War in the Soul

391 Pages·2013·14.13 MB·English

by  Albert Edward Milton

WAH IN THE SOUL
WAR IN THE SOUL:
RO~.ANS 7 :7-25 IN THE CONTEXT OF
PALESTINIAN AND ALEXAt"{DRIAN JUDAISM
by
A. EDWARD MILTON, B.A., B.D., M.A.
A Thesis
Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies
in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements
for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
McMaster University
March, 1985
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY McMASTER UNIVERSITY
(Religious Studies) Hamilton, Ontario
TITLE I War in the Soul: Romans 7: 7-25 in the Context
of Palestinian and Alexandrian Judaism
AUTHOR: Albert Edward Milton, B.A. (University of Alberta)
B.D. (McMaster University)
M.A. (University of Calgary)
SUPERVISOR: Professor E. P. Sanders
NUMBER OF PAGES: vii, :3 23
ii
ABSTRACT
The question of Paul's view of the nature of man has interested
biblical scholars for the past 150 years. Of particular concern has
been the degree to which Paul's hert tage from Hebrew-speaking Judaism
may have been altered by the admixture of Greek ideas. One of the pas
sages used to measure this factor is Rom. 7:7-25. in which many anthro
pological terms and concepts appear. The presence of Hellenistic ideas
in this passage has been both confidently affirmed and vigorously denied.
The present investigation attempts to resolve this question by
a careful exegesis of the passage against the background of a compre
hensive survey of the literature of Hebrew-speaking and Greek-speaking
Judaism, particularly with respect to the of man and the origin
r~ture
and nature of sin. References to individual human destiny are included
to the extent that they throw light on whether the immaterial part of
man was seen to be distinct from the physical part.
The exegesis of Rom. 7:7-25 in this context shows that Paul does
hold to a dualism of soul and body, or mind and flesh, at least in the
passage in question. The opposition between the mind or "inner man"
and the flesh or "members" is expressed as a war in which the "I" or
subject is taken captive and can be delivered only through Christ.
No claim is made that an identical meaning is to be found in
parallel passages using the same terminology or that Paul had a consis
tent scheme of the nature of man throughout his writings.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to express my appreciation to all those who contributed
to this undertaking. My first thanks must be to my adviser, Dr. E. P.
Sanders, for his interest in the topic and his helpful advice and direc
tion. The other members of my advisory committee, Dr. Alan Mendelson
and Dr. John Thomas, were also generous with their time and counsel.
I would also like to thank my family and friends for their con
tinued interest and encouragement. Special thanks are due to my wife,
Muriel, for her love and support during these years of study. Without
her help this undertaking would not only have been impossible, but
Nould have lost much of its purpose.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
I NTRODUC'I'I ON • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • 1
I. PERSPECTIVES ON PAUL'S ANTHROPOLOGy......................... 6
A. The Origin and Orientation of Paul's Religion, 6
1. Paul as a Hellenist
2. Paul as a He brew of the He brews
3. Paul as a Christian
4. Summary
B. Paul's Anthropology as Indicator of His Religio-
Philosophical Orientation, 34
1. Paul as a Hellenistic Jew
2. Paul as a Hebrew of the Hebrews
3. The Existentialist School
4. Paul and Qumran
5. Summary
C. Romans 7 as Expression of Paul's Anthropological
~~
Thought, 60
1. The Refonners
2. The Existentialist School
3. The Non-Existentialist School
4. The Hellenist School
II. THE NATURE OF MAN AND THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF SIN IN
PA LESTI NIAN JUDAISM.. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • . • • • • • • • • • 101
A. The Old Testament, 101
1. The Natu--e of Man
2. The Human Condition
3. The Nature of Sin
v
B. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. 120
1. Ben Sira
2. 1 Enoch
3. 4 Ezra
4. 2 Baruch
5. Summary
C. The Dead Sea Scrolls, 144
1. The Nature of Man
2. The Origin and Nature of Sin
3. Summary
D. The Rabbis, 160
1. The Nature of Man
2. The Nature and Origin of Sin
3. The Rabbinic Doctrine of the Ye~er Hara'
III. THE NATURE OF MAN AND THE GOAL OF THE RELIGIOUS QUEST
IN ALEXANDRIAN JUDAISM ••••••••••••••••• , ••••••• , • • • • • • • • 192
A. Wisdom of Solomon, 192
1. The Role of Wisdom
2. The Nature and Destiny of Man
3. Summary
B. Fourth Maccabees, 203
1. Reason, Wisdom and the Four Virtues
2. The Passions
3. The Control of the PaSsions by Reason
4. The Destiny of Man
5. Summary
C. Philo of Alexandria, 217
1. The Creation of Man
2. The Tripartite Nature of the Soul
3. The Dual Nature of Man
4. The Goal of the Religious Life
5. Attaining the Goal
6. The Destiny of Man
7. Summary
vi
IV. EXEGESIS OF ROMANS 7: 7-2.5 •••••••••••••.••••••••.•••••••••• 271
A. Presuppositions, 271
1. Paul's Religio-Philosophical Orientation
2. The Nature of Man and the Origin and Nature
of Sin in Hebrew-Speaking Judaism
3. The Nature of Man and the Origin and Nature
of Sin in Greek-Speaking J uiaism
4. Hermeneutical Guidelines
B. The Context of the Passage, 293
1. The Letter to the Romans
2. Chapters .5 to 8
C. Exegesis of 7:7-2.5, 321
1. The Immediate Context: Freedom from Sin and
the Law (7:1-6)
2. The Function of the Law (7:7-13)
3. Moral Impotence and Its Cause (7:14-20)
4. War in the Soul and Its Resolution (7:21-2.5)
D. Summary, 367
CONCLUSION ••••••••••••.••••••••••••••••••••.••••••••.••••• 371
BIBLI~RAPHY , ............................................. .
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INTRODUCTION
Was Paul a dualist? Did he envisage man as a union of body and
soul, the material and the immaterial, in which the former is inferior
to the latter? More particularly, did he think of sin in terms of the
desires of the flesh as well as of rebellion against God? These are
questions which have occupied the attention of biblical scholars for
centuries.
On the one hand there is no doubt that Paul seems at times to be
l
a dualist, or at least to use dualistic language. In Rom. 7:22-23 he
says, "I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my
members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me cap-
tive to the lail of sin which dwells in my members." On the other hand
sei10lars have questioned whether, in such passages, Paul means what he
says. Paul, they argue, was a Jew, not a Greek (and the extent to which
Paul's Jewishness was af:ected by Greek thought is hotly debated); Jews
in Paul's day thought of man in holistic, not dualistic, terms (this is
affirmed at least for Hebrew-speaking Judaism, and Paul's relation to
Greek-speaking Judaism is again debated); in any event, Paul's dualistic
lIn "Monism and Dualism in the Pauline Anthropology" (Bl.blical
Research, 3 (1958], 15-27), Samuel Laeuchli brings together a number of
such passages; more could be added.
1
2
language has quite other and different meaning (a meaning supplied by
later theology and by existentialist philosophy).
How is the real meaning of Paul's dualistic language to be re-
covered? One approach has been to attempt to determine the religiOUS and
philosophical thought-world to which Paul belonged and thereby to ascer-
tain whether his view of man was essentially a biblical or a Hellenistic
one. This procedure is problematical. It assumes that the biblical view
of man was of one kind (holistic) while the Greek view was of another
(dualistic). Further, it assigns Paul to one or other of these worlds
and decides the question of his view of man accordingly.
A second approach has been to bring together all the passages in
which Paul uses dualistic language (or indeed any aftthropological lan-
guage) and to compare these texts among themselves in the varying con-
2
texts in which they occur. This approach, for all its value, is ha..rr.-
pe!'8d by th·:! :!..ini tations of any self-contained system. First, i:' Ie.cks
an objective standard by which the meaning of the te=ms and en-
co~certs
countered may be decided. Second, it does nothing to alter the a priori
assumptions of the interpreter. If, for example, it 1s held Paul
t~4t
could not have entertained certain views as to the nature of man and of
sin (because he was a Jew and Jews did not think that way, or because
he held other views which render the first views impossible or redun
dant), no amount of painstaking exegesis or of compari~~ passage with
passage will necessarily recover his true meaning.
2
A recent example of such a study is Robert Jewett, Paul's An-
thropological Terms (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971).