the form of the internal monologue and its dramatic and descriptive purposes.86 84 So, Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 16–18; Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 3, 15, n. 26, agreeing with Fitzmyer (Romans, 476) against Paul Meyers (“The Worm at the Core of the Apple: Exegetical Reflections on Romans 7,” in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John in Honor of J. Louis Martyn [ed. Robert T. Fortna and Beverly R. Gaventa; Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1990], 62–84). 85 For the argument that Paul alludes to the lion and the many-headed beast in 1 Cor 15:32, see Abraham J. Malherbe, “The Beasts at Ephesus,” reprinted in Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 79–89. 86 See Gill, “Two Monologues,” 31–32. As Price summarizes of Plato’s Republic:

These forms of expression, treating parts as persons or separating the man from his parts, are recurrent in books 8 and 9, where they often occur together. We can take them to be a manner of speaking, a way of writing up internal conflict in the style of

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It is important to emphasize that the attributes and functions that Rom 7 ascribes to the speaker, mind, and inner person are consistent with Platonic views of the reasoning faculty. This identification with the Platonic reasoning faculty is particularly clear when contrasted with the Stoic view of mind. Though formally the Stoics deny that self-division or contradiction is even possible, they argue that bad acts occur when the mind commits itself to false propositions. In contrast, the mind in Rom 7 is not corrupted by false information and it does not waver between competing claims about what is good and bad. The speaker never equivocates about right and wrong and never approves of what sin does but rather constantly affirms its capacity for knowledge and good judgment. It also speaks repeatedly about sin, the passions, the flesh, and the members of its body as if they were alien and outside it. What else is the implication of “It is not I that am doing this, but the sin which lives in my members” if not that the “I” is spatially removed from and functionally differentiated from sin? This makes sense on Platonic but not Stoic premises. Though Engberg-Pedersen has argued that the text depicts a whole person schizophrenically describing its different and conflicting forms of self-identification, I can find no support for this reading in the text of 7:7–25.87 Beyond Body/Soul Dualism: Body, Flesh, and Members in Romans 7 Rom 7 manifests a Platonic logic in viewing the body and flesh as evil coconspirators with sin. As explored previously, the body and flesh often appear as allied with passions, desires, and wickedness. So, Philo writes, “But there is a different mind which loves the body and the passions and has been sold in slavery to that chief cateress (th|= a0rximagei/rw| tou~ sugkri/matoj) (Gen 39:1) of our compound nature, pleasure (h9donh|=)” (Deus 111); “This is a most noble definition of a deathless life, to be possessed by a love of God and a friendship for God with which flesh and body have no concern” (Fug. 58); and Galen warns, “there are also passions of the body which because of their greatness are beyond cure” (tw~n tou~ sw&matoj paqw~n e1nia dia\ me/geqoj e0stin a0ni/ata).88 The body and flesh become enemies of mind, allies of passions, and habitations for passions, desires, and wickedness because of the ambiguous role of bodily senses in Plato’s epistemology. Philo summarizes, “to the end that sense, being a maimed thing, may follow a blind guide, namely that which sense external drama…. More speculatively, we may surmise that such conceptions can faithfully capture an aspect of the way the mind pictures itself, a self-dramatizing mode in which it experiences, and transmutes, its own workings. (Mental Conflict, 56) 87 88

Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 244–245. Kühn, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, 5.29; Harkins, Galen, 48.

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can perceive, and that the mind, led by this pair of blind guides, may be brought to the ground and robbed of self-control” (e0ktraxhli/zhtai kai\ a0krath\j e9autou~ gi/nhtai) (Leg. 3.109). Pleasure and the senses, like the appetites themselves, are thus instrumental in bringing about the downfall of the charioteer: reason. This approach to the language of body and flesh understands “being in the flesh” (Rom 7:5) as conveying the rule of passions and desires. Similarly, when the speaker complains, “the law is pneumatic, but I am fleshly, sold as a slave under sin” (7:14); “nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (7:18); “I see another law in my members making war with the law of my mind” (7:23); “wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?” (7:24); and “with my mind I serve as a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I serve as a slave to the law of sin” (7:25), these cohere as statements about sin’s domination of the body. The language about body, flesh, and members works to create a picture of reason as the tiny inner person overwhelmed and trapped by sin. Paul need not be wedded to Platonic metaphysics and epistemology to conceptualize the body or flesh as an ally of the passions. I have treated this aspect of Platonism to better explain how Platonists justify the ambiguous position of the body in relation to the mind and reason, the material world, pleasures, passions, and appetites. However, the role of body and flesh in Rom 7 makes sense in light of the Platonic premise that the body is naturally allied with passions and appetites. Life, Death, Knowledge, and Ignorance: Life Apart from the Law (Rom 7:9) At the very beginning of the monologue the interlocutor speaks of its life before and after the coming of the law: “I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came in, sin sprang to life and I died; the very commandment that was for life, brought death” (e0gw\ de\ e1zwn xwri\j no/mou pote/, e0lqou/shj de\ th=j e0ntolh=j h9 a9marti/a a0ne/zhsen, e0gw_ de\ a0pe/qanon kai\ eu9re/qh moi h9 e0ntolh\ h9 ei0j zwh/n, au3th ei0j qa/naton) (7:9–10). If the “I was once alive” conveys the domination of mind, then this would imply that reason was fully in control before meeting with the law; the “I was alive” and “sin was dead” would convey the dominance of reason and the disempowerment of the passions. Yet, it is not clear how this would fit with Paul’s claims elsewhere, especially 5:12, where sin comes into the world with Adam rather than the law. In addition, philosophers and moralists who discuss extreme immorality assume that such persons must be warped and perverted prior to attaining such an immoral state. Extreme immorality does not just happen but appears as the nadir of degeneration long in the making. Writers usually explain that bad educa-

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tion and upbringing are conditions for extreme degeneracy, though in some cases hereditary conditions can also play a role (Eth. nic. 7.1150b12–16). However, a different kind of death metaphor can explain the language of life and death in Rom 7:9–10 as conveying the awakening of the mind to its terrible plight. As noted previously, Zeller considers this idea of “the living dead” in a broad array of literature in search of the origins of Philo’s idea of souldeath.89 Explaining instances where death conveys a lack of understanding and knowledge, Zeller treats a number of texts that are especially illuminating for Rom 7:9–10. So, a fragment of Menander reads: Believe me, men, I had been dead during all these years of life that I was alive. The beautiful, the good, the holy, the evil were all the same to me; such, it seems, was the darkness that formerly enveloped my understanding and concealed and hid from me all these things. But now that I have come here, I have become alive again for all the rest of my life, as if I had lain down in the temple of Asclepius and had been saved. I walk, I talk, I think. (Pap. Didot. 2.2–12)90

The speaker claims that its newfound knowledge and understanding has produced a revaluation of its previous life and it characterizes this transition by appealing to the language of sudden healing and salvation. This old life concealed true understanding in darkness and the text also describes this state as a type of death characterized by an inability to distinguish good from evil, the beautiful from the holy. In contrast, the person now walks, talks, and thinks with knowledge and discernment. As Zeller shows, many writers appeal to the idea of a truer or more authentic life and death that contrasts (often ironically) with the actual life and death of persons and bodies. Of interest for the present investigation are those contexts where life and death function as metaphors for having knowledge or lacking it. So, Sir 22:11 states, “the life of the fool is worse than death.” In a more elaborate context, Philo writes of Cain and Abel: “Cain rose up and slew himself,” not someone else. And this is just what we should expect to befall him. For the soul that has extirpated from itself the principle of the love of virtue and the love of God, has died to the life of virtue. Abel, therefore, strange as it seems, has both been put to death and lives: he is destroyed or abolished out of the mind of the fool, but he is alive with the happy life in God. (Det. 48; cf. 70)

These texts show how easily the metaphors of life and death serve moralizing contexts that construe true life as the possession of virtue, knowledge, and wisdom. Similarly, the speaker of Rom 7:7–13 explains that knowledge of the law produced understanding and awareness of its true condition. That condition, however, is imprisonment, enslavement, and death at 89

Zeller, “The Life and Death of the Soul,” 50–52. Trans. Edelstein and Edelstein. Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Lives 5.19; Philo, Ebr. 140; Somn. 2.234; Agr. 163–164. 90

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the hands of passions and desires. In this context, the illuminating knowledge shines a light on the mind’s true condition but in and of itself cannot change it. The preceding argument has emphasized the death of the soul as a particular moral-psychological condition, but other uses of life and death analogies show characteristic flexibility in the use of these metaphors. Though it is not difficult to discern the various meanings in context, some discussions mix several different conceptions of life and death without producing incoherence. I contend that Rom 7:9–10 conveys the mind coming to know itself as dead, just as Menander states, “I had been dead during all these years of life that I was alive.” This fits with a conception of the Jewish law as the embodiment of knowledge and wisdom as well as the association of the law with life (Deut 30:15–16).91 On this reading, the claims “I was once alive apart from the law” and “sin was dead” convey the speaker’s previous evaluation of itself before meeting with the law. The law produces a revaluation of its condition so that it comes to know that it is in reality imprisoned, enslaved, and “killed” by sin. Life and death metaphors function somewhat differently here in that “I was once alive” and “sin was dead” convey the old view when it imagined itself as alive, but once it comes to know that it is truly dead, the death in view is generally the death of the soul. The complaint “the commandment that was for life brought death” summarily states this. As in Menander, knowledge illuminates, but unlike Menander this knowledge does not rescue and heal the soul. Rom 7:14–25 then fittingly explains exactly why knowledge cannot heal: this person cannot put this knowledge into action because of the domination of sin. Self-contradiction and a0krasi/a in Romans 7 Stowers and Engberg-Pedersen argue that Rom 7:7–25 depicts the moralpsychological plight of a0krasi/a, but both struggle to find a place for 7:7– 13 in the akratic drama.92 For Engberg-Pedersen, 7:14–25 uses the conventions of a0krasi/a to characterize “the person’s own recognition of his or her sinfulness,” but this is distinct from the first half of the monologue, 91

E.g., Lev 18:5; Deut 4:1, 6:24; Sir 17:11, 45:5; Wis 6:17–20; cf. Wis 1:12–14. On a0krasi/a in Rom 7, see also A. Van Den Beld, “Romans 7:14–25 and the Problem of Akrasia,” Rel. Stud. 21 (1985): 495–515; H. Hommel, “Das 7. Kapitel des Römerbriefs im Licht antiker Überlieferung,” Theologia Viatorum 8 (1961–1962): 90–116. For unsuccessful attempts to dismiss these texts as irrelevant to Paul’s argument, see Ronald V. Huggins, “Alleged Classical Parallels to Paul’s ‘What I Want To Do I Do Not Do, But What I Hate, That I Do’ (Rom 7:15),” Westminster Theological Journal 54 (1992): 153– 161; Gerd Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology (trans. John P. Galvin; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 211–221; Bultmann, Theology, 248, discussed in the introduction. 92

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which concerns the relation between law and sin.93 This analysis has the virtue of taking seriously the moral discourse of a0krasi/a, but EngbergPedersen does not connect this effectively with the life and death of the speaker, the life of sin, sin’s role in inciting passions, and the relation with the law in the first part of the monologue. In a different way, Stowers uses the conventions of apostrophe and proswpopoii/a to identify the character that speaks from 7:7 onward as an akratic Gentile. Yet, when it comes to the argument about a0krasi/a, Stowers focuses on 7:14–25 and skips over 7:7–13.94 This shift of emphasis is telling; whereas 7:14–25 manifests many characteristics of akratic monologues, it is not clear how this fits with 7:7–13. The conventions of proswpopoii/a further complicate the issue because rhetorical treatises insist that the self-narration of past, present, and future reflect a coherent life condition. The first and second parts of the monologue should describe a single plight. Greater coherence can be brought to the monologue when it is understood as a depiction of a more extreme moral-psychological condition. Read this way, 7:7–13 and 7:14– 25 elaborate on the same condition: the mind’s disempowerment at the hands of passions and desires. This domination becomes the necessary condition for the self-contradiction belabored in 7:14–25. Scholars of philosophy have shown a great deal of interest in ancient theories of emotion and have justly focused on the problem of a0krasi/a. The term itself comes from Aristotle (often translated “weakness of will”), but Hellenistic philosophers make the issue central in debates about human motivation and action.95 Medea figures prominently in debates about a particular mental condition but moral discourse also differentiates among ailments, and a0krasi/a is only one condition among many. Though this point has drawn little interest among scholars of philosophy, it is important for the historical explanation of moral discourses and the varied uses to which writers put them. As discussed already, Plato’s Republic addresses the idea of contradiction between reason and the lower faculties but insists that the mind can never be made to sanction bad acts or properly deceived into going after the same objects as the passions and desires. This is the case even in the tyrannical man whose mind is totally powerless to put its judgments into action and is the basis for the claim that the tyrant “least of all does what he wants.” This reflects Plato’s view that the attributes and 93

Engberg-Pedersen, “The Reception of Greco-Roman Culture in the New Testament: The Case of Romans 7:7–25,” in The New Testament as Reception (ed. Mogens Müller and Henrik Tronier; JSNT supp. ser. 230; New York: Sheffield Academic, 2002), 39. 94 Stowers, Rereading Romans, 269–272. 95 Though a0krasi/a is sometimes used for self-contradiction considered as a moralpsychological event and for the person whose full-scale moral diagnosis is properly akratic, for the sake of clarity I refer to the former as self-contradiction and the latter as a0krasi/a.

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functions of each faculty must be basically stable, a position that underwrites the perpetual conflict of the embodied soul. Yet, a number of philosophers, including later Platonists, argue that the mind acts in harmony with passions and appetites in extreme cases. Such a capacity or tendency would, among other things, obviate the kind of regret and reflection displayed by the interlocutor in Rom 7. But though Platonic writers often take this position in formal or systematic treatments of the issue, they also side with something like the Platonic position in less systematic contexts where it suits their argumentative and exhortative aims. Aristotle’s very clear and comprehensive discussion of moral types organizes them on a relational spectrum from total self-control to its opposite. Though beastliness (qhriwdh=j) and vice (kaki/a) are more severe than a0kolasi/a, the lack of regret that distinguishes a0kolasi/a from a0krasi/a is important because Aristotle regards worse types such as beastliness as very rare. His a0krath=j (a person suffering from a0krasi/a) understands that bad acts are wrong, where the a0kolasth=j does not. Plutarch accepts the sort of distinction that Aristotle makes in Eth. nic. 7 and ascribes a kind of treasonous assent to the reasoning faculty. So, he explains: For intemperance possesses both an evil passion and an evil reason; under the influence of the former, it is incited by desire to shameful conduct (pa/q oj fau~ lon kai\ lo/g on, u9f’ ou[ de\ me\n e0c a/g etai tw~| e0p iqumei~n pro\j to\ ai0sxro/n); under the influence of the latter, which, since its judgment is evil, is enlisted with the desires, intemperance loses even the perception of its errors (tw~| kakw~j kri/ nein prostiqeme/nou tai~ j e0p iqumi/ aij kai\ th\n ai1sqhsin a0p oba/ l lei tw~n a9m artanome/nwn). But incontinence (a0krasi/ a), with the aid of reason, preserves its power of judgment intact yet by its passions, which are stronger than its reason, it is swept along against its judgment (tw~| me\n lo/g w sw|_zei th\n kri/s in o0rqh\n ou]san, tw~| de\ pa/q ei fe/retai para\ th\n kri/sin i0s xu/o nti tou~ lo/gou ma~l lon). That is why incontinence (a0 kolasi/a j) differs from intemperance, for in it reason is worsted by passion (h9tta~t ai tou~ pa/q ouj o9 logismo\j), whereas with intemperance reason does not even fight; in the case of incontinence reason argues against the desires (tai~j e0p iqumi/a ij) as it follows them, whereas with intemperance reason guides them and is their advocate; it is characteristic of intemperance that its reason shares joyfully in the sins committed, whereas with incontinence the reason shares in them, but with reluctance; with intemperance, reason is willingly (e9kw_n) swept along into shameful conduct, whereas with incontinence, it betrays honour unwillingly (a1kwn). (Virt. mor. 445d–e)96

Something like an Aristotelian distinction between a0kolasi/a and a0krasi/a is brought to bear here so that the reasoning faculty loses even the ability to perceive that it is doing wrong. This same position is clearly articulated by Galen: “I speak of reason joining forces (sunekqei~n) with an affection (tw~| pa/qei) when reason makes its opinions conform to the 96

So also Virt. 446b.

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demands of the affection (o3tan a3per e0kei~no prosta/ttei kai\ o9 logismo\j doca/zh|), as is the case with the self-indulgent (tw~n a0kola/stwn)” (Hip. et Plat. 4.2.39). Similarly, Philo warns that the mind in the prison house of the passions should try to remain a prisoner rather than join forces with its jailor, the passions (Deus 114–116).97 Plutarch’s discussion above seems clear-cut, but he later suggests that reason may retain some capacity to reflect on the wrongs it helps to commit. So, he distinguishes the akratic person from the person suffering from a0kolasi/a by attributing them different dramatic cries. His a0kolasth~j cries: “To eat, to drink, to have one’s way in love: all other things I call accessory” and “Leave me to die, for that is best for me” (Virt. mor. 445f– 446a). In contrast, the a0krath~j cries: “A mind I have, but nature forces me”; “Alas! From God this evil comes to men when, knowing what is good, they do it not”; and “The spirit yields and can resist no more, like anchor-hook in sand amid the surge” (Virt. mor. 446a).98 Whereas the cries of the a0krath~j display regret, the complaints of the a0kolasth=j also display some level of understanding. What else is the implication of “Leave me to die, for that is best for me!” than that the mind of the a0kolasth=j appreciates that its condition is bad and incurable such that it is better off dead? Discussions of a0kolasi/a usually depict the a0kolasth=j as paradigmatically or normatively immoral. They do not always agree, however, on precisely what conditions bring this about. This divergence is especially clear when it comes to the question of whether, or to what degree, the mind retains perception of the bad acts committed by the body and passions. Plato’s reasoning faculty is intrinsically reasonable and under no conditions can it be made to cooperate with passions and desires. Confusion and regret can still plausibly characterize reason in the worst imaginable situation. The Timaeus explains: Pleasures and pains in excess (u9p erballou/s aj) are the greatest of the soul’s diseases. For when a man is overjoyed or contrariwise suffering excessively from pain, being in haste to seize on the one and avoid the other beyond measure, he is unable either to see or to hear anything correctly, and he is at such a time distraught and wholly incapable of exercising reason (lutta=| de\ kai\ logismou~ metasxei= n h3kista to/t e dh\ dunato/j). (Tim. 86b–c)

Reason can only be inhibited from exercising its judgments, not from making them, but it becomes difficult to determine in what sense reason would function to reason when so confused. Plato might hold that regret and repentance come later, at a moment of relative calm within the soul, or 97 98

For a similar argument, see Philo, Conf. 21–22. Euripides, Frag. 841; Ovid, Metam. 7.21.

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that reason is tricked into preferring vice as a lesser evil.99 Later writers, though, may appeal to Aristotle’s analysis because they understand it as accommodating a clearer notion of reason’s disempowerment without implying that it threatens the ontological stability of the faculties. While in the texts introduced above Philo and Galen take something like the Aristotelian position on the nature of a0kolasi/a, elsewhere they attribute both regret and perception of self-contradiction to the mind in a similar state. In On the Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul’s Passions, discussed already, Galen explains the terrible plight of the a0kolasth=j: “For then, even if you should want to do so, you will not be able to hold it in check; then you will say what I heard a certain lover say – that you wish to stop but you cannot (e0qe/lein me\n pau/sasqai, mh\ du/nasqai de\) – then you will call on us for help but in vain, just as that man begged for someone to help him and to cut out his passion (pa/qoj e0kko/yai).”100 Similarly, Philo warns that the worst plight imaginable is for reason to cooperate with passions and desires (Deus 114–116), but elsewhere he attributes a significant level of self-understanding to extreme types. His exegesis of the tower of Babel repeatedly affirms that even the most wicked persons retain knowledge and understanding: “The punishments of God’s visitation may be thought to be hidden from our sight, but they are really well known. For all, however wicked, receive some general notions to the effect that their iniquity will not pass unseen by God, and that they cannot altogether evade the necessity of being brought to judgment” (Conf. 120). Under no conditions, Philo argues, do immoral persons fail to understand God’s judgment and truth. Both Philo and Galen are happy enough to attribute selfcontradiction to extreme types of immorality such as a0kolasi/a when it suits their interests in exhortation; this is best understood as a permissible variation that serves specific argumentative purposes rather than chaotic inconsistency. Especially in the case of Galen, one finds a systematic exposition of a0kolasi/a where he is concerned to refute the views of Chrysippus (Hip. et Plat. 4.2.39–44), but a mind that knows and regrets its contradiction in a less systematic context that makes direct exhortations aimed at emphasizing the terrors of this condition. 99

So, Alcinous:

If someone turns to vice, then, first of all he will not turn to it as to an evil, but on the assumption that it is a good; and if someone falls into vice, such a person must inevitably be deceived into imagining that he can by involving himself in some lesser evil divest himself of a greater one, and in this way he will come to it involuntarily. For it is impossible that one should turn to evil through wishing to possess it as such, without being actuated by the hope of some good or the fear of some greater evil. (Did. 31.1; trans. Dillon) 100

Kühn, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, 5.28–29; Harkins, Galen, 48.

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Thus construed, Paul is like writers such as Philo and Galen in appealing to the interior monologue of self-contradiction to depict extreme immorality because it suits his immediate argumentative needs in Romans. Like other writers, Paul depicts the mind imprisoned by passions and desires only able to bemoan the acts that it is powerless to stop. Rom 7:14– 25 never suggests that the condition is temporary or that the mind alone can free itself from this bondage to sin. The contradiction is normative and unrelenting; the cry “who will save me from this body of death?” expresses this very clearly.101 Reason has lost the battle and has become unable to do anything but bewail its plight from the prison house created by the passions. Law and Sin in Romans 7 Within the broader study of the law in Paul’s thought, the question of the generative interaction between law and sin has proved especially difficult. This instrumental relation arises in 7:5: “when we were in the flesh our sinful passions, aroused by the law, worked in our members to bear fruit to death” (o3te ga\r h]men e0n th=| sarki/, ta\ paqh/mata tw~n a9martiw~n ta\ dia\ tou~ no/mou e0nhrgei~to e0n toi~j me/lesin h9mw~n, ei0j to\ karpoforh=sai tw~| qana/tw|). The first part of the monologue goes on to elaborate on the relation, as the interlocutor asks, “Is the law then sin?” (o9 no/moj a9marti/a), to which a speaker responds, “Not at all!” (mh/ ge/noito), and then proceeds to explain how the law both makes known and exacerbates or incites sin. Though these verses appear to clarify, the explanation they offer has often troubled interpreters. In particular, scholars have struggled to provide historical contexts to make sense of the premise of 7:8 and 7:11 that sin “found an opportunity in the commandment” (a0formh\n de\ labou~sa dia\ th=j e0ntolh=j) and for holding this sin-engendering role together with the goodness of the law. As discussed previously, some scholars appeal to the notion that sin is a cosmological force powerful enough to co-opt the law of God, but others have related the law-sin interaction to the story of Adam. Scholars find support for such a reading in Gen 2–3, where God’s command not to eat from the tree of life could plausibly be under-

101

In Paul and the Stoics, 240, Engberg-Pedersen argues that Paul uses a0krasi/ a in Rom 7 to explain that the person under the law “risks sinning.” Yet, the phenomenon here is considerably more severe; self-contradiction is entirely normative, not occasional or even frequent. In addition, Engberg-Pedersen’s insistence that the problem depicted in 7:7–25 is “I centeredness” echoes Bultmann’s sin as self-reliance (Paul and the Stoics, 245). Some texts do speak very negatively of those who confuse human wisdom and God’s wisdom (see Plato, Laws 4.716a–b, 5.732a–b; Philo, Sacr. 54–57; Leg. 1.48–53; Migr. 134–138), but I see no reason to understand this as the problem here.

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stood as causing the very act that it condemns.102 Yet, the Genesis story supplies a more obvious proximate cause: it is the serpent that provokes the act, not the prohibition itself. Moreover, as Krister Stendahl and Werner George Kümmel have argued, Paul appears in his other letters to think quite highly of his moral rectitude before his conversion, and it is difficult to make sense of the statement “I was once alive apart from the law” as applying to a Jew at any time in life.103 Some have argued that Jewish readers understood God’s command not to eat of the tree of life as a law, but Markus Bockmuel has shown that even though much later Rabbinic texts sometimes refer to the command given to Adam as a law, they more frequently refer to the Noachide laws.104 The Noachide laws emphasize specific precepts such as against homicide and eating meat with blood in it, not eating from the tree of life. Further, though Gen 2–3 is read in a variety of ways in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, the transgression of Adam and Eve is not made central to discussions of human evil – at least not prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 C. E. – and there is little evidence even in later periods that Jewish writers understand God’s instructions to Adam as a law.105 As a result, the idea that Rom 7 represents, alludes to, or echoes Adam’s situation becomes a kind of floating theological premise that lacks historical contextualization. Taking Rom 7 as depicting soul-death contextualizes the problem of the law as an outgrowth of a more basic moral-psychological condition. On this reading, the problem of not being able to do the law in 7:7–13 becomes an exemplary case of the more general problem of 7:14–25, where the person cannot do anything they know to be good and just. It is argued in the next chapter that this condition can be even further relativized to the Gentiles given Paul’s claims in 1:18–32 about God’s punishment for idolatry. Yet in relation to Rom 7, discussions of extreme immorality among moral writers help to explain the logic of 7:7–13. This literature provides a 102

See Collins, “Origin of Evil,” 287–300; for other critiques, see the introduction, n. 13. For a creative but unpersuasive attempt to find an allusion to Adam and Eve as Gentiles, see Glen Holland, “The Self Against the Self in Romans 7.7–25,” in The Rhetorical Interpretation of Scripture: Essays from the 1996 Malibu Conference (ed. S. E. Porter and D. L. Stamps; JSNT supp. ser. 180; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999), 260–271. 103 Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” reprinted in Paul Among the Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 90; Kümmel, Römer 7 und die Bekehrung des Paulus (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1929; repr. Munich: Kaiser, 1974), 81. 104 Bockmuel, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 145–173. 105 For the view that this is just a commonsense explanation for human nature, see Luke Timothy Johnson, Reading Romans: A Literary and Theological Commentary (New York: Crossroad, 1997).

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framework for understanding the problem of contradiction itself as well as the inciting role of law as writers such as Plato, Polybius, and Seneca claim that in extreme cases of immorality positive interventions such as laws and punishments can inflame or incite further acts of wickedness and immorality. Rom 7:7 asks and answers questions about no/moj, but it quickly introduces the tenth commandment as a case in point: “Is the law then sin? Not at all! For I would not have known sin except through the law. I would not have known desire if the law had not said, ‘do not desire’” (o9 no/moj a9marti/a; mh\ ge/noito· a0lla\ th\n a9marti/an ou0k e1gnwn ei0 mh\ dia\ no/mou· th\n te ga\r e0piqumi/an ou0k h|1dein ei0 mh\ o9 no/moj e1legen· ou0k e0piqumh/seij). The example of the tenth commandment works well here because the LXX’s ou0k e0piqumh/seij can easily be exploited as a command about e0piqumi/a (desire). So, Philo and the author of 4 Maccabees (2.4–6) interpret the tenth commandment as encapsulating the law’s usefulness as a tool for controlling the passions.106 Philo writes: The last commandment is against covetousness or desire which he knew to be a subversive and insidious enemy. For all the passions of the soul which stir and shake it out of its proper nature and do not let it continue in sound health are hard to deal with, but desire is hardest of all (Teleutai~o n d’ e0p iqumei~ n a0 p agoreu/ei newteropoio\n kai\ e0p i/boulon th\n e0p iqumi/ an ei0dw& j. pa/nta me\n ga\ r ta\ yuxh=j pa/q h xalepa\, kinou~nta kai\ sei/o nta au0t h\n para\ fu/sin kai\ u9g iai/n ein ou0k e0 w ~nta, xalepw&taton d’ e0p iqumi/a). (Dec. 142)

In context, Philo uses this passage to set the stage for a Stoic-influenced discussion of the four types of passions in the soul that explains why e0piqumi/a is the root of all of them. What is most important for the analysis of Rom 7 is that Philo, like the author of 4 Maccabees, exploits the LXX translation to make the commandment relevant to his immediate argument about passions and desires. Similarly, in Rom 7:7–13, Paul does not appropriate the full commandment but rather strips it of its specificity so that it becomes a general prohibition against e0piqumi/a rather than desire for one’s neighbor’s house or wife. This way of construing the tenth commandment suggests that Paul means to address the law in this case principally as a tool for self-mastery, since e0piqumi/a is not infrequently made into the font or source of all other desires as in Philo.107 On these terms,

106

Stowers, Rereading Romans, 60–61; John A. Ziesler, “The Role of the Tenth Commandment in Romans 7,” JSNT 33 (1988): 41–56. Ziesler’s study is helpful but underappreciates the philosophical context of many of the texts he cites, especially those from Philo. 107 Ziesler, “Tenth Commandment,” 47; see, e.g., Philo, Spec. 4.84–94; Dec. 150, 173. See also L.A.E. 19.3; Apoc. Ab. 24.10.

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the commandment has a generalizing force in 7:7–13 as a prohibition of desire. The meaning of no/moj in Paul’s thought has historically been much debated. Scholars have attempted to distinguish different meanings of the term on the grounds that various subsets of law can be detected, such as that between moral and ritual law, the law generally versus the law as misused or misunderstood by some group, and the law of Moses versus the law of Christ; some have even claimed to have detected such nuances based on the presence or absence of the article.108 Yet as Heikki Räisänen shows, with the exception of a few instances in 7:21–25 and 8:2, the most basic meaning of no/moj is as “the whole of Israel’s most sacred tradition, with special emphasis on its Mosaic centre.”109 This definition does not settle the issue of precisely what the law means in any particular context, and, as Räisänen notes, the meaning in context does to some extent “oscillate.” Such an approach to no/moj avoids proliferating fine-grained distinctions in meaning as well as the problems created by taking no/moj as the Mosaic Torah in every case. Debates about how to understand no/moj in 7:21–25 and 8:2 provide a salient case in point. It was argued above that in the context of verses 14–25, the e3teron no//mon in verse 23 is a wordplay that looks back at the “principle” of self-contradiction in verses 14–25. Similarly, as Räisänen and others have argued, no/moj in 8:2 makes most sense understood as “principle” so that the verse develops the “principle of the pneu~ma of life in Christ.” In contrast, some have argued that no/moj should be taken as the “Torah of Christ” signaling a way of viewing the law positively within the new eschatological age.110 If Paul really intended “law of the spirit of life in Christ” to convey “Torah as experienced in the new age of Christ,” it would be difficult to detect such a shift in meaning from the immediate literary context. Though the subsequent verses state or imply that there is a subset of the no/moj that Christ has somehow fulfilled (implied with to\ ga\r a0du/naton tou~ no/mou in verse 3 and stated with dikai/wma tou~ no/mou in verse 4), the argument from 8:4 onward is more easily understood as construing the no/moj tou~ pneu~matoj as the new way of life made possible for those who have the indwelling pneu~ma. On these terms, the no/moj tou~ pneu~matoj th=j zwh=j e0n Xristw~| I)hsou~ of 8:2 points forward toward the life kata\ pneu~ma developed in verses 4–17. As in 7:22–23, the no/moj tou~ pneu~matoj is a wordplay that looks forward to the totally new way of life made possible by the divine pneu~ma. This also 108

See Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 16–18. Ibid., 16. 110 Hans Hübner, The Law in Paul’s Thought (repr. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 144–146; Dunn, Romans, 1.394–399. Cranfield, (Epistle to the Romans, 364–365), counts at least five types of law alluded to here. 109

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makes sense of the fact that Paul drops the positive language about no/moj after 8:2 and elaborates instead on the meaning of participation in Christ. The argument advanced previously about sin as representing the passions has a number of implications for understanding Paul’s statements about the law in Rom 7. Most prominently, it helps to explain why a discussion about failing to do the tenth commandment becomes an exposition about failing to put good intentions into action. Rom 7:7–13 focuses first on the law and then on the tenth commandment specifically, but verse 14 shifts to an extended discussion about wanting and doing good or evil rather than wanting and doing the law. So, verse 14 states, “we know that the law is pneumatic, but I am fleshly, sold as a slave under sin” (oi1damen ga\r o3ti o9 no/moj pneumatiko/j e0stin, e0gw_ de\ sarkino/j ei0mi peprame/noj u9po\ th\n a9marti/an), and the subsequent verses develop a long explanation of this fleshy state until the law reappears toward the end of the monologue: “I delight in the law of God in my inner person, but I see another law in my members making war with the law of my mind and making me a captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (sunh/domai ga/r tw~| no/mw| tou~ qeou~ kata\ to\n e1sw a1nqrwpon, ble/pw de\ e3teron no/mon e0n toi~j me/lesi/n mou a0ntistrateuo/menon tw~| no/mw| tou~ noo/j mou kai\ ai0xmalwti/zonta/ me e0n tw~| no/mw th=j a9marti/aj tw~| o1nti e0n toi~j me/lesi/n mou) (7:22–23). The development of the argument makes the problem of the law into a subset of a more general problem with not being able to effect good intentions and plans. Thus, the statement “the law is holy and the commandment is holy, just, and good” (o9 me\n no/moj a3gioj kai\ h9 e0ntolh\ a9gi/a kai\ dikai/a kai\ a0gaqh/) (7:12) sets up the transition in verse 14 to the issue of the good (to\ kalo\n, a0gaqo/n) and the person’s inability to do it. In this latter part of the monologue, the good that the person cannot do ceases to be the commandment and becomes the good abstractly; likewise, the problem ceases to be breaking the law and inflaming desire and becomes evil generally. On these terms, the monologue effectively transforms the question “What is the relation between law and sin?” into the question “How can this person escape the domination of the passions and do what they know to be good?” The law is very little in view in 7:14–25 because the argument integrates the problem of the law into the problem of extreme self-contradiction. If the analysis of sin as representing passions and desires has merit, then this explains 7:7– 25 as arguing that the law is not therapeutic for passions and desires because of a more fundamental set of problems with exceedingly strong passions. This way of understanding the relation between the argument about the law and the commandment in 7:7–13 and the argument in 7:14– 25 also lends support to views of Rom 7 as a defense of the law, since it

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relativizes the problem as the outgrowth of a more basic complex of moral issues. 111 While Rom 7:7–13 introduces the idea of not being able to do the law, 7:14–25 explains the problem of self-contradiction and ascribes it normative force. The moral traditions explored previously provide a context for understanding this larger problem in 7:14–25 as that of extreme selfcontradiction where the mind cannot put any of its good intentions into action. As discussed above, philosophers and moralists often use the dramatic cry attributed to Medea to develop competing analyses of mental conflict. The philosophers, however, appropriate the monologue for their own ends, and there is no necessary relation between Euripides’s play, the figure of Medea, or the interests and goals of the philosophers. Though philosophers often appeal to Medea’s cry, they also raise the same issues by appealing to other figures from tragedy and epic or to none at all. 112 Rom 7 elaborates on a tradition of using internal monologues to portray self-division, but the speaker in 7:7–25 should not be understood as Medea, and the condition it ascribes to itself is not the same as the one Medea usually typifies. Platonic interpretations of the Medean monologue, for example, hold that she is torn between reason and anger, an emotion of the qumo/j. In contrast, I have argued above that Rom 7 portrays a more extreme conflict between the appetites and reason, where the appetites totally dominate the mind. The speaker, in fact, describes selfcontradiction in at least eleven different ways. Rom 7:15 claims, “I do not know what I am doing” and in fact “I do that which I do not want to do, that which I hate”; in 7:16 the law is good – “if I do the thing which I do not want”; in 7:17, “I now understand that it is not me doing this [thing I hate], but the sin which dwells in me”; in 7:18, “I can wish to do the good but not do it”; in 7:19, “for I do not do the good that I want, but I do the evil that I do not want”; in 7:20, “if I do the thing that I do not want, it is no longer I that does it, but the sin that lives in me”; and finally in 7:21, “I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close by me.” The extreme nature of this plight explains why reason claims to be killed, imprisoned, enslaved, and held captive by sin, but this also creates a picture of self-contradiction as normative and unrelenting. The problem of self-contradiction explains the response to the law in Rom 7:7–13 inasmuch as the response to the tenth commandment can be construed as an instance of such contradiction. Read this way, 7:7–13 uses 111

Dunn, Romans, 1.377, and see his bibliography; with Räisänen, Paul and the Law,

16. 112 So, Epictetus (Diatr. 1.28.6–8) uses Medea, as well as Menelaus, Helen, Alexander the Great, Achilles, Patroclus, Agamemnon, and a number of tragic figures from the plays of Sophocles and Euripides.

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an exemplary case of contradiction to explain the more general problem developed in 7:14–25. This interpretation explains why the law and the commandment drop away after 7:7–13 as the discussion comes to focus on good and evil in the abstract. Yet, though extreme self-contradiction helps to make sense of the contradictory response to the law in 7:7–13, statements such as “our sinful passions were aroused by the law” (7:5) and “sin seized an opportunity (a0f ormh\n la/bousa) through the commandment” (7:8, 7:11) suggest that the law exacerbates sin. Self-contradiction renders this plausible insofar as the sanction of law can logically provoke contradictory responses. However, these verses also raise questions about how Paul concretely imagines the law as arousing sinful passions. While there are no exact analogues in ancient literature, Plato and other writers sometimes note that in special circumstances positive interventions meant to correct and heal, such as laws, teachings, and punishments, end up having the opposite effect. Though writers do not show a special interest in this phenomenon or the conditions that bring it about, it sometimes arises as one of many problems that extremely wicked persons have. As explored previously, Plato distinguishes among different types of desires within a single faculty.113 On this basis he differentiates between the democratic and the tyrannical man, as the latter is ruled by the very worst, lawless desires. So, his discussion of the tyrannical man begins: Some of our unnecessary pleasures and desires seem to me to be lawless. They are probably present in everyone, but they are held in check by the laws and by the better desires in alliance with reason. In a few people, they have been eliminated entirely or only a few week ones remain, while in others they are stronger and more numerous (kolazo/m enai de\ u9p o/ te tw~n no/m wn kai\ tw~n beltio/nwn e0p iqumiw~n meta\ lo/g ou e0ni/w n me\n a0nqrw&p wn h1 panta/p asin a)p alla/ttesqai h1 o)li/g ai lei/p esqai kai\ a0sqenei=j, tw~n de\ i0s xuro/t erai kai\ plei/o uj). “What desires do you mean?” Those that are awakened in sleep, when the rest of the soul – the rational, gentle, and ruling part – slumbers. Then the beastly and savage part, full of food and drink, casts off sleep and seeks to find a way to gratify itself. You know there is nothing it won’t dare to do at such a time, free of all control by shame or reason. It doesn’t shrink from trying to have sex with a mother, as it supposes, or with anyone else at all, whether man, god, or beast. It will commit any foul murder, and there is no food it refuses to eat. In a word, it omits no act of folly or shamelessness (ta\j peri\ to\n u(/p non, h]n d' e0g w/, e0g eirome/naj, o(/tan to\ me\n a)/llo th=j yuxh=j eu(/ dh|, o(/son logistiko\n kai\ h(/m eron kai\ a)/r xon e0kei/nou, to\ de\ qhriw~de/j te kai\ a)/g rion, h1 si/twn h1 me/q hj plhsqe/n, skirta=| te kai\ a0p wsa/m enon to\n u(/p non zhth=| i0e/ nai kai\ a0p opimpla/n ai ta\ au9t ou~ h)/q h: oi]sq' o(/ti pa/nta e0n tw~| toiou/t w| tolma=| poiei~n, w(j a)p o\ pa/shj lelume/non te kai\ a0p hllagme/non ai0sxu/nhj kai\ fronh/s ewj. mhtri/ te ga\r e0p ixeirei~n mei/g nusqai, w(j oi)/etai, ou)de\ n o0knei~, a)/l lw| te o9t w|o u=n a0nqrw&p wn kai\ qew~n kai\ qhri/w n, miaifonei~ n te o9t iou~n,

113 Plato ascribes the faculties their own pleasures and desires, e.g., Rep. 9.580d–587e. See Julia Annas (An Introduction to Plato’s Republic [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981], 131) on Plato’s anthropomorphic depiction of the appetites.

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brw&m ato/j te a0p e/xesqai mhdeno/j : kai\ e9ni\ lo/g w| ou)/t e a)noi/aj ou0de\n e0l lei/p ei ou)/t ' a0naisxunti/ aj). (Rep. 9.571b–d)

Here, the lawless desires are devious and rebellious forces that use the sleep of reason to their own advantage. The appetites go after any and all pleasures and are unchecked by any intervening considerations that reason, law, or social conventions might counsel.114 The text imagines the appetites as latent forces waiting for the right moment to strike but does not imply that sanctions incite the appetites to action. The conditions for this activation are rather the slumber of reason (to be avoided by properly rousing reason and encouraging appetite to slumber; see Rep. 9.571d– 572a) and the presence of a strong multitude of lawless desires. The person must first of all have strong, lawless appetites in contrast to persons whose reason, respect for laws, and better desires keep them in check. Such an appetitive disposition results from bad socialization and education, as these allow the appetites to become strong and reason weak. Elsewhere in the Republic and Laws, however, Plato explains that laws and even the activities of reason itself can exacerbate appetites in some cases. Book 8 of the Republic describes how the democratic person evolves into the tyrannical man. Plato explains that democratic persons, because of the weakness and softness of their souls, are irritated by any restraints or dictates a master might impose: To sum up: Do you notice how all these things together make the citizens’ souls so sensitive that, if anyone even puts upon himself the least degree of slavery, they become angry and cannot endure it. And in the end, as you know, they take no notice of laws, whether written or unwritten, in order to avoid having any master at all (w(j a9p alh\n th\n yuxh\n tw~n politw~n poiei~ w3ste ka1n o9t iou~n doulei/a j tij prosfe/rhtai, a)g anaktei=n kai\ mh\ a0n e/xesqai; teleutw~ ntej ga/ r pou oi]sq’ o3t i ou0de\ tw~n no/m wn fronti/zousin gegramme/nwn h1 a0g ra/fown, i3 na dh\ mhdamh|= mhdei\j au0t oi~j h|] despo/t hj). (Rep. 8.563d–e)

Such souls are sensitive because of the terrible disposition of passions and desires. This condition results from the rule of equality and freedom which on Plato’s argument leads the democratic person to treat all beliefs and desires as equal, whether good or evil. Plato explores a similar problem in the Laws in a way that strikingly resembles Rom 7 in that passions and desires cause the person to despise the dictates of reason while reason goes 114 Kathy Gaca argues that this text shows that the appetites particularly like forbidden or illicit pleasures, in The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 28. Plato’s point here seems rather to be that the appetites are unmoved by any intervening considerations and the examples given illustrate this resistance or unresponsiveness, not their goals. For the blindness of desires, see Annas, Plato’s Republic, 130– 132.

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on approving of what is good and just. So, Plato writes of ignorance in its greatest form (h9 megi/sth a0maqi/a): That which we see in the man who hates, instead of loving, what he judges to be noble and good, while he loves and cherishes what he judges to be evil and unjust (th\n o(/tan tw&| ti do/can kalo\n h1 a)g aqo\n ei]nai mh\ filh=| tou~to a0lla\ mish=|, to\ de\ ponhro\n kai\ a1dikon dokou=n ei] nai filh=| te kai\ a)spa/zhtai). That want of accord, on the part of the feelings of pain and pleasure, with the rational judgment is, I maintain, the extreme form of ignorance, and also the “greatest” because it belongs to the main mass of the soul, – for the part of the soul that feels pain and pleasure corresponds to the mass of the populace in the State. (Leg. 3.689a–b)

This text moves quickly from “the man” designating the actions and disposition of the person as a whole to a statement about the disposition of reason, “what he judges to be good and just.” Strictly speaking, though, the one who “loves what he should hate” and the one who judges “what is noble and good” are different parts of the same person. This makes sense because, on Plato’s theory, a person’s actions will be determined by whichever part of the soul dominates. Since passions dominate in this case, the person behaves badly and hates what their reason recognizes as best. The argument here simply elaborates on basic premises of the Platonic theory. This elaboration comes out above as the text defines this greatest form of ignorance as a contradiction between the rational judgment and “the main mass of the soul,” a gloss for the appetites. The text continues: So whenever this part [the appetites or the masses of the city] opposes what are by nature the ruling principles – knowledge, opinion, or reason – this condition I call folly (a1noian), whether it be in a state, when the masses disobey the rulers and the laws, or in an individual when the noble elements of reason existing in the soul produce no good effect, but quite the contrary (o9p o/t an kaloi\ e0n yuxh=| lo/g oi e0no/ntej mhde\n poiw~sin ple/o n, a0 lla\ dh\ tou/t oij pa~ n tou0n anti/o n). (Leg. 3.689b)

The text further elucidates the state of the soul in the person (as a whole) who “loves what he should hate” as a state where desires oppose reason so effectively that “the noble element of reason” cannot put its good judgments into action. This text also suggests that reason’s efforts may make matters worse, but the brief comment that reason cannot put its judgment into action, “but quite the contrary” (a0lla\ dh\ tou/toij pa~n tou0nanti/on), only hints at this. The discussion in the Laws probably draws on a relatively common idea that extremely wicked persons are inflamed by attempts to correct them by instruction, punishment, or various other types of intervention. So, Josephus writes of God’s punishment of Cain, “His punishment, however, far from being taken as a warning (ou0k e0pi\ nouqesi/a| de\ th\n ko/lasin e1laben) only served to increase his vice (au0ch/sei th=j kaki/aj). He indulged in every bodily pleasure (h9donh\n me\n pa=san e0kpori/zwn au0tou=

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tw~| sw&mati), even if it entailed outraging his companions” (Ant. 1.60). Josephus casts God’s punishment as an attempt to reform passions and vices that ultimately incites further acts of wickedness. Similarly, Polybius develops this more directly as he attempts to justify the Athenian slaughter of the Carthaginians: In the case of ulcers, if we treat them, they are sometimes inflamed by the treatment itself and spread more rapidly, while again if we neglect them they continue, in virtue of their own nature, to eat into the flesh and never rest until they have utterly destroyed the tissue beneath. Similarly such malignant lividities and putrid ulcers often grow in the human soul (tai~j te yuxai~j paraplhsi/w j toiau~t ai polla/kij e0p ifu/o ntai melani/a i kai\ shpedo/nej), that no beast becomes at the end more wicked and cruel than man. (Hist. 1.81)

In those whose moral condition is very extreme, interventions are not only ineffective but also actively harmful. So, Polybius emphasizes: In the case of men in such a state, if we treat the disease by pardon and kindness, they think we are scheming to betray them or deceive them, and become more mistrustful and hostile to their would-be benefactors (a)p isto/t eroi kai\ dusmene/steroi gi/nontai pro\j tou\j filanqrwpou~ntaj), but if, on the contrary, we attempt to cure the evil by retaliation they work up their passions to outrival ours, until there is nothing so abominable or atrocious that they will not consent to do it, imagining all the while that they are displaying a fine courage (diamillw&m enoi toi~j qumoi~j ou0k e1s ti ti tw~n a)p eirhme/nwn h1 deinw~n o9p oi=o n ou0k a0n ade/ xontai, su\n kalw~| tiqe/m enoi th\n toiau/t hn to/lman). (Hist. 1.81)

Every attempt at intervention inflames the passions further. Similarly, Seneca advises care in the application of laws and penalties, because these can serve to incite the very acts they condemn: You will notice, besides, that the sins repeatedly punished are the sins repeatedly committed. Your father within five years had more men sewed up in the sack [punishment for parricide; cf. 1.15.7] than, by all accounts, there had been victims of the sack throughout all time. Children ventured much less often to incur the supreme sin (nefas) so long as the crime lay outside of the pale of the law. For by supreme wisdom the men of highest distinction and of the deepest insight into the ways of nature (rerum naturae) chose rather to ignore the outrage as one incredible and passing the bounds of boldness, than by punishing it to point out the possibility of its being done; and so the crime of parricide began with the law against it (cum lege coeperunt), and punishment showed children the way to the deed (et illis facinus poena monstravit); filial piety was truly at its lowest ebb after the sack became a more common sight than the cross. In the state in which men are rarely punished a sympathy for uprightness is formed, and encouragement is given to this virtue as to a common good. (Clem. 1.23)

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This text develops the case of parricide as one instance of the general problem of overlegislating. The claim that “the punishment showed children the way to the deed” probably overstates Seneca’s case but this perhaps makes sense as rhetorical amplification. Considered together, the above texts provide very different types of arguments about extremely immoral persons and their responses to interventions. Plato and Polybius warn that in extremely bad cases any intervention – whether sanction or kindness – will only incite further terrible acts of violence and immorality. Josephus implies this in the case of Cain but does not articulate it directly. Seneca does not provide an analysis of the moral condition that produces the bad response to law, but his diatribes against the immorality of the masses elsewhere suggests that the response arises because of the general degeneracy of the masses. Similarly, though Plato does not pause to develop the point that knowledge, opinion, and reason bring about the opposite of the intended result, it is a logical extrapolation of his moral psychology. An understanding of the appetites as ferocious, manipulative, and devious desires suggests that they are capable of using reason’s functions against itself, but there is no worked-out explanation of precisely how this happens in the soul. Does the mind evaluate something as good, develop a plan to get it, and somewhere along the way get attacked by the terrible appetites? Does recognition of what is good and just provide a special opportunity for the appetites? Do the appetites deceive the mind into thinking that it pursues the good, when really it pursues evil? Plato offers no specific answer in this context, but elsewhere he suggests that the lower faculties either create enough confusion to render reason inoperative or permit reason only an impotent recognition and disgust. Though the Timaeus (Tim. 86b–c) claims that reason becomes clouded and confused, the Republic and Laws develop cases of what is sometimes termed “hard” a0krasi/a, where reason is capable of reflection on its bad acts. So, in the Republic, Leontus is unable to resist his desires for corpses and rushes toward them, crying “Look for yourselves, you evil wretches, take your fill of the beautiful sight!” (Rep. 4.440a). This cry addresses Leontus’s own passions as “evil wretches” and articulates the perspective of his reason even though its protests are impotent. Platonic moral psychology provides a context for understanding Paul’s argument that the law aroused sinful passions (7:5; cf. 5:20), that “sin found an opportunity in the commandment and worked in me all kinds of desires” (a0formh\n de\ labou~sa h9 a9marti/a dia\ th=j e0ntolh=j kateirga/sato e0n e0moi\ pa~san e0piqumi/an) (7:8), and that through the commandment sin “deceived and killed me” (7:11). Moral discourse also explains the language about incitement, deception, and domination by the passions. Plato writes of the appetites’ waking up during the sleep of rea-

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son, Plutarch personifies them as vice that “sets every desire stirring” and has the “power to stir up the activity of the emotional [faculties]” (Virt. vit. 101a), and Philo often appeals to the Platonic language of rest and motion to explain the activation of different faculties.115 Philo writes, “The place where vice is located serves as the initial starting-point to the fool (a0rxh\ ga\r kai\ a0formh\ fau/lw|) for those activities (e0nergei/aj) which defy nature” (Conf. 68).116 Philo also uses the term a0formh/ in moralpsychological contexts that bear on Rom 7. So, he refers to the soul’s potentialities (a0f ormai/) for wisdom (Prob. 70–71) and explains how sight (the better of the senses) may help reason: “And the understanding (dia/noian) affected in like manner is not quiescent (ou0k h0remei=), but, unsleeping and constantly in motion as it is, takes the sight as the startingpoint (ta\j a0f orma\j labou=sa) for its power of observing the things of the mind, and proceeds to investigate whether these phenomena are uncreated or had some beginning of creation” (De Abr. 162). Here, intelligence (dia/noia) becomes active, rather than the passions, sin, or vice, but the capacities for activation, motion, and quietude are attributed to all the soul’s faculties.

III. Conclusions I have argued that Platonic moral psychology accommodates the idea that in some very wicked persons the goodness of reason or law may induce bad acts. Yet, this does not explain why Paul develops this argument in the literary and argumentative context of Romans. The simplest explanation may be that Paul is concerned to argue that the law serves God’s different purposes for Jews and Gentiles. Instead of simply arguing that the law is not therapeutic for Gentile immorality, he insists that God meant for the law to illuminate, increase, and condemn Gentile sins. Such an argument would fit with a view of the end-time scenario as requiring an apocalyptic level of sinfulness and also make the law a purposive intervention on the part of God in relation to Gentiles as well as Jews.117 Viewed in this light, 115

See the discussion in Rep. 9.583c on “quietude” (h9suki/ a), which is not a resting state of vice or virtue, as in Philo, but rather a midway point between them that can become either. Cf. Crat. 415b. 116 Cf. “Now all who have wandered away from virtue and accepted the starting points (a0formai=j) of folly, find and dwell in a most suitable place, a place which in the Hebrew tongue is called Shinar and in our own ‘shaking out’” (Conf. 68); cf. Tim. 88a–b. 117 See Stowers, Rereading Romans, 178. On filling up the measure of Gentile sin and iniquity, see Gen 15:16; Jubilees 14.16; Dan 8:19, 11:36. Some Jewish texts also construe God’s gracious gifts to the Israelites as punishments for Gentiles, as the Wisdom of Solomon interprets certain exodus narratives: “For through the very things by which their

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the arguments about the law result from the overlap and homology between the moral-psychological and the eschatological aspects of Paul’s thought. This chapter has treated the Platonic assumptions, images, and metaphors operative in Rom 7 with the purpose of better explaining the argument of the text. It was argued that Paul, like a range of his contemporaries, uses a Platonic model of the soul locked in a struggle between reason and emotions, higher and lower faculties, virtue and vice. As one might expect, Rom 7 does not manifest a theology of sin developed much later in fierce battles over sin and the human capacity for goodness, though this text is used in these battles to great effect. Similarly, the text does not reveal a concept of the modern self-reflective, self-legislating, basically stable self cut off from the world of objects as it did for Bultmann. Instead, Rom 7 manifests a rational or reasoning part of the person consistent with a middle-Platonic discourse alive in Paul’s day. By construing Rom 7 as appropriating a Platonic discourse, I have sought to clarify the terms on which Paul may be understood as appropriating from a distinctive tradition, whether consciously or unconsciously. I contend that Paul is like other writers who make use of different discourses and traditions and exploit points of homology and congruence among them. This notion of discourse can allow for a more subtle analysis of the use of intellectual traditions, ideas, and language in making arguments. The alternative might be to speak of Paul ‘getting’ an idea from a Jewish text or a set of Greek writings, as if he were at a grocery store assembling ingredients for a new recipe. Such formulations posit a high level of conscious reflection and choice and construe intellectual traditions as substantial entities that are synthesized and combined to produce a new substantial thing: Pauline theology. As an alternative, I view these texts as occasional, evental productions of a fluid, changing, and unfolding set of intellectual discourses that are sustained only to the degree that persons find them useful and so appropriate, change, and reproduce them. This approach also presumes that creative elaboration on shared premises is an ordinary feature of linguistic expression. Though I have sought to show how Rom 7 presupposes a certain set of assumptions about the nature of the soul, my aim has not been to focus on similarities to the exclusion of differences. Rather, I have found certain similarities that scholarly tradition has long denied and developed an explanation for those similarities. If, as I have argued, Rom 7 presumes and elaborates on the Platonic divided soul, then it will have to be shown how this elaboration serves a broader set of interests and arguments about judgment, the law, Christ’s death, and the moral enemies were punished, they themselves received benefit in their need” (Wis 11:5); cf. Wis 11:13, 18:8.

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histories of particular peoples. However, creativity in appropriating Platonism should not be confused with substantively altering it to create something supposedly new. Paul is not radical or sui generis with respect to his use of Platonism in Rom 7.

Chapter 3

The Life and Death of the Soul in Romans 1–8 The previous chapter developed an interpretation of Romans 7:7–25 as a depiction of the death of the soul. Understanding the monologue in terms of a certain moral-psychological condition explains many difficult aspects of the text, especially the death of the speaker and the self-contradiction that results from it. This chapter situates this reading of Rom 7 within the developing argument of the letter. It is argued that Rom 7 brings together aspects of Paul’s broader arguments about the passions and immorality in Rom 1–8, especially 1:18–32 and chapters 6–8. Moral discourse about passions and desires illuminates a number of features of chapters 1–8 and Platonic assumptions in particular help to explain certain difficult aspects of Rom 6–8. The reading developed here is outlined as follows. Rom 1:18–32 justifies the enslavement to passions and a base mind as God’s punishment for idolatry, and this condition informs the argument of chapters 2–8 in at least three basic ways. First, the condition explains why persons enslaved to passions will be condemned at the final judgment since they are generally, though not uniformly, extremely wicked (2:14–16 as exceptional). Second, Rom 6 and 8 treat God’s intervention with Christ as restoring this lost capacity for self-control and reversing the punishment of 1:18–32. Though I cannot fully treat the mechanism by which this happens, an invasion of pneu~ma (breath/spirit), the language of chapters 6 and 8 develops this new state as a kind of renewal that allows for self-control. The arguments here seem to assume that selfcontrol is a necessary condition for obedience to God. This analysis explains exhortations such as “do not let sin rule in your mortal body to make you obey its passions” (mh\ ou]n basileue/tw h9 a9marti/a e0n tw|~ qnhtw~| u9mw~n sw&mati ei0j to\ u9pakou&ein tai~j e0piqumi/aij au0tou~) (6:12) and “but if with the pneu~ma you put to death the doings of the body, you will live” (ei0 de\ pneu/mati ta\j pra/ceij tou~ sw&matoj qanatou~te zh/sesqe) (8:13) as moral exhortations to fight against the passions. Finally, a Platonic understanding of the soul obviates the supposed problem of the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’, or the ‘indicative’ and the ‘imperative’. Scholars have often noted a seeming contradiction between already or indicative statements such as “we have died to sin” (6:2) and the not yet or imperative statements such as “do not let sin rule in your mortal bodies” (6:12)

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that warn of sin’s continued threat. Such seeming contradictions disappear when understood in light of the struggle and conflict in the divided Platonic soul where passions and appetites always threaten reason so long as the soul is embodied.

I. Extreme Immorality in Rom 1:18–32 Rom 1:18–32 tells a story about idolatry in a way that is overwhelmingly concerned with what is happening at the mental level.1 Paul does not simply claim that idolaters worship idols and are punished, but rather fashions virtually every aspect of this disobedience and God’s punishment for it around the dispositions of hearts and minds. The role of mental dispositions comes out in the language of impaired reasonings (e0mataiw&qhsan e0n toi~j dialogismoi~j), darkened hearts (e0skoti/sqh h9 a0su/netoj au0tw~n kardi/a), passions and desires (e0piqumi/aij, pa/qh, o0re/cei), and a base mind (a0do/kimon nou~n). In connection with this focus on mental functions and malfunctions, the text consistently returns to questions of truth and knowledge. So, 1:18 directs God’s wrath against those who “suppress the truth by their wickedness” (tw~n th\n a0lh/qeian e0n a0diki/a| katexo/ntwn); in 1:19 “knowledge of God is manifest to them because God has shown it to them” (to\ gnwsto\n tou~ qeou~ fanero/n e0stin e0n au0toi~j· o9 qeo\j ga\r au0toi~j e0fane/rwsen); verse 22 declares, “claiming to be wise, they became fools” (fa/skontej ei]nai sofoi\ e0mwra/nqhsan); and 25 explains the basic error as “exchanging the truth about God for a lie” (meth/llacan th\n a0lh/qeian tou~ qeou~ e0n tw~| yeu/dei). Paul here renders Jewish traditions about idolatry as a series of intellectual mistakes having to do with knowledge and truth about God. Given the consistent focus on intellectual interests, it is not surprising that dispositions of mind should also figure prominently, since these are what allow for the perception of truth, knowledge, and judgments of all kinds. In this light, it makes sense that 1:18–23 connects errors of judgment about God with darkened minds and impaired reasonings. As argued below, this description also fits with God’s punishment in handing over the idolaters to passions and desires in 1:24–32. Though intellectual interests and mental states play a central role in 1:18–32, it is not always clear precisely how the idolaters’ original mistake relates to their mental capacities. Verses 19–20 seem to make the availability of truth and knowledge about God a condition for the idolaters’ accountability: 1 My analysis complements Stanley Stowers’s work on self-mastery and the hortatory use of decline narratives in Rom 1:18–32 (A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994], 8–88).

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Knowledge of God is clear to them, for God made it clear to them. His invisible aspects, namely, his eternal power and divinity have been clearly understood since the creation of the cosmos through the things [he] made, so that they are without excuse (dio/t i to\ gnwsto\n tou~ qeou~ fanero/n e0stin e0n au0t oi~j : o9 qeo\j ga\r au0t oi~j e0f ane/rwsen. ta\ ga\r a0o 5rata au0t ou~ a0p o\ kti/sewj ko/smou toi~j poih/m asin noou/m ena kaqora~tai, h3 te a0i5 dioj au0t ou~ du/n amij kai\ qeio/t hj ei0j to\ ei] nai au0t ou\j a0n apologh/t ouj).

Here it seems that the idolaters clearly perceived the truth and knowledge about God, but verse 21 introduces some potential ambiguity: “Therefore although they knew God they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but they were made stupid in their reasonings and their senseless hearts were darkened” (dio/ti gno/ntej to\n qeo\n ou0x w(j qeo\n e0do/casan h1 hu0xari/sthsan a0ll’ e0mataiw&qhsan e0n toi~j dialogismoi~j au0tw~n kai\ e0skoti/sqh h9 a0su/netoj au0tw~n kardi/a) (1:21). Does Paul here envision the darkening of the minds as a consequence of God’s punishment or as a cause of their initial misrecognition? The ambiguity surrounds whether or not verse 21 implies that bad reasonings are a cause or a consequence of the failure to properly revere God. Given the emphasis on the responsibility of the idolaters (ei0j to\ ei]nai au0tou_j a0napologh/touj) and the claim that they did know God in 1:19–21, it makes most sense to understand the line of argument in 1:18–23 as requiring an initial state of clear perception of God, a turning away from this truth, and a darkening of the minds that follows as a consequence of their failure to worship God. On this approach, God’s punishments in 1:24, 26, and 28 either elaborate on the basic transaction implicit in 1:21 (that the idolaters become stupid) or they exacerbate a condition that has already set in. The alternative, that the idolaters are impaired to begin with, would also undermine the emphasis on accountability and God’s just punishment that runs through nearly every verse of the text. Alternately, Paul could also construe this choice not to worship the one true God as itself a kind of faulty reasoning that indicates a growing foolishness and stupidity. Though such a reading undermines the emphasis on the justice and fairness of God’s response in certain ways, it could still work together with 1:24–32 if vice and immorality simply escalate as a result of God’s handing idolaters over to passions and desires. In any case, though both interpretations are plausible, it makes most sense to take the statement “although they knew God they did not honor him or give thanks” in verse 21 as positing a clear initial grasp of the truth about God and a betrayal of that truth by turning to idols. Interpreters have often attempted to implicate all humanity in 1:18–32 by finding the story of Adam’s fall or an allusion to the golden calf.2 As an 2 For unpersuasive attempts to argue that 1:18–32 alludes to the fall, see James D. G. Dunn, Romans (Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1988), 1.53; Morna Hooker, “Adam in Romans 1,” NTS 6 (1959–1960): 297–306; “Further Note on Romans 1,” NTS 13 (1967): 181–183; A. J. M. Wedderburn, “Adam in Paul’s Letter to the Romans,” Studia Biblica 3 (1978): 413–

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alternative, some scholars have found 1:18 to announce a universal condemnation, as Thomas Tobin, who argues that this broader statement about God’s wrath indicates that Paul has both Jews and Gentiles in mind.3 Read in context, however, it is nearly impossible to equate the substance of 1:19–32 with anything but Gentile idolatry, a point that Tobin himself makes. Whatever Paul does or does not hold about the status of wickedness in some abstract or universal sense (presumably, he would view it as bad), he elaborates on the more general claim in 1:18 from verse 19 onward so that it applies explicitly to Gentile idolaters. Thus, the truth in question becomes th\n a0lh/qeian tou~ qeou~ (1:25), and its suppression involves turning to images of men, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles. Jewish and Gentile listeners would doubtless have read themselves and others into the story in a wide variety of ways, but given the virtually limitless possibilities for such interpretation and reinterpretation it makes more sense to focus on the most explicit interests and arguments of the text.4 The explicit story of 1:18–32 is that God’s wrath is directed at Gentile idolaters who “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (meth/llacan th\n a0lh/qeian tou~ qeou~ e0n tw~| yeu/dei) (1:25). Rom 1:18–23 develops Jewish traditions about idolatry in distinctively intellectual terms in its focus on truth, knowledge, and dispositions of mind. In this the text shares at least some of the interests of writers such as Philo and the unknown author of the Wisdom of Solomon.5 Discussions of idolatry in Wisdom and Philo interweave an intellectualizing construal of 430. In contrast, both Joseph Fitzmyer (Romans: A New Translation and Commentary [New York: Doubleday, 1993], 274) and Stowers (Rereading Romans, 86–89) persuasively argue that it is impossible to connect the fall literature with Rom 1 without conceptual gymnastics; so also Tobin, “Controversy and Continuity in Romans 1:18–3:20,” CBQ 55 (1993): 298–319. Dale B. Martin (“Heterosexism and the Interpretation of Romans 1:18–32,” Interpretation 3 [1995]: 335) also points out that even the later Rabbinic sources never attribute the origins of idolatry to Adam, but rather to Kenan, Enosh, or the generations of Enosh. Fitzmyer (Romans, 283) does find an allusion to the golden calf episode by appealing to Ps 106:20, which in turn alludes to Exod 32, but these texts do not support his proposal, as Ps 106 discusses the Israelites’ glory, not God’s glory. If Paul wanted to allude to the disobedience of the Israelites here, the golden calf episode would be an odd way to do so, because in this story some Israelites go astray and are immediately punished. This is not, I take it, the story of Rom 1:18–32, and four-footed animals here are a general class that appears along with humans, reptiles, and birds. Further, when Paul does address wicked Jews in Rom 9–11, he appeals regularly to Biblical traditions by quoting them directly. 3 Tobin, Paul’s Rhetoric in Its Contexts: The Argument of Romans (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004), 108–110. 4 See Stowers, Rereading Romans, 21–29. 5 David Winston (The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [New York: Doubleday, 1979]) has shown that the text of Wisdom as a whole heavily appropriates ancient philosophy and likely shares at least some common traditions with Philo if not a more direct literary relation.

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idolatry with other traditions of critique. So Wisdom 11 justifies God’s punishment of the Egyptians: In repayment for their wicked and witless reasoning, by which they were misled into worshipping brute reptiles and worthless beasts, you sent against them a swarm of creatures devoid of reasoning; that they might know that by those things through which a man sins, through them he is punished (a0nti\ de\ logismw~n a0sune/twn a0d iki/aj au0tw~n, e0n oi[j planhqe/ntej e0q rh/skeuon a1 loga e9rpeta\ kai\ knw&dala eu0telh=| e0p ape/steilaj au0t oi~j plh=q oj a0 lo/g wn zw~|w n ei0j e0k di/ khsin, i3n a gnw~sin o3ti, di’ w{n tij a9m arta/nei, dia\ tou&t wn kola/ zetai). (Wis 11:15–16)6

Here bad reasoning leads to idolatry and God punishes accordingly with the very beasts worshipped. Similarly, the extended discussion about idolatry that occupies Wis 13–15 opens with a critique of those who deify nature instead of its creator: Born to mindlessness were all those who were [inherently] ignorant of God, and unable to perceive the Existent One from visible goods, nor recognize the Artificer, though intent on his works (ma/taioi me\n ga\r pa/ntej a1 nqrwpoi fu/sei, oi[j parh=n qeou~ a0g nwsi/a kai\ e0k tw~n o9rwme/nwn a0g aqw~n ou0k i1s xusan ei0 de/n ai to\n o1nta ou1t e toi~j e1rgoij prose/ xontej e0p e/g nwsan to\ n texni/thn). (Wis 13:1)

This text charges idolaters with impaired reasonings, as they are ma/taioi and afflicted with a0gnwsi/a and so cannot perceive or know God (ei0de/nai, e0pe/gnwsan) in his creation.7 This intellectualizing approach to idolatry makes sense in light of basic themes and interests of the text. For instance, chapter 1 of Wisdom opens with exhortations about mind, knowledge, and wisdom, such as “devious thoughts cut men off from God” (1:3) and to the effect that God is the “real guardian of his [the human being’s] mind” (1:6). In ways that are both similar and different, Philo intellectualizes idolatry in certain parts of his long discussion in On the Decalogue (52– 75). For instance, he writes: For these idolators cut away the most excellent support of the soul, the rightful conception of the ever-living God. Like boats without ballasts they are for ever tossed and carried about hither and thither, never able to come to harbour or to rest securely in the roadstead of truth, blind to the one thing worthy of contemplation, which alone demands keen sighted vision. (Dec. 67)

Turning away from the correct way of understanding God cuts away the mind’s grasp on truth, and this has a profoundly destructive effect on the soul. This discussion differs in important ways from that of Wisdom and Rom 1, but Philo construes God as embodying the ultimate form of knowledge and truth and casts the failure to understand this as a failure of mind. There are many important differences in the language and arguments that 6 7

Trans. Winston. Cf. Philo, Dec. 59–60.

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these texts marshal, but they share distinctively intellectual interests in questions of knowledge, truth, and states of mind. At Rom 1:24 the discussion shifts from idolatry to a long description of God’s punishment. As Jouette Bassler and others have shown, each repetition of the transaction ‘idolaters did X, so God did Y’ follows a pattern of measure-for-measure punishment.8 Because idolaters exchange God’s glory (do/can) for the worship of idols, God causes them to dishonor (a0tima/zesqai) their bodies; those who exchange (meth/llacan) the truth about God for a lie then exchange (meth/llacan) natural for unnatural sexual relations; in verse 28 those who do not approve (e0doki/masan) knowledge of God get a base (a0do/kimon) mind. In the last two instances Paul uses wordplays to emphasize these as punishments in kind.9 Each punishment also results in the escalation of vice and immorality in which passions and desires play a pivotal role. Paul explains three times in the space of six verses that idolatrous disobedience justifies God’s handing over (pare/dwken) idolaters to passions and a base mind. So 1:24 explains, “therefore, God handed them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity with the result that they dishonored their bodies among themselves” (dio\ pare/dwken au0tou_j o9 qeo\j e0n tai~j e0piqumi/aij tw~n kardiw~n au0tw~n ei0j a0kaqarsi/an tou~ a0tima/zesqai ta\ sw&mata au0tw~n e0n au0toi~j); the following verses reiterate this sequence of events: “for this reason God handed them over to dishonorable passions, and their females exchanged natural relations for those that are unnatural, and likewise their males left off natural relations with females and burned with their desires for one another” (dia\ tou~to pare/dwken au0tou_j o9 qeo\j ei0j pa/qh a0timi/aj ai3 te ga\r qh/leiai au0tw~n meth/llacan th\n fusikh\n xrh=sin ei0j th\n para\ fu/sin, o9moi/wj te kai\ oi9 a1rsenej a0fe/ntej th\n fusikh\n xrh=sin th=j qhlei/aj e0cekau/qhsan e0n th=| o0re/cei au0tw~n ei0j a0llh/louj) (1:26–27), and “because they did not see fit to recognize God, he handed them over to a base mind” (kai\ kaqw_j ou0k e0doki/masan to\n qeo\n e1xein e0n e0pignw&sei, pare/dwken au0tou_j o9 qeo\j ei0j a0do/kimon nou~n) (1:28). Rom 1:24–27 exhausts the language of the passions in the space of four verses, as God gives up idolaters to e0piqumi/aij in 24, to pa/qh in 26, and in verse 27 they burn with o0re/cei.10 8 Bassler, Divine Impartiality: Paul and a Theological Axiom (Chico, Calif.: Scholars, 1982), 128–134. 9 Bassler (Impartiality, 129) follows Hooker (“Further Note on Romans 1,” 181–183) in taking God’s do/ca as the opposite of a0timi/a, as in 1 Cor 11:14–15, 15:43, and 2 Cor 6:8. 10 The division between appetites (e0p iqumi/a) and passions (pa/q h) is canonized by Plato (Rep. 9.588c–591b; Tim. 69c–71d) as belonging to the appetitive and spirited parts of the soul, whereas Aristotle uses the term o1recij. Plato’s distinction is inconsistently applied by others, as writers emphasize the difference between the appetites and passions

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The semantic range of paradi/dwmi in classical and Hellenistic usage encompasses a variety of transactions, from handing something over like a letter or transmitting teachings (as in Rom 6:17) to military and political transfers like handing over persons to a guard or a whole people to a foreign military power. This verb is also used in juridical contexts for handing over someone for indictment or a slave to torture.11 Elsewhere Paul uses verbs such as basileu/w and kurieu/w for the rule of sin and “its passions” (6:12–14) and this fits with the use of paradi/dwmi in Rom 1 to convey a handing over to the rule of passions and desires, and also fits with the developing argument about vice and immorality.12 First, when the verb is applied to persons it typically conveys a transfer of those subject to rule (as a slave, prisoner, or city) from one domain of rule to another. Second, moral-psychological discourse explored previously makes broad use of analogies relating to political and military power to convey the workings of the passions. Such metaphors and analogies are often, though not exclusively, associated with Platonic views of the soul as a composite of warring factions vying for power. Third, taking the verb as conveying a handing over to the rule of passions explains why vice and immorality escalate, since this is just what passions do when they dominate.13 In other

in some contexts, and in other contexts subsume them into a single category, the irrational passions. On this, see John Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 80 BC to 220 AD (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), 102, 174–175. Platonic distinctions in terminology do not hold for the Stoics, but they often use the language of o1recij and pa/q oj. For a summary of terms for emotions, see Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 319, n. 4. 11 On handing over to a guard, see Plutarch, Arat. 7; Herodotus, Hist. 2.159; to hand over a whole city into the hands of another, see Hist. 3.149, 5.37; hostages to an enemy, Hist. 1.45, 3.13. The LSJ suggests the translation “deliver up, surrender” or, in cases where political treachery is indicated, even “betray,” as in Pausanius, Descr. 1.2.1; for handing over a slave to be tortured, Isocrates, Trapez. 17.15. For moral-psychological contexts, see, e.g., Plato’s Phaedr. 250e–251a for one who “gives himself up to pleasure (a0ll’ h9 donh=| paradou_ j) and like a beast proceeds to lust and begetting; he makes license his companion and is not afraid or ashamed to pursue pleasure in violation of nature”; see also Philo, Conf. 144. 12 See Stowers’s (Rereading Romans, 281) discussion to the same effect on pipra/skw in Rom 7:14 and paradi/ dwmi in Rom 1; see also C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979), 1.357. 13 Dunn (Romans, 1.62) finds a resonance here with the Israelites’ disobedience in the wilderness in Num 11:31–35 as told in Ps 78 [LXX 77]: 29. Yet, in Ps 78 God gives the Israelites their desires: th\n e0p iqumi/ an au0tw~n e1 dwken au0t oi~j (if one accepts the reading of Sinaiticus of e1dwken for h1negken). Desire is the direct object of the verb because in this context God gives them food to satisfy their hunger. Ps 106 [105]: 14–15, like Psalm 78, similarly speaks of God giving the Israelites what they want just before punishing them. The story of Rom 1:18–32, in contrast, is about giving a whole people over

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words, according to the logic of moral discourse explored in chapter 1, persons transferred to the rule of passions and desires should become horribly wicked and vicious, and this is precisely what happens in 1:24–32. This explains why a discussion that begins by highlighting sexual deviance soon encompasses a long list of vices from gossiping to dishonoring parents to murder. Though Paul’s text foregrounds sexual sin, as do Jewish writings like Wisdom and the third Sibylline Oracle, the simplest explanation for the logic of the argument as a whole is that Paul shares the assumption that passions cause vices and wickedness so that the domination of passions leads to every imaginable type of vice. Finally, this approach also explains the language of unfit mind (a0do/kimon nou~n) in 1:28 as a different perspective on the same set of problems, as the threat of strong passions and desires is that they inhibit and impair the functions of mind. Thus, a0do/kimon nou~n follows the pattern of 1:24 and 1:26: God hands over (pare/dwken) idolaters to rule by passions and desires and this results in various forms of vice, from inappropriate sex to murder, gossiping, and dishonoring parents.14 It is also important to note that the role of passions and desires in 1:24–32 need not necessarily arise from specifically Platonic assumptions, because all schools of thought blame bad acts on passions and desires.15 Nevertheless, the language of handing over to passions and to passions and desires, not satisfying bodily appetites such as hunger. Cf. Wis 4:12; Sir 5:2, 23:5. 14 For a helpful overview of vice lists that touches briefly on this text, see Neil J. McEleney, “Vice Lists of the Pastoral Epistles” CBQ 36 (1974): 203–219. 15 Some scholars have found resonances between Stoicism and 1:18–32 because of specific terms (e.g., kaqh/konta in 1:28) or broader motifs but not in relation to the language about passions and desires. So, see Dunn, Romans, 1.75; Stowers, Rereading Romans, 98; and John Martens, who cautiously proposes a Stoic reading of Rom 2:14–16 that draws on the language of 1:18–32, in “Romans 2:14–16: A Stoic Reading,” NTS 40 (1994): 55–67. Troels Engberg-Pedersen has argued that Rom 1:18–32 draws on a Stoic model of communal ethics (Paul and the Stoics [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 2000], 200–205), but I find little warrant for taking the central problem here as self-directedness. The issue is that Gentiles disobey God, not that they focus on themselves. Their disobedience and its punishment arises as corporate, and the social vices that follow this punishment in verses 29–32 are the consequence, not the cause, of the problem. Diana Swancutt (“Sexy Stoics and the Rereading of Romans 1:18–2:16,” in A Feminist Companion to Paul [ed. Amy-Jill Levine; London: T&T Clark, 2004], 42–73) overstates the case for connections with Stoicism especially in regard to fu/s ij in verse 26, and her efforts to connect Stoics with inappropriate sex misrepresents broader discourses about sexual deviance. On fu/sij, see Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas (Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity [Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997], 447–456), who catalog sixty-six different meanings of the term in ancient literature. On the complexity of the theory of natural law in Stoicism, see Gisela Striker, “Origins of the Concept of Natural Law,” in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (vol. 2; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), 70; Brad Inwood, “Commentary on Striker,” Proceedings, 95–101; “Rules and Reasoning in

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desires fits most easily with basic tenets of Platonism and would set the stage for the later discussion of sin as an evil indwelling ruler that I argue best explains the role of sin in Rom 6–8. At the end of the long list of vices in 1:28–31 Paul adds, “Though they know God’s just decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only do these things but also approve of those who do them” (oi3tinej to\ dikai/wma tou~ qeou~ e0pigno/ntej o3ti oi9 ta\ toiau~ta pra/ssontej a1cioi qana/tou ei0sin ou0 mo/non au0ta\ poiou~sin a0lla\ kai\ suneudokou~sin toi~j pra/ssousin) (1:32). Interpreters have taken this dikai/wma as in some way proleptically referring to God’s judgment or to a general moral condemnation. Joseph Fitzmyer argues that the term alludes to God’s eschatological judgment as spelled out in Rom 6:23 and elsewhere, and so avoids associating this with the law. James D. G. Dunn allows, “Of course Paul sees the law as the clear expression of what God requires of man (so also 2:13)…. but it is obedience of a different order.”16 Dunn’s solution addresses the law indirectly by positing another sphere of moral demands so that those who do not know the law can still fulfill it (2:14–15). Yet, this does not fully explain how God’s dikai/wma relates to other types of knowledge, such as that associated with the law in 3:20 and 7:7, where the law brings knowledge of sin. Stanley Stowers offers a helpful refinement of the above positions, proposing that 1:32 refers to the present situation of Gentiles under the law, so that the dikai/wma looks forward to the idea of the Gentiles being under the law in the present.17 This avoids positing discontinuity between the knowledge of God’s dikai/wma in 1:32 and the claim that the law brought knowledge of sin in 3:20 and 7:7 and also fits with the turn toward the present situation of Gentiles in 2:1–16. On this approach, “therefore you are without excuse, mister” (dio\ a0napolo/ghtoj ei] w} a1nqrwpe) addresses a present situation that follows as the logical consequence of 1:32.18 Such persons are “without excuse” because they know that God’s law expects good behavior and obedience. Stowers’s solution resolves tensions in the statements about knowledge in 1:32, 3:20, and 7:6 and also leaves open the issue of how to construe the Gentile situation vis-à-vis law. So he writes of the uncircumcised Gentile who keeps ta\ dikaiw&mata tou~ no/mou (2:26): “The best answer seems to be that Paul, along with many other Jews in antiquity, assumed that the law required different (and fewer) things of gentiles than of Jews. The passage simply

Stoic Ethics,” in Topics in Stoic Philosophy (ed. Katerina Ierodiakonou; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 95–127. 16 Dunn, Romans, 1.69. Dunn also suggests that Noachide or other commandments may be in view here. 17 Stowers, Rereading Romans, 91. 18 Ibid., 147–148.

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assumes that the law requires literal circumcision for Jews but not for gentiles.”19 It makes most sense in context to take the dikai/wma here as referring to God’s demands on Gentiles as this also sets the stage for the broader discussion of future judgment and accountability in 2:1 and following. Of course, this does not settle various ambiguities having to do with what it means to be e0n no/mw| in 2:12 or u9po\ no/mon in 6:14, but it can account for the logic implicit in claims such as that a good Gentile might actually fulfill the just requirement of the law even though not circumcised and therefore breaking a commandment of the law. Rom 1:24–32 explains that God hands over idolaters to passions and that this has terrible, lasting consequences for the history of Gentile sin and immorality. This exposition makes sense in light of the central intuition of Paul’s day that bad acts result from the overpowering influence of passions and desires. Scholars sometimes note the language of passions and desires very briefly but do not explain how they function in contemporary discourses. So Fitzmyer notes, “the ‘disgraceful passions’ of which Paul speaks are the sexual perversion of homosexual activity,” and Dunn writes, “Paul has in view man’s animal appetites, specifically the desires of the flesh, the mortal body.”20 Both treat passions and desires but do not subject them to close historical evaluation. In contrast, attention to contemporary thought about passions and desires shows that wickedness, sin, and immorality do not just happen in Rom 1. Even if verse 21 is taken to convey that mental futility precedes God’s punishment, 1:24–32 clearly escalates the problem to remarkable proportions and consistently explains this as God’s doing. As Paul explains three times, “therefore, God handed them over to the desires of their hearts” (dio\ pare/dwken au0tou_j o9 qeo\j e0n tai~j e0piqumi/aij tw~n kardiw~n au0tw~n) (1:24); “for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions” (dia\ tou~to pare/dwken au0tou\j o9 qeo\j ei0j pa/qh a0timi/aj) (1:26); and “God handed them over to a base mind” (pare/dwken au0tou\j o9 qeo\j ei0j a0do/kimon nou~n) (1:28). Passions and desires are the instrument of God’s punishment. Gentiles worship false gods, God impairs their mental functioning by unleashing the passions, and every kind of bad act ensues. Passions as Punishment in Paul and Philo So far it has been argued that Rom 1:18–32 tells the story of God punishing idolatry by making Gentiles wicked and immoral. Though Paul’s dis19

Ibid., 157. Fitzmyer, Romans, 285; Dunn, Romans, 1.62. Dunn (Romans, 1.62–64) does note that the terms appear frequently in Stoicism and offers some citations from Biblical texts, but he does not appreciate the centrality of passions in ethical discourse generally or their particular role in it. 20

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cussion here is distinctive, this type of punishment has a number of suggestive resonances with the writings of Philo. Philo often explains that God devises special moral-psychological punishments for different Biblical figures, consistent with his representations of God as one who “moves and leads the car of the soul in whatever way he pleases” (o9 kinw~n qeo\j kai\ a1gwn h[| a1n proairh=tai to\ th=j yuxh=j o1xhma) (Leg. 2.85). Such punishments often concern specific biblical figures like Cain as well as whole peoples such as the Egyptians. So Philo explains God’s means of punishing wickedness in the time of Noah in a way that fits most clearly with Platonism: We have a symbol of this dire happening in the great deluge described in the words of the lawgiver, when the “cataracts of heaven” poured forth the torrents of absolute wickedness in impetuous downfall and the “fountains from the earth,” that is from the body [Gen 7:11], spouted forth the streams of each passion, streams many and great, and these, uniting and commingling with the rainpour, in wild commotions eddied and swirled continually through the whole region of the soul which formed their meeting-place. “For the Lord God,” it runs, “seeing that the wickednesses of men were multiplied on the earth, and that every man carefully purposed in his heart evil things every day,” determined to punish man, that is the mind (le/g w de\ to\n nou~n), for his deadly misdeeds, together with the creeping and flying creatures around him and the other unreasoning multitude of untamed beasts (Gen 6:5–6). This punishment was the deluge. For the deluge was a letting loose of sins, a rushing torrent of iniquity where there was naught to hinder, but all things burst forth without restraint to supply abundant opportunities to those who were all readiness to take pleasure therein. And surely the punishment was suitable (h9 de\ timwri/ a kataklusmo/j. h]n ga\r e1fesij a9m arthma/twn kai\ pollh\ tou~ a0dikei~ n mhdeno\j kwlu/o ntoj fora/, a0 lla\ prosanarrhgnume/nwn a0 dew~j a9p a/ntwn ei0j xorhgi/ aj a0fqo/nouj toi~j pro\j ta\j a0p olau/seij e9t oimota/t oij, kai\ mh/p ot’ ei0ko/t wj). (Conf. 23–25)

The text allegorizes the flood as a torrent of wickedness, passions, and sin that functions to punish the mind. In context, this arises as a fitting response to an already bad condition (Conf. 16–22), but the punishment escalates the problem, as the passions flood the soul. Because Philo allegorizes the punishment as a moral-psychological one, he combines images of wickedness reigning down from heaven, passions arising from the body and flooding the soul, a punishment of the mind, and an e1fesij a9marthma/twn (a release of sins). These different descriptions of punishment cohere in that they are causes (passions), instruments (body), or results (wickedness, sin) of the way passions impair the mind in the Platonic tradition. In a way that appropriates Stoic classification of the emotions, Philo elaborates on God’s punishment of Cain. So he explains this punishment as worse than death: Death thus remains with him perpetually; observe how that is effected. There are four passions in the soul, two concerned with the good, either at the time or in the future, that

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is pleasure and desire (h9donh=j kai\ e0p iqumi/a j), and two concerned with evil present or expected, that is grief or fear (lu/p hj kai\ fo/bou). The pair on the good side God tore out of him by the roots so that never by any chance he should have any pleasant sensations or desire anything pleasant, and engrafted (e0 nefu/t eusen) in him only the pair on the bad side, producing grief unmixed with cheerfulness and fear unrelieved…. and most grievous of all should be sensible of his own evil plight, feeling the weight of the present ills and foreseeing the onrush of those yet to come against which he could not guard. (Praem. 71–72)

Here Philo makes use of the Stoic categorization of the passions into desire, fear, pleasure, and pain. Though the Stoics view all of these as harmful, they distinguish desire as the expectation of future good, pleasure the opinion of present good, fear as the expectation of future evil, and pain the opinion of present evil.21 God’s punishment removes even the false opinions inherent in pleasure and desire and so increases Cain’s torment. The text illuminates Rom 1:18–32 in that God devises a special punishment that fits the heinousness of Cain’s crime and carries out this punishment by intervening in Cain’s soul. Philo’s God tears out the pleasurable passions in the soul, whereas Paul’s God gives up the Gentiles to their passions; yet, both explain God’s intervention as having direct effects on minds and souls. As the text continues, Philo also makes Cain’s self-awareness a Cassandra-like torment that in and of itself serves a punishing role, where for Paul this awareness exemplifies an extreme level of depravity: “they know God’s decree that those who do these things deserve to die, but they not only do these things but also approve of others who do them” (Rom 1:32).22 Though these texts have very different ways of construing this punishment, they share an interest in representing God’s activity as punisher as working to reshape the fundamental moral capacities of persons and groups.

II. The Death of the Soul in Romans 6–8 Most readers find the subject matter and argument of Rom 1:18–4:25 very different from that of 5:1–8:39 and so distinguish chapters 1–4 and 5–8 as subsections of the letter. The bulk of Rom 1–4 addresses the situation of Jews and Gentiles in broad historical terms that explain and justify

21 Tad Brennan, “The Old Stoic Theory of Emotion,” in The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy (ed. Juha Sihvola and Troels Engberg-Pedersen; Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998), 31–32. 22 As Philo returns to the topic of Cain in other treatises he often makes his selfawareness central. See, e.g., Virt. 200; Det. 177; Praem. 68–73.

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God’s ways of dealing with both, but chapters 5–8 focus on sin, death, and the law.23 Both the subject matter and style of argumentation change so dramatically at chapter 5 that readers with very different approaches agree that 5:1 introduces a new form of address as well as a new topical focus. Fitzmyer concludes, “In 5:12–7:25, after the introductory paragraph of 5:1–11, three freedoms (from sin and death, from sin and self, and from the law) prepare the way for the discussion of life in the Spirit,” and Stowers argues, “The Jewish teacher fades away toward the end of chapter 4 as Paul for the first time since his opening address begins speaking directly to his epistolary audience.”24 Whereas dialogues with imaginary interlocutors drive the discussion in chapters 2–4, the style changes at 5:1 as Paul rhetorically turns back to his epistolary audience. In this light, it is notable that chapters 1–4 make arguments that have implications for, but do not directly address, the present situation of those baptized “in Christ.” Rom 1:18 refers to the revelation of God’s wrath, chapter 3 describes a current time of sin, and though a coming judgment looms large in 2–4, with the exception of 3:21–26, these chapters explain little in detail about the ways that all of this affects the present situation of the baptized Christ-follower. Even when Paul announces a new reconciliation at the beginning of chapter 5, he quickly relates this to a broad historical outline of the time from Adam to Moses and Christ in 5:6–21. From this perspective, Rom 6 constitutes Paul’s first attempt to relate this history of sin to the present situation of the Christ-believer. So, in 6:1 the authorial voice begins a conversation with a fictitious interlocutor who has been recently released from the domination of sin through baptism, 6:1–22 explains the present implications of Christ’s death in seemingly personal and bodily terms, and verse 23 relates this to God’s future punishment and reward with eternal life or death. Attention to this shift of focus also throws light on the organization of 6–8 as a whole. Whereas chapter 6 focuses largely on the present implications of baptism, 7:1–8:13 integrates the direct and seemingly personal language that begins in chapter 6 with a broader historical schema. Chapters 6–8 contain a series of arguments that address the past, present, and future of the Christ-believers themselves. Rom 7:7–25 expounds the thesis of 7:5, “while we were in the flesh our sinful passions that were aroused by the law worked in our members to bear fruit to death” (o3te ga\r h]men e0n th=| sarki/, ta\ paqh/mata tw~n a9martiw~n ta\ dia\ tou~ no/mou e0nhrgei~to e0n toi~j me/lesin h9mw~n, ei0j to\ karpoforh=sai tw~| qana/tw|), and Rom 8:1–13, that of 7:6, the new state where “discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so we serve as slaves not under the old written code but in the newness of the 23 24

See Fitzmyer’s lucid discussion of the place of Rom 5 (Romans, 96–97). Fitzmyer, Romans, 97; Stowers, Rereading Romans, 38.

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spirit” (nuni\ de\ kathrgh/qhmen a0po\ tou~ no/mou a0poqano/ntej e0n w{| kateixo/meqa, w#ste douleu/ein h9ma=j e0n kaino/thti pneu/matoj kai\ ou0 palaio/thti gra/mmatoj). Sin and Death in Romans 6 Previously I argued that Romans 7:7–25 uses life and death metaphorically to describe the dominance of one part of the soul, the passions, over another, reason. The extreme type of immorality described as soul-death in chapter 7 also fits with the story about idolatry and immorality at the very beginning of the letter body in 1:18–32. This connection between Rom 1 and 7 answers the important question “Why is this person in Rom 7 so afflicted by passions?” because 1:18–32 justifies this terrible condition as God’s punishment for idolatry. The argument of Rom 2–8 returns to this history of sin but especially so in chapters 6–8. Sin and death loom large in these chapters, as Paul makes reference to sin 37 times and death and dying in some 42 instances. Fully 52 percent of Paul’s uses of qa/natoj and its cognates appear in Romans, and all but 7 of these are found in these chapters.25 While Paul’s characterization of sin has been the object of much attention, scholars have sometimes explained the language about death by creating taxonomies of different uses, from the juridical to the participatory to the demonic. C. Clifton Black, for example, has identified at least seven different meanings of death in Rom 5–8.26 Though death need not have a single meaning, many of the statements about sin and death make more sense when understood in light of Platonic discourse.27 Such an approach also resolves the apparent tensions between the ‘already’

25 C. Clifton Black, “Pauline Perspectives on Death in Romans 5–8,” JBL 103.3 (1984): 413, n. 2, counts 95 occurrences overall, 49 in Romans as a whole, and 42 in Rom 5–8. 26 Black, “Pauline Perspectives on Death in Romans,” 421–424; Dunn rejects Black’s type of approach as overly schematic but insists that Adam’s death is working throughout (Romans, 1.307–308). 27 David E. Aune suggests that Paul’s metaphors in Rom 6–8 draw on Hellenistic philosophical traditions that cast the practice of virtue as the “practice of death” (“Human Nature and Ethics in Hellenistic Philosophical Traditions and Paul: Some Issues and Problems,” in Paul in His Hellenistic Context [ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994], 305–312). Whereas Aune’s approach is productive for 1 Cor 15:31, 2 Cor 4:10–11, Gal 2:19–20, and 6:14, I find it unsatisfactory for Rom 6–8 and Gal 5:24 because Paul speaks here of killing or putting to death certain parts of the person, not of the whole person living as if they were dead. I do think that there are relations between discussions of soul-death, the positive “practice of death” that Aune develops, and what Dieter Zeller has termed popular traditions of “the living dead” (“The Life and Death of the Soul in Philo of Alexandria,” The Studia Philonica Annual 7 [1995]: 50–54), but they must be carefully differentiated.

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and the ‘not yet’ by taking supposed ‘already’ claims as conveying certain dispositions with regard to sin and the passions. Rom 6 makes a number of statements about the relation between sin, the passions, and the body that make sense in light of Platonic premises. At 6:1 an interlocutor appears who asks various questions about the meaning of Christ’s intervention for the present. This person asks, “shall we continue to sin, so that grace might increase?” and Paul responds, “absolutely not, for how can we who have died to sin continue to live in it?” (mh\ ge/noito. oi3tinej a0peqa/nomen th|= a9marti/a|, pw~j e1ti zh/somen e0n au0th|=) (6:1–2). The authorial voice then elaborates on the idea of dying to sin by appealing to Christ’s death and resurrection and the interlocutor’s own baptism.28 So, 6:3 explains, “we have been baptized into his death” (ei0j to\n qa/naton au0tou~ e0bapti/sqhmen); 6:4 that the baptized have been buried (suneta/fhmen) through baptism “so that we might also walk in the newness of life” (ou3twj kai\ h9mei~j e0n kaino/thti zwh=j peripath/swmen); 6:5 explains that sharing in Christ’s death means sharing his resurrection; and 6:6 introduces the language of sin and the body: “We know this, that our old person was crucified so that the body of sin might be rendered ineffective, so that we might no longer be slaves to sin” (tou~to ginw&skontej o3ti o9 palaio\j h9mw~n a1nqrwpoj sunestaurw&qh i3na7katarghqh|= to\ sw~ma th=j a9marti/aj, tou~ mhke/ti douleu/ein h9ma=j th|= a9marti/a|).29 This implies that the condition prior to baptism was to be a body of sin (sw~ma th=j a9marti/aj) and that baptism somehow renders sin ineffective. Rom 6:12–14 then connects the old dominion of sin implied earlier to the present situation of the baptized: “do not let sin rule in your mortal body to obey its passions” (mh\ ou]n basileue/tw h9 a9marti/a e0n tw|~ qnhtw~| u9mw~n sw&mati ei0j to\ u9pakou&ein tai~j e0piqumi/aij au0tou~) (6:12); 6:13 opposes the rule of sin to the rule of God and exhorts, “yield yourselves to God as though brought from death to life and your members to God as weapons of righteousness” (parasth/sate e9autou_j tw~| qew~| w9sei\ e0k nekrw~n zw~ntaj kai\ ta\ me/lh u9mw~n o3pla dikaiosu/nhj tw~| 28 Some scholarship on Rom 6 has concerned speculations about the origins of Paul’s view of baptism, as Fitzmyer, Romans, 430–439; Black, “Pauline Perspectives on Death in Romans 5–8,” 421; Dunn, Romans, 1.303–304. I take it that baptism functions primarily as an analogy and suspect that little if anything about the practice of baptism can be inferred from the text. Engberg-Pedersen writes of baptism in terms of a normative selfidentification: “Baptism celebrates the change from identifying with one’s individual, bodily being (I) and living for ‘oneself’ to identifying with Christ (X), thereby also coming to live to God – in short, I-X” (Paul and the Stoics, 231; emphasis original). My approach is compatible with Engberg-Pedersen’s in some ways, but a Platonic moral psychology (rather than a Stoic one) fits better with this text. 29 So Fitzmyer translates katarghqh=| as “rendered powerless” (Romans, 436), and Engberg-Pedersen as “made inoperative” (Paul and the Stoics, 225–239), against the RSV’s “destroyed.”

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qew~|); and 6:14–23 develops the rule of sin and God as antithetical forms of enslavement and appeals to the language of yielding members of the body to sin or to righteousness. The language about sin and the body in chapter 6 makes sense in light of the Platonic assumption that the passions use the body in plotting and carrying out its vicious and immoral plans. As explored previously, Platonists associate the irrational faculties with the body and flesh because the passions rely on bodily senses such as touch, taste, and sight to identify their objects: pleasures. Philo, for example, even uses the body in such instances to stand for the passions-body-senses complex; he writes of souldeath: “the worse, the body, overcomes (kratou~ntoj me\n tou~ xei/ronoj sw&matoj), and the better, the soul, is overcome (kratoume/nou de\ tou~ krei/ttonoj yuxh=j)” (Leg. 1.106). Paul may not know or be interested in these finer points about the senses or the special forms of knowledge that this tradition attributes to mind as a counterpoint to the senses. However, the metaphors and arguments of chapter 6 can be clarified by understanding a basic Platonic economy as implicit in the language about sin, passions, and body. This economy associates passions and desires with the flesh or body; understands the passions as inimical to and in conflict with reason, and hence, virtue; and construes the passions as capable of coalescing as an evil, indwelling counterruler whose domination results in terrible levels of vice and wickedness. Such an economy explains why chapter 6 consistently associates sin with the flesh, body, and members; depicts sin as an indwelling ruler that directs other desires in 6:12 (cf. 7:8); and throughout assumes that the rule of sin produces wickedness and vice, as 6:13 exhorts, “do not yield your members to sin as weapons of wickedness” (mhde\ parista/nete ta\ me/lh u9mw~n o3pla a0diki/aj th=| a9marti/a|) (cf. 6:19). Taking a Platonic understanding of the soul as implicit in Rom 6 also explains much of the language about life and death as metaphors for domination and control. Here Paul uses the language of “dying to sin” (6:2); being buried with Christ through baptism (6:3); being raised with Christ to a new life (6:4, 6:5); crucifying the old person so as to destroy the body of sin (6:6); dying with Christ so as to live with him (6:8); thinking of oneself as dead to sin and living to God (6:11); and yielding the self to God as though brought to life from the dead (6:13). At 6:14 the language of life and death fades as analogies of rule and slavery become prominent, but 6:16 explains that sin leads to death and obedience to righteousness (h1toi a9marti/aj ei0j qa/naton h1 u9pakoh=j ei0j dikaiosu/nhn); verses 21 and 22 state that enslavement to sin results in death while enslavement to God results in eternal life; and verse 23 summarizes, “the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our lord” (ta\ ga/r o0yw&nioj th=j a9marti/aj qa/natoj to\ de\

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o0yw&nioj th=j a9marti/aj qa/natoj to\ de\ xa/risma tou~ qeou~ zwh\ ai0w&nioj e0n Xristw|~ I)hsou~ tw~| kuri/w| h9mw~n). With the exception of verses 21–24 and possibly 6:14, the language of life and death/crucifixion as applied to the baptized makes sense as metaphors that convey domination used here in both positive and negative senses. Similarly, Philo can write that “the soul dies to the life of virtue, and is alive only to that of wickedness” (o(/tan h9 yuxh\ to\n a0reth=j bi/on qnh/|skh| to\n de\ kaki/aj zh=| mo/non) (Leg. 1.107) because he understands living to virtue as conveying that reason dominates the passions and living to vice as the opposite. Because the metaphors convey a type of domination, they are flexible and so can capture positive and negative outcomes. So, Philo writes: When, then, O soul, wilt thou in fullest measure realize thyself to be a corpse-bearer? (w} yuxh/, ma/l ista nekroforei~n sauth\n u9p olh/yh) Will it not be when thou art perfected (teleiwqh|=j), and accounted worthy of prizes and crowns? For then shalt thou be no lover of the body (filosw&m atoj), but a lover of God.… For when the mind has carried off the rewards of victory, it condemns the corpse body to death (o3tan ga\r o9 nou~j ta\ a0reth=j a0p ene/g khtai nikhth/ria, qa/n aton katayhfi/ zetai tou~ nekrou~ sw&m atoj). (Leg. 3.74)30

The good faculty is the soul or mind that struggles against a corpse-body, and when the mind wins the struggle it condemns the body to death, even though the body is ironically already a corpse. The “rewards of victory” here refers to the domination of reason that results in the condemnation of the body. In other words, the reward of victory is equivalent to the slaying of the body so that the reason dominates and the person becomes a virtuous God-lover. Applying these insights from Philo’s texts to Rom 6 makes sense of statements such as “you have died to sin”(6:2) and “therefore consider yourself dead to sin” as referring to a new state where the baptized can use the good part of the soul to dominate the passions, stop sinning, and obey God. This reading finds support in the following verses: Therefore do not let sin rule in your mortal body to make you obey its passions, and do not yield your members to sin as instruments of injustice, but yield yourselves to God as though brought to life from the dead and your members as weapons of righteousness to God; for sin will no longer rule you; for you are no longer under the law but under grace (mh\ ou]n basileue/t w h9 a9m arti/a e0n tw|~ qnhtw~| u9m w~n sw&m ati ei0j to\ u9p akou/e in tai~j e0p iqumi/aij au0t ou~, mhde\ parista/nete ta\ me/lh u9m w~n o3p la a0diki/a j th=| a9m arti/a|, a0l la\ parasth/s ate e9 autou\j tw~| qew|~ w(sei\ e0k nekrw~ n zw~ntaj kai\ ta\ me/lh u9m w~n o3p la dikaiosu/nhj tw~| qew~|. a9m arti/a ga\r u9m w~n ou9 kurieu/sei· ou0 ga/r e0ste u9p o\ no/mon a0l la\ u9p o\ xa/ rin). (Rom 6:12–14)

The text assumes that baptism has created a situation that makes the exhortation “do not let sin rule in your mortal bodies” relevant. On these terms, 30

See also Leg. 3.69–72; Det. 47–49; Somn. 2.234–236.

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6:1–10 develops the idea of dying and rising with Christ in baptism as dying to sin, and 6:11–14 explains this as a moral-psychological analogy given that sin and the passions continue to threaten. Paul’s text seems to assume that control of the passions is a necessary condition for obedience to God. Many interpreters note a tension or contradiction between claims that the person has died to sin but also must continue to resist it. They often appeal to the idea that there is a tension between the already and the not yet in Paul’s thought, or between the indicative and the imperative.31 Taking much of the death language in chapter 6 as metaphorical allows for a more coherent interpretation of the text and avoids positing an already/not yet tension such as that between claims about having “died to sin” (a0peqa/nomen th|= a9marti/a|) in 6:2 and the exhortation “do not let sin rule in your mortal bodies” (mh\ ou]n basileue/tw h9 a9marti/a e0n tw~| qnhtw~| u9mw~n sw&mati) in 6:12. Understanding Paul’s conception of the person as basically Platonic makes sense because in the embodied Platonic soul the mind battles with passions and desires during life, whether the soul belongs to a moral degenerate or a sage. Though ideally reason masters the lower faculties, the passions and appetites always threaten reason during life, and it cannot free itself from them until it separates from the body at death. In spite of the many proposals for holding the indicative together with the imperative in Paul’s thought, the discourse of soul-death obviates these tensions and provides a contextual explanation for the metaphors that can be anchored historically. A Platonic conception of the soul not only explains Paul’s assumption that even baptized persons must beware of sin and the passions, but also his insistence that those in Christ await the “redemption of our bodies” (8:23) and a transformation of the fleshy body at the parousia (1 Cor 15). Understood in this way, Paul’s already statements explain a new form of self-mastery, whereas his not yet statements warn that the lower faculties still threaten. Death to sin does not convey some kind of realized sinlessness but functions as an analogy for a new 31

Dunn’s formulation helpfully restates this central insight:

One further structural feature of chapters 6–8 calls for attention: the way in which Paul makes an in-principle statement in clear cut unequivocal terms at the start of each chapter, only to go on immediately to qualify it and to blur the clean-cut lines by showing that the reality of the believer’s experience is more ambivalent. The “Already” has to be qualified by the “Not Yet”; the indicative of a salvation process begun has to be qualified by the imperative of a salvation process as yet incomplete. (Romans, 1.302–303) For Dunn the indicative/already statements are 6:1–11, 7:1–6, and 8:1–9, whereas the imperative/not yet are 6:12–23, 7:7–25, and 8:10–30. Cf. Engberg-Pedersen’s more cognitive resolution in Paul and the Stoics, 233, 238–239.

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dominance over sin and the passions made possible by Christ’s death and resurrection. The text seems to simply assume that baptism has restored the ability to control the passions, be virtuous instead of wicked, and obey God. Rom 6 implies a new condition with exhortations such as “do not let sin rule in your mortal bodies” (6:12), “yield yourselves to God” (6:13), and with the analogy of sin and righteousness as the two masters in 6:15–20. In 6:15 the interlocutor again asks whether it is appropriate to sin, since “we are not under law, but under grace.” Paul again responds “absolutely not!” and goes on to argue that those who sin are ruled by sin. Viewed as a whole, Rom 6:1–11 uses baptism as an analogy for transformation using Christ’s actual death and resurrection; 6:12–14 develops an analysis of obedience to God as involving the mastery of the passions; and 6:15–23 then explains how the mastery of sin leads ultimately to death at the final judgment, whereas the mastery of God leads to eternal life. Paul writes that obedience to righteousness (6:19) and God (6:22) leads to sanctification (a9giasmo/n) and eternal life (zwh/ ai0w&nioj). The promise of sanctification and eternal life need not be construed as precisely the same as self-mastery and virtue, but Paul seems to assume that these rewards require some level of self-mastery; being judged righteous by God at the impending judgment requires, at least in part, that persons stop sinning all the time. The point seems almost banal, but sinning here includes what Greek moral traditions construe as vices and immorality as well as Jewish notions of sin as disobedience to God. To clarify, this argument does not require that Paul’s interests in wickedness, sin, and the passions fit in every way with contemporary moral discourses, especially Platonism. Rather, it only requires that he appropriate and synthesize certain aspects of this thought to his broader interests and agenda, perhaps most importantly the apocalyptic convictions that so centrally motivate his mission to the Gentiles, his understanding of the way God shapes human history, and the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection in light of this plan. Though Paul does refer to his teachings (tu/pon didaxh=j) in 6:17, he does not propose that the Gentiles learn to behave better by spending their lives with a moral teacher in an arduous battle toward virtue. Rather, he seems to assume that baptism in chapter 6 and pneu~ma in chapter 8 serve to restore the lost capacity for self-control that is a condition for obedience to God. Assuming that having certain moral capacities and functions is a condition for behaving well and pleasing God fits with basic aspects of Greek moral traditions and Jewish traditions about sin, and it also takes seriously Paul’s broader statements about how these behaviors matter to God, as “God will give to each according to their works” (2:6). From this perspective, Paul’s thought on sin here syn-

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thesizes Greek intellectual traditions about human motivation and action to make an argument about God’s impending punishment and rewards for those actions. His solution, an invasion of divine pneu~ma, is distinctive but also makes sense in light of his apocalyptic conviction that God is about to judge the world for its sins. That is, this understanding of God’s coming judgment requires a nearly immediate solution to the problem of sin, and Paul finds this in understanding Christ’s death and resurrection as, at least in part, restoring a lost capacity for self-control through the pneu~ma. Paul also seems to assume that this solution allows for a totally new domain of accountability. Though I have not treated the difficult issue of what it means to be “under the law” or Paul’s argument against works of the law in chapter 3, the notion of being under grace rather than the law in 6:14, the marriage analogy in 7:1–3, and the idea of dying to the law in 7:4–6 all develop strong language about transfer from one domain of accountability to another. The fact that Paul seems to think of these as totally antithetical types of accountability proves puzzling, but as others have suggested this may arise from Paul’s overriding commitment to the idea that Christ’s death and resurrection requires a new system, since “if justification is through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal 2:21).32 Romans 8:1–13 Rom 7:6 states: “for now we have been set free from the law, dead to what held us down, so that we serve in the new spirit and not the old letter” (nuni\ de\ kathrgh/qhmen a0po\ tou~ no/mou a0poqano/ntej e0n w{| kteixo/meqa, w3ste douleu/ein h9ma=j e0n kaino/thti pneu/matoj kai\ ou0 palaio/thti gra/mmatoj). In spite of the important role here ascribed to pneu~ma, Paul does not refer to it again until Rom 8:1–11 except to note in 7:14 that the law is pneumatic (o9 no/moj pneuma/tikoj). Instead, 7:7–25 develops an explanation of the past relation between law and sin that reflects the situation in 7:5. Rom 8:1–13, however, explains how God’s actions through Christ respond to and resolve the terrible plight described in such detail in chapter 7. As in chapter 6, the ominous threat of the old passions of the flesh makes sense on Platonic terms. Read in light of the previous interpretations of Rom 6–7, chapter 8 reflects the same condition described in chapter 6, especially 6:12–14, which warns of the continued threat of sin, the passions, and the body and urges obedience to God. Chapter 8, however, introduces the pneu~ma as instrumental to this new way of life and also serves to circumscribe those who authentically “belong to Christ.” However Paul thinks about the indwelling pneu~ma, taking the language of 32 Heikki Räisänen, Paul and the Law (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986); E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983).

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sin and flesh as consistent with the Platonic language of Rom 6–7 renders certain difficult statements intelligible, especially the exhortation to “kill” the body and the language about the intelligence of the flesh. Rom 8 addresses a number of issues relating to the meaning of Christ’s death, not all of which can be dealt with here. This is especially the case with Paul’s understanding of the role of pneu~ma and the meaning of Christ’s condemnation of sin in the flesh in verse 3. Scholars such as Albert Schweitzer and E. P. Sanders have brought out the centrality of participation in Paul’s thought, especially in regard to the language of being “in Christ” so prevalent in the letters.33 It is clear that the notion of sharing the substance of Christ through the pneu~ma is absolutely central to chapter 8, but it is less clear how this notion should be contextualized and explained. Scholars have brought to bear popular medical/scientific notions of pneu~ma, the logic of intergenerational contiguity, and Stoic theories of pneu~ma as divine rational matter pervading the universe.34 One shortcoming of these approaches is that they have not so far developed an explanation for how persons could suddenly acquire a portion of divine substance. Below I suggest that Philo’s notion of the indwelling lo/goj may provide an analogue, but I do not undertake a full study of the notion of pneu~ma in Paul’s thought. Similarly, I find it difficult to contextualize Paul’s statements about how Christ’s death works in relation to sin “in the flesh.” While scholars have often understood this in terms of sacrificial atonement, Stowers offers a devastating critique of these theories that needs to be taken seriously.35 As a result, I do not explore the meaning of Christ’s “condemnation of sin in the flesh” (kate/krinen th\n a9marti/an e0n th=| sarki/) so that “the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (to\ dikai/wma tou~ nomou~ plhrwqh=| e0n h9mi=n) in much detail. Rom 8:1–13 addresses the new state of those “in Christ,” largely by contrasting it with the idea of being “in the flesh.” So Rom 8:2 reflects on freedom from the law of sin and death by opposing the “law of sin and death” to the “law of the spirit of life in Christ.” When 8:3 explains that the old law inevitably produced sin “since it was weak because of the flesh,” this makes most sense as referring to the situation of 7:7–25 where no/moj primarily means the Judean law. On these terms, 8:3a summarizes the plight of Rom 7 generally and 7:22–23 in particular, where the speaker 33

Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977), 439, 447– 474; Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1931). 34 Stowers, “What Is Pauline Participation in Christ?” in New Views of Jewish and Christian Self-Definition (Notre Dame, Ill.: Notre Dame University Press, forthcoming); Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), 96–136; Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 247–253. 35 Stowers, Rereading Romans, 206–213.

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professes that it cannot do God’s law because of the sin that dwells in its members. On this reading, the problem does not arise because of some innate weakness of the law, but because the person is dominated by the sinful passions of the flesh. The language about sin, passions, body, and flesh in chapters 6 and 7 helps to make sense of the numerous references to sin and flesh in 8:1–13. So, sin is “in the flesh” (e0n th=| sarki\) in verses 3, 8, and 9; verse 4 introduces the idea of “living according to the flesh” (kata\ sa/rka peripatou~sin), and in verse 5 those who are kata\ sa/rka “think the things of the flesh” (ta\ th=j sarko\j fronou~sin); in verse 6 the “thought of the flesh is death” (fronh/ma th=j sarko\j qa/natoj) and in verse 7 it is hateful to God; in verse 10 even those who are in the spirit have bodies that are “dead because of sin” (nekro\n dia\ a9marti/an); and verses 12 and 13 warn against being “debtors to the flesh” (o0feile/tai e0sme\n ou0 th|= sarki\ tou~ kata\ sa/rka zh=n). Read in light of the Platonic traditions explored previously, the role of sa/rc here makes sense as a metonym for the body as coopted by the sinful passions. To cite only one example of a similar economy, Philo claims that Moses teaches: Justice and every virtue love the soul, while injustice and every vice love the body; that what is friendly to the one is utterly hostile to the other – a lesson given in this passage as elsewhere. For in a figure [Gen 15:11] he pictures the enemies of the soul as birds, eager to intertwine and engraft themselves in bodies and to glut themselves with flesh (dikaiosu/nh me\n kai\ pa=sa a0reth\ yuxh=j, a0diki/ a de\ kai\ pa=s a kaki/a sw&m atoj e0rw~si, kai\ o3ti ta\ tw~| e9te/rw| fi/la tw~| e9te/rw| pa/ntwj e0xqra/ e0sti, kaqa\ kai\ nu= n: ai0n itto/m enoj ga\r tou\ j yuxh=j polemi/o uj o1rnea ei0sh/g age glixo/m ena e0m ple/kesqai kai\ e0m fu/esqai sw&m asi kai\ sarkw~n e0m forei~sqai). (Her. 243)

This text personifies vice as a lover of the body that is hostile to virtue and depicts it as an external force that enters the body and consumes the flesh. This makes sense on Platonic premises that implicate the body and its passions as instrumental in causing vicious acts. Similarly, this helps to explain the more abstract language of living “according to the flesh” or being “in the flesh” as a matter of obeying the sinful passions. Platonic assumptions thus can hold together both the more generalizing language about walking in the ways of the flesh as well as the more seemingly intimate language such as that of verses 10–11, where the body is dead because of sin but will soon be revivified by God through the pneu~ma inside it. The former expresses the idea that allowing sin to dominate once again (cf. 6:12) means to act wickedly and will result in condemnation at the final judgment; the latter imagines the pneu~ma as stuck inside a body waiting for God to remake it into something better (1 Cor 15). While many interpreters tend to paraphrase 8:1–13 or take it as conveying some vague aspects of Christian experience, taking Platonic traditions more seriously allows for a more concrete and specific interpretation of the language and

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argument.36 By focusing on internal struggle, Paul’s teachings here function to incite anxiety that the Christ-believers might return again to their old ways. Platonic discourse is especially helpful for illuminating the claims about the thoughts of the flesh in 8:5–8. As discussed in chapter 1, Plato does attribute some reasoning functions to the passions and appetites, such as having beliefs and exercising means-ends reasoning. Though the passions and appetites do not literally have minds, they have aspects of mind attributed to them in service of certain analogies and metaphors. So, Plato writes of the tyrannical man: But, rather, erotic love lives like a tyrant within him, in complete anarchy and lawlessness as his sole ruler, and drives him, as if he were a city, to dare anything that will provide sustenance for itself and the unruly mob around it (a)lla\ turannikw~j e0n au)tw~| o( 1E rwj e0n pa/sh| a)narxi/a| kai\ a)nomi/ a| zw~n, a(/t e au)to\j w!n mo/narxoj, to\n e)/xonta/ te au)t o\n w(/sper po/lin a)/ cei e0p i\ pa=s an to/lman, o(/q en au(t o/n te kai\ to\n peri\ au(to\n qo/rubon qre/yei). (Rep. 9.574e–575a)

The leader of the appetites is personified as a lawless ruler that commands other passions, implying that it has a mind that plots an evil appetitive coup. Such analogies help to explain why Paul speaks of thinking according to the flesh in verse 5 and attributes fronh/ma to the flesh in verse 6. Read this way, “the intelligence of the flesh” (to\ ga\r fro/nhma th=j sarko\j) means the intentions and plans of the lower faculties that continue to threaten the mind. As in 6:12, where Paul warns that sin may rise to “rule your mortal bodies and make you obey its passions,” 8:5–8 cautions that the mind is not yet free from the passions and desires. At best, Christ’s indwelling pneu~ma allows the mind to dominate the passions and desires to “walk by the spirit” (8:4) and “put to death the deeds of the body” (8:13). Conversely, the claim that pleasing God is a matter of “thinking in accordance with the spirit” (8:5) is similar to other positives exhortations such as that of 6:13 to “yield yourselves to God as people who have been brought from death to life.” The language of death comes to the fore in Rom 8 in a way that is very similar to that of chapter 6. Paul exhorts: If Christ is in you, though your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness; for if the pneu~m a of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells inside you, then the one who raised Christ from the dead will make alive also your mortal bodies through his spirit which dwells in you (ei0 de\ to\ pneu~m a tou~ e0g ei/rantoj

36 So Fitzmyer (Romans, 480–481) counts thirteen different ways that 8:9–11 expresses the “reality of the Christian experience” and concludes, “Such expressions may seem confusing at first, because they are not clearly distinguished one from the other, but they forestall an overfacile interpretation of how the Christian is united with Christ or God” (Romans, 481).

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to\n I)h sou~n e0k nekrw~n oi0k ei~ e0n u9m i= n, o9 e0g ei/raj Xristo\n e0k nekrw~ n zw|o poih/s ei kai\ ta\ qnhta\ sw&m ata u9m w~n dia\ tou~ e0noikou~ntoj au0t ou~ pneu/m atoj e0n u9m i=n). (8:10–11)

Here, the death of the body and the life of “your spirits” imagine a revivified spirit stuck within a sin-dominated body. The life and death metaphors seem to invoke something like its “status before God,” which makes sense in light of the promise that God will soon use the pneu~ma to transform the body into something better. The notions of life and living here are interconnected in that those who live in the present in the right way will have their bodies transformed by God, probably as they are on their way to getting eternal life as a reward. Given 1 Cor 15, this likely alludes to the idea that God will reconstitute the body as made of a finer pneumatic material and this would also make sense of why the pneu~ma here functions as a kind of down payment on this future. When Paul writes that “if, by means of the pneu~ma, you put to death the deeds of your body, you will live” (8:13) he brings together the moral-psychological metaphor of death as domination (here used positively) with the idea of acquittal for good behavior and obedience to God. In this context “put to death the deeds of your body” makes sense as an exhortation to control the passions and desires. Chapter 8 seamlessly connects moral issues and problems with an eschatological framework. A Platonic model of the soul allows for a relatively consistent interpretation of Rom 8:1–13 and makes good sense of Paul’s so-called anthropological statements and claims. By understanding Platonic oppositions between sin, flesh, members, body, and passions on the one hand, and reason, nou~j, and the pneu~ma of God on the other, Rom 8:1–13 coheres as a series of exhortations about good and bad conduct in the context of God’s impending judgment for that conduct. When Paul argues that God’s intelligent pneu~ma has restored the mind, he does not thereby create something radically new and uniquely religious. Rather, like other writers, he elaborates Platonic discourse in a way that gives a special role to divine pneu~ma because his intellectual project can accommodate such a role. In one sense 8:4–13 leaves the meanings of life according to the flesh (kata\ sa/rka) versus according to the pneu~ma (kata\ pneu~ma) undefined insofar as these concern the behaviors and dispositions of those “in Christ.” This may be deliberate, since Paul will himself detail quite extensively what these norms should be in the paraenetic sections of chapters 12–15. It is notable, however, that this section also begins by referring to the transformation of the mind: “Do not be conformed to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your minds so that you may prove what is the will of God, the good and acceptable and perfect” (mh\ susxhmati/zesqe tw|~ ai0w~ni tou/tw| a0lla\ metamorfou~sqe th|= a0nakainw&sei tou~ noo\j ei0j to\ dokima/zein u9ma=j ti/ to\ qe/lhma tou~ qeou~, to\ a0gaqo\n kai\ eu9a/reston

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kai\ te/leion) (12:2). But in chapter 8, the strong contrast between life kata\ sa/rka and kata\ pneu~ma sharply delimits membership in the supposed community of those “in Christ” and allows for radically different conduct. So verse 9 raises the possibility that persons may not really have the pneu~ma, “if in fact, the pneu~ma of God dwells in you,” and then 8:11 clarifies the split nature of those who possess the spirit but still await God’s future intervention to deal finally with their “mortal bodies”: “If the pneu~ma of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then the one who raised Jesus from the dead will give life also to your mortal bodies through his pneu~ma that dwells in you.” Thus, “the law of the spirit of life in Christ” (8:2) may allude to both the sense in which the pneu~ma rehabilitates the mind and to a subset of the law to which Gentiles are responsible. On this view, Paul then elaborates on this subset of the law (dikai/wma tou~ no/mou) in Rom 12–15.37 In certain ways, Paul’s language of an indwelling pneu~ma of God bears some resemblance to Philo’s concept of an indwelling lo/goj. The lo/goj plays a wide variety of roles in Philo’s thought, but in relation to the soul it is often represented as a fragment, imprint, copy, or ray of the divine. So, he writes: Every man, in respect of his mind, is allied to the divine reason, having come into being as a copy or fragment or ray of that blessed nature, but in the structure of his body he is allied to all the world (pa=j a1nqrwpoj kata\ me\n th\n dia/noian w|)kei/w tai lo/g w| qei/w |, th=j makari/a j fu/sewj e0kmagei~o n h1 a0p o/spasma h1 a0 p au/g asma gegonw&j, kata\ de\ th\n tou~ sw&m atoj kataskeuh\n a3p anti tw~| ko/smw|) . (Opif. 146; cf. QG 4.4)

Philo uses the Stoic language of a0po/spasma here along with the Platonic language of e0kmagei~on.38 In a similar synthesis, he elsewhere typifies man’s reason as a portion of divine breath: And therefore the lawgiver held that the substance of the soul is twofold, blood being that of the soul as a whole, and the divine breath or spirit that of its most dominant part.… So we have two kinds of men, one that of those who live by reason, the divine inbreathing, the other of those who live by blood and the pleasure of the flesh. This last is a moulded clod of earth, the other is the faithful impress of the divine image (e1doce tw~| nomoqe/t h| ditth\n kai\ th\n ou0si/an ei]nai yuxh=j, ai[m a me\n th~j o3lhj, tou~ d’ h9g emonikwta/t ou pneu~m a qei~o n.… w#ste ditto\n ei]d oj a0nqrw&p wn, to\\ me\n qei/w | pneu/m ati logismw~| biou/ ntwn, to\7de\ ai3m ati kai\ sarko\j h9donh|= zw&ntwn. tou~to

37 Against Dunn, who generalizes Rom 8:2 to a broader association of the law with the flesh: “The law weakened in its divine purpose by being identified too closely with Israel as national and physical entity marked out particularly by circumcision (2:28–29; 4:1ff; 9:8). It was precisely their engagement with the law too much at the level of the flesh which was Israel’s and the law’s undoing!” (Romans, 420). 38 See David Winston, Logos and Mystical Theology in Philo of Alexandria (Cincinnati, Ill.: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985), 28–29.

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to\ ei]do/j e0sti pla/sma gh=j, e0kei~no de\ qei/aj ei0ko/noj e0 m fere\j e0kmagei~o n). (Her. 55– 57; cf. Leg. 3.161; QE 2.46) 39

Philo synthesizes the Stoic language of pneu~ma and h9gemonikwta/tou with Platonic notions of the rational part of the soul as the image or imprint of the divine. That is, the Stoics claim that the mind is a central command center – the h9ghmo/nikon – made up of a fine material substance, pneu~ma; Philo here simply adds the Platonic lower faculties and treats the Stoic commanding faculty as if it were the Platonic reasoning part. Ambiguities arise, however, as to whether Philo conceives of the soul as divine only in the sense that it was originally made on the divine pattern or as having an ongoing interaction with God’s lo/goj. As David Runia notes, “Philo does not give the Logos a carefully worked out intermediate structure, such as Plato attributed to his cosmic soul. Consequently it always remains difficult to determine the extent to which the Logos becomes a hypostatis, i.e. an entity having real existence separate from God himself.”40 One result is that Philo tends to alternate between imagining the lo/goj as a distinct entity or hypostasis and as an already existing attribute of human rationality that happens to resemble the divine insofar as it was originally made like it. Philo’s discussions of God’s lo/goj provide clues to understanding the role of pneu~ma in Rom 8 where the pneu~ma takes up residence inside Christ-believers.41 Though Philo does not often treat lo/goj, pneu~ma, or wisdom as something that enters the body (except when creating Adam), this is implied in those contexts where God withdraws it. Similarly, Paul does not speak of the pneu~ma entering the body, but it is already there for those truly “in Christ” (8:9–11) who presumably got it through baptism. Paul also seems to conceive of pneu~ma as a substance elsewhere, as 1 Cor 15 speaks of pneumatic bodies in a way that is basically alien to Philo, with his strong commitment to the Platonic material/immaterial divide. However, Philo’s indwelling lo/goj and Paul’s indwelling pneu~ma are both divine rational entities that are conceptually required by their claims about God’s direct interventions in human history.42 Though Philo tends to 39

See Winston, Logos, 28, n. 3. Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 297. 41 Some issues pertaining to God’s lo/g oj in Philo and Paul have been raised by scholars such as Dunn (Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980], esp. chap. 7) and F. Gerald Downing (“Ontological Asymmetry in Philo and Christological Realism in Paul, Hebrews, and John,” JTS 41.2 [1990]: 423–440) but not in the ways addressed here. 42 My analysis of pneu~m a compliments that of Stowers (“What Is Pauline Participation in Christ?”) but in my view better accounts for the ways that the pneu~m a functions as God’s tool for intervening in human history. 40

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construe the lo/goj as something that allows for a Platonic meditation on the divine intelligible realm, he also uses it as a mediator between the divine and human and sometimes synthesizes the Stoic language of pneu~ma to his Platonic moral psychology and cosmology. For example, he writes in the text Who is the Heir? quoted above, “And therefore the lawgiver held that the substance of the soul is twofold, blood being that of the soul as a whole, and the divine breath or spirit that of its most dominant part” (Her. 55). Here the use of pneu~ma seems dictated by the exegetical pressures of construing God’s inbreathing in Genesis. This text also describes two moral types, not flesh and spirit cohabitating in the same body as in Rom 8. In spite of these differences, Philo’s indwelling lo/goj and Paul’s indwelling pneumatic substance resolve certain logical problems with construing God’s interventions in human hearts and minds. Though Jewish traditions speak of God’s intervening to harden hearts or restore minds, Philo and Paul seem to assimilate this to Greek traditions of moral psychology and in so doing require some instrument by which God can punish and restore. This, I suggest, is basically the role ascribed to pneu~ma in Rom 8 and elsewhere. Paul may well draw more on Stoic or popular notions of pneu~ma, but his discussion in Rom 8 does seem to presuppose a divided soul of competing motivations and capacities aligned with their respective co-conspirators: flesh and God. While it is not clear that Platonic traditions regularly, if ever, were made to accommodate such conceptions of pneu~ma, the analysis of discourse developed in chapters 1 and 2 does not require that Paul be a proponent of some full-blown Platonism for Platonic traditions to illuminate his writings, only that he appropriate and synthesize certain Platonic images and assumptions. In fact, writers such as Plutarch, Galen, and Philo regularly synthesize divergent traditions and theories. The ghost of Plato might be outraged at the materialistic language of pneu~ma in Philo, but I can find no justification for allowing the interests of a systematic philosopher to constrain the analysis of different types of intellectuals.

III. Conclusions The interpretation of Rom 1–8 developed here focuses on the role of moral-psychological concepts, metaphors, and arguments in chapters 1, 6, and 8. The moral discourse about soul-death is particularly helpful for making sense of Paul’s statements to the effect that the believer must “die” to sin, “live” to God, and “put to death” the sinful body. This approach also clarifies exhortations such as “do not let sin rule in your mortal bodies

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to make you obey its passions” (6:12) and “if, by the pneu~ma you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (8:13) as exhortations about the ongoing struggle for self-mastery and the potential threat still posed by passions and desires. Appreciating the moral-psychological arguments in chapters 6 and 8 also helps to elucidate the immediate literary context of the monologue in 7:7–25. On these terms, 7:7–25 emerges as the dramatic self-narration of a particular moral-psychological condition that fits with the developing arguments of Rom 6–8, rather than a convoluted depiction of the horror of sin set in a seemingly odd first person narrative.

Conclusions

Romans 7 Beyond the Bultmann-Käsemann Debate This study has construed Paul as having a broad repertoire of interests and skills that he creatively musters to meet his literary aims in Romans. His repertoire includes multiple intellectual traditions and complexes of images, metaphors, and assumptions that he synthesizes, consciously or not, to produce an argument that conforms to no single tradition. The preceding chapters advanced an argument about one area of this intellectual repertoire and found that Romans 7 appropriates a specifically Platonic tradition. This Platonic tradition about extreme immorality or soul-death illuminates the monologue as the dramatic self-narration of the mind explaining its total disempowerment at the hands of passions and desires represented as sin. On this reading, life and death primarily function as moralpsychological metaphors for sin’s domination and control, and the speaker is reason, the inner person. Statements such as “I died” and “sin worked death in me” convey the total domination of the passions and are synonymous with the speaker’s complaints that it has been deceived, killed, sold as a slave to, and taken captive by sin. This radical disempowerment also explains why the mind cannot do anything that it knows to be good, including following the law, as well as the metaphors of death, slavery, rule, and warfare here and throughout chapters 6–8. If this reading has substantial merit, it suggests that Paul’s appropriation of philosophical and moral traditions is more significant than has often been assumed. The interpretation proposed here undermines the influential work of Rudolf Bultmann and Ernst Käsemann to the effect that the ‘I’ represents the whole person and that sin is a quasi-demonic entity that has entered the speaker from outside its body. Both understood the person of Romans 7 as unified, but Käsemann developed his theory of sin as a power as an ostensibly ‘mythological’ alternative to Bultmann’s ‘demythologizing’ project. Both scholars made important contributions, but later interpreters have tended to assume rather than justify such claims. While scholars such as W. David Stacey and Hans Dieter Betz argue this explicitly, many interpreters simply assume a conception of a unified person that does or does not get invaded by sin.43 As suggested in chapter 2, such approaches tend 43 Stacey, The Pauline View of Man in Relation to Its Judaic and Hellenistic Backgrounds (London: MacMillan, 1956); Betz, “The Concept of the ‘Inner Human Being’ (o9

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to superimpose distinctively modern ideas of the self as a more or less unified center of consciousness, experience, and reflection. Descartes’s famous “I think therefore I am” captures the idea that the only thing that cannot be explained away is thinking and thus gives a special priority to inner reflection and thought. The result is a distinctively modern idea of the subject as constituted by a special inner life and a way of knowing that cuts it off from the external world of objects. For Bultmann, Paul’s theology of the subject reveals the struggle of the Cartesian self, cut off from the world of objects, painfully forced to know itself only as an object. In contrast to the Cartesian tradition, the Platonic divided soul makes the reasoning part an important source of motivation, but it functions alongside two other competing sources of motivation: the passions and appetites. This tradition understands the mind as more a bundle of reasoning dispositions and capacities than a special or unique attribute of the self. The mind certainly thinks and reflects, but it does so because that is its characteristic function, not because its most essential attribute is a certain kind of unique subjective experience. Against the reading of Rom 7 as depicting a unified psyche, Platonic traditions make sense of the monologue as the self-narration of the mind displaying its characteristic dispositions and capacities as it thinks, reflects, and makes judgments about good and bad courses of action. On this approach, reason here reflects on the fact that it cannot put these good judgments and plans into action because it has lost the battle to be the primary source of motivation. This is not a whole person ‘split’ between different perspectives, as if the person were debating what to do, and there is no deliberation, no appreciation of the rationale of another perspective, just the same voice that makes essentially the same point again and again: “I cannot do what I know to be right; in fact, I do the opposite of what I know to be right.” The analysis of sin as a representation of the passions obviates various theories that cast sin as a supposedly apocalyptic power. I have argued that the notion of sin as a representation of the passions can be better anchored historically than the sin-as-power interpretations as currently formulated. But though I find that this particular apocalyptic interpretation of sin lacks substantial historical merit, I do not contend that Rom 6–8 is nonapocalyptic or, in Bultmannian terms, that sin be ‘demythologized’. Relatedly, I can find no reason to insist that Paul’s apocalyptic beliefs and commitments fight against or obviate basic interests in whether or not people behave badly and what God will or will not do about it. In fact, Paul’s interest in e1sw a1nqrwpoj) in the Anthropology of Paul,” NTS 46 (2000): 315–341. In contrast, others simply assume that the text represents a unified self, as, e.g., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 463–466; James D. G. Dunn, Romans (Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1988), 1.381–382.

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the problem of sin – here understood simply as behavior that God deems good or bad, just or unjust – makes sense in light of his strongly held commitment to the premise that God is about to judge all peoples for their behaviors. It also makes sense that Paul would think about sin using various conceptual resources at his disposal and synthesize them in a way that fits his distinctively apocalyptic teachings. While there have been a number of calls in recent decades to read Paul “beyond the Judaism/Hellenism divide,” I suggest that this divide still looms large in the guise of other dualisms, such as the apocalyptic/existential, the mythological/demythological, and the religious/philosophical.44 The pervasiveness of these powers approaches may ultimately result from their fit with the Augustinian-Lutheran interpretation of sin and human nature. By understanding sin as an invading cosmic agent, such theories can project onto the cosmos the Augustinian-Lutheran axiom that the human being is incapable of goodness in itself.45 Thus rendered, contemporary interpreters can simply understand Paul’s apocalyptic worldview as metaphorical and arrive at Luther’s formulation of sin and human nature by demythologizing the more substantive cosmological language. Though apocalypticism may well turn out to be the “mother of Pauline theology,” as Käsemann famously argued, the common view that Paul inhabits a universe of warring cosmic hypostases needs to be subjected to more searching historical inquiry. An important first step in this project will be to develop criteria for distinguishing between the metaphorical and literal uses of language. Finally, chapter 3 proposed that moral discourse about the death of the soul provides the most appropriate context for interpreting the instrumental relationship between law and sin. Yet, as I have developed it, this moral discourse does not directly answer a perennial question in debates about the law: Why would God give a law that actually causes sin? While a vast array of answers have been proposed to this question, in my view the simplest is that Paul’s argument in Rom 1–8 is not about the plight of all persons under the law, but specifically that of the Gentiles. On this approach, Paul provides explanations for the sin and immorality of Jews and Gentiles, but they are very different types of arguments, and they ascribe Jews and Gentiles special but seemingly incongruous roles in God’s plan. The body of the letter in chapters 1–8 explains the problem of Gentile sinfulness, whereas chapters 9–11 explain how this fits together with the situation of Jews who have not yet accepted Christ. On these terms, the 44 E.g., Troels Engberg-Pedersen, ed., Paul Beyond the Hellenism-Judaism Divide (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 2001). 45 See, e.g., J. Louis Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1997), 87–88.

148

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argument advanced here complements that of Stanley Stowers and Runar Thorsteinsson to the effect that the epistolary audience of Romans is a Gentile audience.46 Taking the monologue as describing the moral psychology of a Gentile also helps to address certain problems created by taking the speech as reflecting the universal plight of the human being. Whereas interpreters such as James Dunn seem to reflexively take this as the universal human condition, John Ziesler raises the contrasting objection that the portrayal of 7:7–25 cannot realistically apply to all human beings in every circumstance.47 Yet the condition makes more sense when understood as addressing a particularly Gentile plight, one that is ascribed to a particular group, for particular reasons, and for a particular period of time. This study has focused on a limited range of problems with statements about passions, death, and self-contradiction in Romans. There are, of course, many more texts and interpretations that I have not considered here that may enrich, qualify, or undermine my analysis. Exclusion, however, is a necessary condition for focus and coherence, and, as Jonathan Z. Smith teaches, explanation requires reduction. It is my contention that the discourse of soul-death has significant explanatory power for making sense of many statements about sin, death, and the law in Rom 6–8. To the extent that this argument succeeds, it may help to answer certain old questions and raise some new ones.

46

Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), 6–33; Thorsteinsson, Paul’s Interlocutor in Romans 2: Function and Identity in the Context of Ancient Epistolography (Coniectana Biblica New Testament Series 40; Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 2004), 87–122. 47 See my discussion of Dunn in the introduction; Ziesler, “The Role of the Tenth Commandment in Romans 7,” JSNT 33 (1988): 41–56.

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Tobin, Thomas H. “Controversy and Continuity in Romans 1:18–3:20.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 55 (1993): 298–319. __. Paul’s Rhetoric in Its Contexts: The Argument of Romans. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004. Trapp, M. B. “On the Tablet of Cebes.” Pages 159–180 in Aristotle and After. Edited by Richard Sorabji. London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 1997. Umbach, H. In Christus getauft – von der Sünde befreit: Die Gemeinde als sündenfreier Raum bei Paulus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999. Van Den Beld, A. “Romans 7:14–25 and the Problem of Akrasia.” Religious Studies 21 (1985): 495–515. Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. “The Golden Age and Sin in Augustan Ideology.” Past and Present 95 (1982): 19–36. __. “The Emperor and His Virtues.” Historia 30 (1982): 298–323. __. “Propaganda and Dissent? Augustus’ Moral Legislation and the Love Poets.” Klio 67 (1985): 180–184. Wedderburn, A. J. M. “Adam in Paul’s Letter to the Romans.” Pages 413–430 in Studia Biblica 1978: III. Edited by E. A. Livingstone. Sheffield: JSOT, 1980. West, M. L. “Towards Monotheism.” Pages 21–40 in Athanassiadi and Frede, 1999. Williams, Michael A. Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. Wink, Walter. Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984. Winston, David. Logos and Mystical Theology in Philo of Alexandria. Cincinnati, Oh.: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985. __. “Response to Runia and Sterling.” Studia Philonica Annual 5 (1993): 141–146. Wolfson, Harry A. Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947. Wright, N. T. The Climax of Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992. Zanker, Paul. Poetry and Politics in the Age of Augustus. Edited by Tony Woodman and David West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Zeller, Dieter. “The Life and Death of the Soul in Philo of Alexandria: The Use and Origin of the Metaphor.” Studia Philonica Annual 7 (1995): 19–55. Ziesler, John A. “The Role of the Tenth Commandment in Romans 7.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (1988): 41–56.

Index of Biblical and Related Sources

Genesis 2–3 2:17 3:9 4:8 4:18 7:11 15:16 39:1

4–5, 103–104 64 66 66n 65 127 114n 94–95

Exodus 4:1–5 32

61 120n

Leviticus 18:5 21:11 32:1–34

98n 64 116n

Numbers 11:31–35 21:6

123n 65

Deuteronomy 4:1 6:24 23:1 30:15–16

Acts 17:18–34 Romans 1–4 1–8 1:18 1:18–23 1:18–32

1:18–4:25 1:19 1:19–20 1:19–21 1:19–32 1:21 1:22 1:24 1:24–27 1:24–32

98n 98n 74 98

Psalms 78 78:29 106:14–15 106:20

123n 123n 123n 120n

Daniel 8:19 11:36

114n 114n

1:25 1:26 1:26–27 1:27 1:28 1:28–31 1:29–32 1:32 2–4 2–6 2–8 2:1

40

128–129 11, 117, 143, 147 118, 120, 129 118–120 10–11, 100, 104, 117–120, 123n, 126, 128, 130 128 118, 120 118–119 119 120 119, 126 118 6, 119–120, 122, 124 122 118–119, 124, 126 118, 120 119, 122, 124, 126 6, 122 122 119, 122, 124, 126 125 124n 125, 128 129 78 78, 117, 130 126

160 2:1–11 2:1–16 2:6 2:6–11 2:12 2:14–15 2:14–16 2:17–4:12 2:26 2:28–29 3 3:20 3:21–26 4:1 5 5–8 5:1 5:1–11 5:6–21 5:12 5:12–7:25 5:20 5:21 6

6–7 6–8

6:1 6:1–2 6:1–10 6:1–11 6:1–22 6:2 6:3 6:4 6:5 6:6 6:8 6:11 6:11–14 6:12

Index of Biblical Sources 78 125 135 89 126 125 33n, 117 78 125 141n 129 125 129 141n 129 54, 84–85, 89n, 128–130 129 129 129 84, 96 129 84, 113 84 10–11, 78, 117, 129, 131– 136, 138–139, 144 136–137 7n, 54, 84–85, 117, 124–125, 129–130, 144– 146, 148 129, 131 131 134 134n, 135 129 117, 132–134 131–132 131–132 131–132 131–132 132 132 134 6, 84, 117, 131–132, 134– 135, 138–139, 143–144

6:12–14 6:12–23 6:13 6:14 6:14–23 6:15 6:15–20 6:15–23 6:17 6:19 6:21 6:21–24 6:22 6:23 7:1–3 7:1–6 7:1–8:13 7:4–6 7:5

7:6 7:7 7:7a 7:7–13

7:7–25

7:7–8.2 7:8 7:9 7:9–10 7:11 7:12 7:13 7:14

123, 131–133, 135–136 134n 131–132, 135, 139 126, 132–133, 136 132 135 135 135 123, 135 132, 135 132 133 132, 135 125, 132–133 136 134n 129 136 6, 83–84, 96, 103, 109, 113, 129, 136 125, 129–30, 136 2, 6, 76, 79, 99, 105, 125 79n 76n, 79, 81, 83, 89, 98–99, 104–109 5–6, 8, 34n, 76–79, 81, 84, 89, 92, 95, 98, 107–108, 117, 129–130, 134n, 136– 137, 144, 148 79 6, 83, 89, 103, 109, 113, 132 76, 83 9, 96–98 83, 103, 109, 113 107 78, 83 9, 83, 96, 107, 123n, 136

161

Index of Biblical Sources 7:14–15 7:14–20 7:14–25

7:15 7:15–25 7:16 7:16–17 7:16–25 7:17 7:18 7:19 7:20 7:20–23 7:21 7:21–25 7:22 7:22–23 7:23 7:24 7:24–8:2 7:25 8 8:1 8:1–9 8:1–11 8:1–13 8:2 8:3 8:4 8:4–13 8:4–17 8:5 8:5–8 8:6 8:7 8:8 8:9 8:9–10 8:9–11 8:10

10 93–94 5–6, 10, 77, 79, 81, 90–93, 98–99, 103– 104, 106–109 5, 90–93, 108 92 92, 108 93 10 83, 92, 108 96, 108 1, 5, 93, 108 83, 93, 108 93 108 93, 106 77, 94 9, 81, 89, 94, 106–107, 137 9, 83, 94, 96, 106 79, 81, 92, 96 79 83, 93–94, 96 117, 135–137, 141–144 92 134n 136 10, 92, 136– 138, 140 94, 106–107, 137, 141 85, 106, 137– 138 106, 138–139 140 106 138–139 139 138 138 138 138, 141 139n 139n, 142 138

8:10–11 8:10–30 8:11 8:12 8:13 8:23 9:1 9:8 12–15 12:2 1 Corinthians 4:4 11:14–15 15

138–140 134n 141 138 117, 138–140, 144 57–58, 130 3 141n 140–141 140–141

15:31 15:42–50 15:43 15:50

3 122n 134, 138, 140, 142 130n 57–58 122n 57

2 Corinthians 1:12 4:10–11 4:16 5:1–10 6:8

3 130n 22n 57 122n

Galatians 2:19–20 2:21 3:22–25 5:16–17 5:24 6:14

130n 136 76n 6 6, 130n 130n

Colossians 2:13

67n

Ephesians 2:1 2:5 5:14

67n 67n 67n

James 1:14–15

88

162

Index of Biblical Sources

Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Rabbinic Literature Apocalypse of Abraham 24.10 105n Letter of Aristeas 212

67

2 Baruch 54.14–16 54.19

86n 86n

b. Berakot 18a–b

67

1 Enoch 15.8–10 69.4–12 92.5 98.4

86n 86n 87 86n

4 Ezra 7.46–61

86n

Jubilees 10.1–9 14.16

86n 114n

Liber antiquitatum biblicarum (Pseudo-Philo) 3:1–3 86n Life of Adam and Eve 19.3 105n 4 Maccabees 2.4–6

105

Sirach 5:2 15:17 17:11 21:27 22:11 23:5 25:24 27:10 45:5

124n 86n 98n 86n 97 124n 86n 87 98n

Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs T. Asher 1:5–9 86n T. Dan. 4:7–5:1 85–86n T. Issachar 7:7 86n T. Reub. 5:6 86n Wisdom of Solomon 1:3 121 1:6 121 1:12–14 98n 1:13–14 86n 2:23–24 86n 4:12 124n 6:17–20 86n, 98n 11:5 114–115n 11:13 115n 11:15–16 121 13:1 121 18:8 115n 18:18–19:13 124n

Index of Ancient Sources

Aelius Theon Exercises 8.116 8.117

78 78n

Alcinous Didaskalikos 25.5 31.1 31.2

73n 102n 52

Apthonius Preliminary Exercises 11.35R 78–79n Aristotle Categoriae 9a28–10a10

27n

De anima 1.1.403a3–b20 2.3.413a22–25 2.3.414b2 3.9.432b3–6

27n 24n 24n 24n

Eudemian Ethics 1.5.1216b22–25 2.2.1220a36–b20 2.7.1223a21–b39 2.10.1225b20 –1127b12

26n 27n 24n

2.7.1107a29–32 2.7.1108a4–9 2.9.1105b20 –1106a12 3.1.1111b1 4.5.1125b30–32 4.5.1126a3–8 5.10.1137b11–32 6.7.1141b13–23 7.1.1145a14–20 7.1.1145a30–32 7.4.1147b26 –1148b14 7.5.1148b19–24 7.5.1149a4–20 7.6.1149a24–b35 7.7.1150b12–16 7.8.1150b29–37 7.8.1151a11–14 9.8.1168b20 Metaphysica 5.21.1022b15–22

26 26n 27n 27n 26 26 26 26n 33n 35 33n 35 35 25 35, 97 34 34 27n

27n

De motu animalium 6.700b22 24n 7.701a36–b1 24n Poetica 1449b24–31

27n

Protrepticus Fr. 10b Ross

67

24n

Nicomachean Ethics 1.13.1102b13 25n 1.13.1102b13 –1103a3 25 2.2.1103b35 –1104a10 26 2.5.1109a20–b26 27n

Rhetorica 1.10.1369a1–4 2.2.1378a20 –2.11.1388b30

24n 27n

164 Augustine De civitate Dei 9.4–6

Index of Ancient Sources

27n

Euripides Medea 1078–1080

Cicero De republica 6.14

67n

Fragment (Plutarch, Virt. mor. 446a) 841 101n

De senectute 23.83 77

80n 67n

Tusculanae disputationes 1.75 67n 3.1–7 40n 3.12–13 40n 3.71–76 27n 3.75–76 39–40 3.76 31 3.82–84 40n 4.31–32 36n 4.37–57 27n 4.58 36n Diogenes Laertius Lives 5.19 97n Epictetus Diatribai 1.28.6–8 1.28.7 1.28.7–8 2.17.18 2.19.29 2.26.1 3.2 3.6.9–10 4.1.147 4.2 4.2.4 4.2.9–10

108n 90 29n, 90 79 38n 5n 38n 38n 82n 38n 37 37

Epicurus (Porphyry) To Marcella 31 31 Vatican Sayings 59

30

28

Galen On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 3.3.14–16 28 3.3.14–17 81n 4–5 41–42 4.1.14–4.2.44 30n 4.2.27 23n, 28n, 91, 93 4.2.39 100–101 4.2.39–44 102 4.6.17–27 28n 5.7.22–25 61n Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul’s Passions Kühn, 5.28–29; Harkins, 47 71–72 Kühn, 5.28–29; Harkins, 48 93, 102 Kühn, 5.29; Harkins, 48 72, 83–84, 95 Hecataeus of Abdera (Diodorus Siculus, Bibl.) 1.71.3 28n Hermogenes Preliminary Exercises 9.20–22 78n 9.21–22 79n Herodotus Histories 1.45 2.159 3.13 3.149 5.37

123n 123n 123n 123n 123n

Isocrates Trapeziticus (Or. 17) 17.15 123n

165

Index of Ancient Sources Josephus Antiquitates judaicae 1.60 111–112

142 150 173

Bellum judaicum 7.344

Quod deterius potiori insidari soleat 47–49 133n 48 66n, 97 70 97 70–71 64n 74–75 64 177 128n 177–178 66n

67n

Menander Papyrus Didotiana 2.2–12 97 Ovid Metamorphoses 6.629–635 7.10 7.18 7.20 7.21 8.470–511

80n 92 79 5 101n 80n

Pausanius Description of Greece 1.2.1 123n Philo De agricultura 163–164 171

97n 66n

De confusione linguarum 16–22 127 21 82 21–22 101n 23–25 127 68 114 119–121 65 120 102 122 66n 144 123n 161 66n De congressu eruditionis gratia 86 75 87 64n De Abrahamo 162

114

De decalogo 52–75 59–60 67

121 121n 121

105 105n 105n

Quod Deus sit immutabilis 111 95 111–112 74 113 74, 83 114–116 101–102 137 74n De ebrietate 70 140

64n 66n, 97n

De fuga et inventione 55–61 75n 58 75n, 95 60 66n 90 64n 113–114 64 De gigantibus 14

64n

Quis rerum divinarum heres sit 53 64n 55 63, 143 55–57 141–142 58 67n 201 64n 243 138 Legum allegoriae 1.32 1.35 1.48–53 1.105–106 1.105–107 1.106 1.106–107 1.107

64n 64n 103n 7 62–63 73, 83, 132 8 133

166 1.107–108 2.74–98 2.77–78 2.78–81 2.85 2.87 2.90–92 2.93 3.13 3.32–35 3.35 3.52–53 3.69–72 3.72 3.73–76 3.74 3.109 3.115 3.116–117 3.160 3.161 3.212 3.234

Index of Ancient Sources 64 65n 65 65 127 65 61 64n 83 66n 64n 64n, 66 133n 64n 65 66, 133 95–96 55–56 56 83 142 83 68

De migratione Abrahami 21 64n 122 67n 134–138 103n De vita Mosis 1.279

64n

De Mutatione nominum 213 64n De opificio mundi 3 45–46 12 45 32–35 41 69–71 41 146 141

Quod omnis probus liber sit 70–71 114 Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin 1.16 64n 1.70 64n 2.12 67n 2.45 64n 4.4 141 4.46 64n 4.238 64n Quaestiones et solutiones in Exodum 2.46 142 De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini 20–25 83 26 83 54–57 103n De somniis 1.139 2.64 2.184 2.234 2.234–236

66n 64n 74n 97n 133n

De specialibus legibus 1.345 64n 4.84–94 105n De virtutibus 17 200

64n 66n, 128n

Philodemus On Frank Criticism Fr. 8 37 Fr. 10 37

De posteritate Caini 12 64n 45 64n 73 65–66

Plato Cratylus 400c 415b

66n 114n

De praemiis et poenis 68–73 66n, 128n 71–72 127–128

Gorgias 466d–e 492e 492e–493a

70n 64n 66–67n

167

Index of Ancient Sources Laws 1.644d–645a 3.689a–b 3.689b 4.716a–b 5.732a–b

81n 111 111 103n 103n

Phaedo 75a–77b

25

Phaedrus 250c 250e–251a 253c–254e 253c–255e 254a–e

67n 123n 23 83 42

Republic 4.430e–431b 4.439a–b 4.440a 4.442a–b 4.442c–d 4.445b 6.509b 8.544d–545d 8.550a–b 8.550b 8.553b–d 8.553c–d 8.553d 8.554a 8.554c–e 8.560b 8.560b–561a 8.561a–b 8.563d–e 9.571a 9.571b–d 9.571d 9.571d–572a 9.572e–573a 9.573a–b 9.573b 9.573e 9.574e–575a 9.577a–e 9.577d–e 9.577e 9.579b 9.580d–587e 9.583c

60–61 63n 113 42 23, 42 70n 25 68 81n 68 81n 82 83 68 23, 42 62 23n 68 110 68 68, 109–110 83 110 69 69n 73 69 70, 139 83 8, 70 92 74n 109n 114n

9.588b–589c 9.588c–591b 9.588e–589a 9.589a–b 9.591b 10.609c–d 10.610a–611a 10.610e

42 22, 77, 122n 22n 22–23n 42 23, 67 23, 67 73n

Timaeus 69c–71d 70a 86b–c 88a–b

122n 62 101, 113 114n

Plautus Pseudolus 868–872

80n

Trinummus 657–658

28n

Plutarch De amore prolis 498d

71

Aratus 7

123n

De Iside et Osiride 371a–c 47 De recta ratione audiendi 46d 36 De virtute morali 441c–d 445c 445d 445d–e 445f–446a 446a 446b 446f–447a 446f–449d 450d–e 450e

29n 23n 82 100 101 80n, 101 100n 29 29n 91 91

Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus 76b–c 36

168

Index of Ancient Sources

De virtute et vitio 100f–101b 101a

68n 71, 83–84, 114

Polybius Histories 1.81

112

Quintilian Institutio oratoria 2.4.8–14 32n 9.2.30 78 1QH 4:30–38 9:21–27 1QS 3 3:23–24 4:23

3 87

54, 85–86 86 86

Seneca Agamemnon 131–144

80n

De clementia 1.23

112

De ira 1.9–10 1.17 3.1.1 3.3

27n 27n 31n 27n

Epistulae morales 52.3–6 38n 60.4 67n

72.6 75.10 75.11 75.12 75.14 75.15 94

39 38 38 38 39 38n, 39 32n

Hercules furens 307–314

80n

Medea 907–919 917–919 990

80 94 79

Phaedra 178–179 184–185 592–599

81 81 80n

Thyestes 419–422 434–439

80n 80n

De tranquillitate animi 5.5 67n Troades 642–662

80n

Sextus Empiricus Pyrrhoniae hypotyposes 3.230 66n 3.280 31

Index of Modern Authors

Aune, David, 58–60 Barnes, Jonathan, 24 Bassler, Jouette, 122 Betz, Hans Dieter, 10, 56–58, 145– 146 Black, C. Clifton, 130 Bockmuel, Markus, 104 Bultmann, Rudolf, 1–2, 5–6, 10, 51– 53, 57–58, 88, 115, 145–147 Calvin, John, 1 Collins, John J., 4 Cooper, John M., 44 Dibelius, Martin, 85 Dillon, John, 46 Dunn, James D. G., 4–5, 89, 125, 148 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels, 5–6, 12, 20–21, 95, 98–99 Fitzmyer, Joseph, 3–4, 89, 126, 129 Gaventa, Beverly Roberts, 88 Gill, Christopher, 42–44, 77–81 Glad, Clarence, 32–33

Kaye, Bruce, 54 Keck, Leander, 87 Kümmel, Werner George, 2, 104 Levison, John R., 4 Luther, Martin, 1 Malherbe, Abraham, 19–20 Marcus, Joel, 87–88 Murphy, Roland, 87 Räisänen, Heikki, 106 Runia, David, 142 Sanders, E. P., 137 Schweitzer, Albert, 137 Seifrid, Mark A., 87 Sihvola, Juha, 20–21 Smith, Jonathan Z., 148 Sorabji, Richard, 59–60 Stacey, W. David, 145–146 Stendahl, Krister, 2–3, 104 Stowers, Stanley, 5–6, 19, 54, 77– 79, 98–99, 125–126, 129, 137, 148 Theissen, Gerd, 5 Thorsteinsson, Runar, 148 Tobin, Thomas, 120

Jewett, Robert, 10, 54–55 Käsemann, Ernst, 53–54, 88, 145– 147

Zeller, Dieter, 66–67, 73, 97 Ziesler, John, 148

Index of Selected Subject Adam, 4–5, 96 – and Rom 7, 4–5, 103–104 – and Rom 1, 119–120 akrasia, 6–7 – and Rom 7, 5–7, 34n, 98–103 – and Medea, 5, 27–29, 108 – and self-contradiction, 98–103 See therapeutic spectrum Already/not yet (indic. vs. imper.), 11, 117–118, 134–135 Apocalyptic eschatology, 88–89, 135–136, 140, 145–147 – and philosophical discourses, 88– 89, 135–136 See sin, as a power Body (and flesh) – in Platonism, 23–24 – in Rom 7, 95–96, 134–139

Idolatry, 118–122 Inner person (o9 e1sw a1nqrwpoj), 9, 22, 55, 58, 62, 77, 94 Law, 76n, 105–107, 136 – and dikaiôma, 125–126 – life apart from (7:9), 96–98 – Noachide, 104, 125n – and “other law” (7:23), 94, 106 – and sin, 103–114 Lutheran tradition, 1–2, 52, 147 Medea, 5, 27–29, 79–81, 87–89, 91 Moral progress, 36–39 See therapeutic spectrum Moral psychology, 15–16 – Plato’s, 21–24, 39–48 – Aristotle’s, 24–27 – Stoic, 27–31 – Philo’s, 45–46

Chrysippus, 27, 42–44 Descartes, René, 20, 146 – and Bultmann’s existentialism, 52–53, 146 Discourse – definition of, 18–20 – and appropriation, 12–13, 16–20, 39–49, 115–116, 135–136, 143 Dualism – supposed body/soul, 56–58 – supposed Gnostic, 53–55

Passions – translation of, 21 See moral psychology Philo of Alexandria, 7–8, 18–19, 45–48, 60–67 – and logos, 141–143 – and Platonism, 45–46 – and Stoicism, 45–46 pneuma, 136–143 Posidonius, 27n, 44 Qumran literature, 3, 85–88

Emotion – definition of, 20–21 Epicureans, 30–31 Gentiles, 114–115, 120, 125–126, 147–148 Gnostics See dualism

Rhetorical devices – speech-in-character (prosôpopiia), 77–81 – apostrophe, 77–78 Sin – and evil impulse, 87–88 – as passions in Rom 7, 81–84

171

Subject Index – as power, 53–54, 84–89, 146–147 – and Qumran literature, 3, 87 – in relation to Greek virtues, 135– 136 Soul –in Paul 8–9, 58 See moral psychology Speaker of 7:7–25, 3–5, 89–95 Stoics, 7n – and Rom 7, 6, 11–12, 95

– and Rom 1, 124–125n See moral psychology See Philo of Alexandria Tabula of Cebes, 37–38 Theraputic spectrum, 7, 31–39 Tyrannical man, 69–70 See Plato’s Republic book 9 Worldviews, problems with, 17, 48– 49