Tag: Deception

10 Contrasts Between Romans 7 & 8 Proving 7:14-25 Cannot Be Describing the Redeemed

Part of the value in rehearsing failed theories of atonement is that the failure will follow a universal pattern, the same pattern that Paul is demonstrating in Romans 7 as it contrasts with chapter 8. I would argue, Paul is setting up a contrast between the non-Christian and the Christian Subject, with chapter 7 from verse 7 focused on the experience of Adam, or every man. The fact that Anselm, Augustine, John Calvin, John Piper and company read 7:14-25 as part of the normal Christian life is not an insight into Paul but an insight into a theology which could mistake non-Christian experience (that of the “wretched man” of v. 24) for Christian experience. I do not mean this as a dig against the spirituality of these men, but simply to say that their mistake (spelled out in my previous blog here) is the universal mistake which Paul is explicating.

To miss Paul’s point about the nature of sin is not simply an Augustinian or Anselmian error, it is the human error. It points not only to the blunder of Augustine in his reading of Romans 5:12 (described here), but the universal repression of the way in which sin is propagated. To miss that sin reigns through death is not simply a theological error but the human error (the work of the deception) that Paul is tracing throughout Romans. From 7:7-24 he is describing life under the lie (inclusive of vv. 14ff) at which point he introduces the deliverance of Christ, which he will explain in chapter 8.

As I put it in the above blog, it is the reign of death which accounts for the spread of sin and not vice versa. Interwoven throughout chapter 5 is the universally observable truth that death reigns (“death spread to all men” v. 12; “death reigned” v. 14; “the many died” v. 15; “death reigned through the one” v. 17; “as sin reigned in death” v. 21). As Paul concludes in verse 21, “sin reigned in death” and not the other way around and it is this explanation for the propagation and work of sin (to say nothing of salvation) that he will build on for the next three chapters. But there is a sense that human experience mitigates against a correct reading of Paul, as sin’s deception in the law of sin and death reigns.

If we have missed Paul’s point in chapter 5, we are likely to miss his point in the contrast between the orientation to death and the law (the “law of sin and death”) described in chapter 7 and how this contrasts with life in the Spirit in chapter 8. If we have understood 5 correctly (sin reigns through death), then we can see that he is drawing out his point about two forms of human life – in the first Adam (7:7ff) and in the 2nd Adam (chapter 8).

1. The Cosmic and Corporate versus the Alienated “I”

Chapter 8 marks the transition in Paul’s argument to the description of an alternative understanding of the human Subject. Where 7:7ff is focused primarily on the isolated individual before the law (with its repeated reference to “I” with its clear reference to Genesis 3:10 and Adam’s self-description), ch. 8 speaks of a corporate identity in the Holy Spirit which has cosmic implications (“those in Christ Jesus” (8:1); “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed” (8.19)). Paul is still working in the universal categories he set out in chapter 5 in contrasting the two Adams, but now the cosmic implications are spelled out.

2. Living Death Versus Life in the Spirit

The Holy Spirit does not appear in ch. 7 but is the theme of ch. 8 (mentioned nineteen times explicitly and the main subject of each section of the chapter). Where ch. 7 focused on describing the dynamics of the body of death (7:24) and agonistic struggle, ch. 8 counters each of the Pauline categories constituting the Subject addressed in ch. 7 with the work of the Spirit, which constitutes a life characterized by peace (8:6). This is perhaps the key contrast; that between the living death of chapter 7 and new life in the Spirit. The Spirit can be equated with life (8:2, 10-11), and with the introduction of the Spirit in 8:2, Paul’s question of 7:24 is definitively answered: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” The fear and slavery under the law of sin and death, with its work through deceptive desire aroused by the law, became “another law,” but this law is now voided along with all of its various machinations.

3. The Ego of Desire or What is Seen Versus a Life of Hope

Paul’s depiction of desire, as with the first couple, is focused on the register of sight. In chapter 7 Paul describes a law of sight (βλέπω v. 23), which as with Adam is connected to the rise of shame and the repeated “I” (I heard, I was afraid, I was naked, I hid, 3:10). Paul’s “I” (ἐgὼ) is exchanged for a life of hope, focused not on the seen but on the unseen (v. 24), which brings about a conformity to the image of the Son (v. 29) (who is not an image or object for the eyes but occupies the Subject position in place of the ego) and a reconstitution of the Subject. As a result, the “I” does not appear in chapter 8 but as in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives within me.”

4. Suffering Under the Law Versus Suffering as a Co-Heir with Christ

Paul describes two forms of suffering in chapters 7 & 8. The work of the law (the law of sin and death) is displaced by the law of the Spirit of life (v. 2) which results in freedom from slavery to fear due to relationship to God as “Abba, Father” (v. 15), reconstituting the Subject a child of God. Paul ties this new relationship to God directly to a different experience of suffering. An implicit element of Paul’s agonistic struggle (in ch. 7) is a depth of suffering which he cannot endure. “Who will rescue me,” he cries, as this suffering is deadly, arising as it does from within. In contrast, the suffering of chapter 8 (the source of which is outside the self), is a sharing in the suffering of Christ which marks one out as a co-heir with Christ of glory (8:17).

5. The Body of Sin and Death Versus Resurrection Life Now

The “body of sin” (6:6) or “body of death” (7.24) is displaced in the resurrection life of the Spirit (8:10-11) which is not a departure from the material body or material reality but the beginning of cosmic redemption (“the redemption of our bodies” (8:23) and the redemption of the cosmos (8:21)). The only resolution to life in the flesh, in the brand of Christianity that reads chapter 7 as the normal Christian life, is future. But in chapter 8, Paul is describing an enacted resurrection life which has defeated this sinful flesh principle in the follower of Christ.

6. Through the Work of Christ People are Made Righteous Versus a Failed Righteousness

There is no work of Christ in Paul’s description of his sinful predicament but only the work of sin and the law (in chapter 7:7ff), but chapter 8 describes how the work of Christ changes up this damnable sort of existence. The punishing effects of the law of sin and death can no longer condemn, as God has condemned the law of sin through the death of Christ (8:1-3) ushering in the law of life in the Spirit. Where 7:7ff described the characteristics of this living death (marked by incapacity), ch. 8 describes life in the Spirit, which sums up the difference God’s righteousness makes. The body is dead due to unrighteousness but the Spirit is life and this is God’s righteousness imparted (8:10). This then results in the capacity to “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (8:4). This walk is characterized in all of its phases by the power of life which enables the mindset and hope of the Subject in Christ.

7. Living in the Lie Versus the Truth of Christ which Exposes the Lie

Paul is describing sin in terms of a deception on the order of the deception foisted on the first couple by the serpent in the Garden. In the opening verses of chapter 8 (countering the opening of 7:7-11), Paul explains how Christ defeats and exposes the lie of sin in the particular death he died. The punishing effects of the law of sin and death (the condemnation he has described in chapter 7) are finished so that there is no condemnation in Christ (8:1). God has “condemned sin in the flesh of Christ” (8:3) so that it can no longer deal out death (an active taking up of death) by deception.

Paul adds to his description in 8:3 by saying “and as a sin-offering.” The sin offering was for the ignorant or unwilling sin, which answers the problem of sin of the “I” (7:15) who does not “know” and does not “will” what he does.[1] Christ does not die for a general wrongdoing but to address the particular work of sin as it appears in ch. 7. This sin which works through deception and ignorance brings about disobedience unto death, and the one who was obedient even unto death makes obedience possible (5:18-20). The disobedience unto death describes an orientation founded in deception (it cannot obey God – it is hostile to God, 8:7) and obedience unto death recognizes death but obeys in light of the resurrection life by which it is empowered (8:11-12). Living according to the lie is to actively die (in death resistance) while to live, in spite of death, is the death acceptance of living in the truth.

8. Life in the Flesh Versus New Life in the Body of Christ

In ch. 7 Paul locates the law of sin “in my members” (7:23), in the flesh (7:25), or as “sin that dwells within me, that is, in my flesh” (7:18). The place from which sin works death is the flesh. As N. T.  Wright explains, the reason there is now no condemnation is “because God has dealt with sin in the flesh, and provided new life for the body.”[2] Those in Christ experience the death to sin and the new life which he provides. The sentence of death is passed on sin in the one who was in the true “likeness of sinful flesh” (8.3), so those who are found in his likeness through baptism (6:5) will also experience this death to sin rather than death by sin.

9. Life in the Split “I” Versus Participation in the Unity of the Trinity

The key difference between the living death of 7:7ff and life in the Spirit of ch. 8, or another way of describing the difference between life and death, is that the death of the “I” divides and alienates, while life in the Spirit is a communion founded by the Father who has sent his Son (8:3) who leads by his Spirit (8:14). The Father is the primary agent who subjected creation in hope (8:20), who makes all things work to the good for those who love him (8:28), who has foreknown and predestined those he called (8:29) and these he has justified and glorified (8:31). This communion is “in Christ Jesus” who was sent to free from the law of sin and death (8:2, 3) by condemning sin in the flesh (8:3), who gives his Spirit of life (8:9) so that those who suffer with him will be glorified together with him (8:17) and who died and was raised and intercedes so that nothing can separate from the love of God (8:34-35). The Spirit is the source of life (8:2) who empowers the walk and mindset of those in whom the He dwells (8:9). The Spirit is God’s righteousness (8:10) whose resurrection power will “give life to your mortal bodies” (8:11) as by his life “you put to death the deeds of the body” (8:13). Through the Spirit adoption as sons enables his sons to cry “Abba” (8:15) and He helps the saints in their weakness and through prayer by interceding for them (8:26-27). The Trinity is a communion in which and through which the new humanity walks (8:4), has their mindset (8:5-8), sonship (8:15), endurance of suffering (8:17) and saving hope (8:20, 24).

10. Shame Versus Glory and Love

Paul, from 7:7ff, is providing a commentary on Genesis 3 which describes the shame of the first couple. He is giving us an interior view of that shame, which is marked by an incapacity for being present for the other (love). Shame marks not only the loss of God’s presence but the possibility of interpersonal love – being there for the other. The anatomy of jealousy, anger, and violence are to be traced in this genealogy of shame. Those who are hiding cannot be present for others or even for themselves but are set in an antagonistic relation with God, self, and others. Paul, in chapter 8, is describing a love that is indestructible and indivisible – nothing can separate us from the love of God found in Christ (8:28).

To miss this contrast between Romans 7:7ff and chapter 8, (which I have only partially filled out) would seem to be on the order of missing the reality of Christianity. There is no prayer, no hope, no Spirit, no Abba, no love, no work of Christ, and no other but only law, desire, deception, unendurable suffering, alienation, and death, in 7:7ff. Compounded with this, to mistake Paul’s description of the damnable (κατάκριμα) life of sin as if it is salvation, would seem to leave one stranded in a punishing life from which there is no deliverance.

[1] Wright, Romans , 579.

[2] Wright, Romans, 575.

(Recent critiques of my blogs on John Calvin, Augustine, and penal substitution have mainly focused on what was not said in a particular blog, when I have usually covered the topic in an accompanying blog. To answer some of these critiques here is a guide to what I have written:

Critique One: “Axton does not reference Calvin directly.” My article on his development of penal substitution is an engagement with the Institutes, “Did John Calvin Invent Penal Substitution?” to be found here and my depiction of his purported confusion of sin and salvation is an engagement with his commentary on Romans, “Has John Calvin Confused the Lie of Sin with Salvation?” is to be found here. My depiction of his work on predestination also deals with the Institutes, “The Gospel as the Mystery Revealed Versus Calvin’s ‘Incomprehensible’ Anti-Gospel” is here. I reference the Institutes in this article dealing with Calvinist assurance of salvation, “Are Calvinists Saved?” which is here . In this piece on Calvin’s view of the necessity of evil, “Acknowledgement of the Problem of Evil as a Test of Authentic Christianity” here I deal with his depiction of evil in the Institutes.

Critique Two: “Axton does no history,” (or something on this order). I have dealt with the Constantinian shift and its impact, “The Shift from Love to Freedom is the Turn to the Law that Kills” here and “The Gospel Versus Constantinian Commonsense” here and here “A Different Form of the Faith: The Constantinian Shift” deals with the history and references a series of primary works. I have dealt with the Augustinian misreading of Romans 5 here in “The Real Tragedy of Augustinian Original Sin.”

Critique Three: “Axton does not recognize Calvin is following Anselm.” Some have objected to my notion that Calvin “invented” Penal Substitution, with reference to Anselm, suggesting he is the true culprit. I have probably written more on Anselm than any other figure and what is not to be missed is that he does set the context in which Calvin is working (along with a host of other factors), nonetheless Calvin is also innovating. I discuss the relationship between the two theories here in “Beyond Divine Satisfaction, Penal Substitution, and Christus Victor to a Healing Atonement” here in “Christ Defeated Sin, Death, and the Devil – Not God’s Wrath,” here in “The Lie Behind Penal Substitution and Divine Satisfaction” and touch upon it here in “Deconstructing ‘Absolute Truth’ to Arrive at the Truth of Christ.”)

Has John Calvin Confused the Lie of Sin with Salvation?

John Calvin may be typical of, or his view comes to typify, those who read Romans 7 as primarily a description of the regenerate, so that Paul’s description of his struggle with sin, his incapacity to carry out what he knows to be right, his alienation within himself, and his existence and identity in the body of death or the body of sin, this “wretched man that I am” (7:24), is as good as it gets on earth. As Calvin explains, “this conflict, of which the Apostle speaks, does not exist in man before he is renewed by the Spirit of God.” The Christian is one who is made aware of his sin condition, and he mainly hopes for a future rescue (when the flesh is gotten rid of) but meanwhile he is made to agonize over his sin and to feel, precisely in his redemption, the acuteness of sin’s effect. Final rescue is focused on deliverance from the wrath of God, provoked by the breaking of the law which contains his righteous decree. In this understanding, Christ died to meet the requirements of the law, and his death is not directly connected to explanation or necessity of an immediate reconstituting of the human Subject, such that he is rid of the sin principle. My argument is that (as depicted in Romans and elsewhere in the New Testament) Christ did not die, primarily, to meet a requirement of the law but to displace a deception which involved the law and in exposing this deception, the Subject described in Romans 8 is born: a Subject no longer controlled by sin and its deception. This means that it is not the law which explains Christ’s death, but sin as it is oriented to the law, and the point of his death is not to save from a future wrath (working according to the law) but from the present tense sin problem (which will certainly pertain to the future).

Is Sin’s Deception Resolved Through the Law or is it Confounded with the Law?

The two readings revolve around the concept of deception in Romans 7:11. I believe Paul depicts sin’s deception in regard to the law as key to understanding the human predicament. Calvin, in his Commentary on Romans, passes over sin’s deception in regard to the law and presumes that the law exposes the deception. It is, according to Calvin, “through the light which the law throws on the turpitude of sin” that sin is revealed. This does not explain why there is the possibility, as Paul presents it, of confusing sin and the law or why or how the law is the means of death and deception. Paul says explicitly (vs. 10), “The very commandment that promised life proved death to me.” Paul is describing how sin distorts the law in its relation to the sinful self. The “command which promised life” serves as an explanation for the content of the deception connected with sin.

James Dunn maintains that life is not to be had in the law (due to sin), while Günther Bornkamm thinks this positing of life directly in the law is the deception which sin always works.[1] Calvin maintains a separation between the deception and the law, and seems to miss what commentators like Dunn and Bornkamm are pointing to – sin distorts the law, such that we imagine that it contains life and righteousness in itself. As Calvin puts it (without reference to the deception), “the commandment shows to us a way of life in the righteousness of God.”

 The obstacle contained within sin, according to Calvin, is “corruption.” But Calvin presumes this corruption pertains to the breaking of the law (which results in death) and not to an attempt to gain life through the law (where avoiding death is the motivating factor). He says, “it is incidental that the law inflicts on us a deadly wound, as when an incurable disease is more exasperated by a healing remedy.” The law then, in Calvin’s explanation, is part of the cure and not intertwined with sin and death in the human imagination. This leaves corruption something of a mystery, while Paul’s point seems to be to explain how sin works through the law by means of a deception.

Calvin renders deception as that which “led me out of the way” of the law. Rather than the law being the occasion for sin, which is Paul’s point, Calvin explains the verse as saying, “as we begin then only to perceive our erroneous course, when the Lord loudly reproves us . . .” That is, he is separating the “erroneous course” and the law, preserving the law from its entanglement with the deception. He renders the verse as making precisely the opposite of Paul’s point: “Paul says rightly, that we are led out of the way, when sin is made evident by the law.” Paul is not saying sin is made evident by the law, he is saying sin uses the law to obscure its sinfulness (holding out the promise of life in the face of death). Calvin’s explanation makes nonsense of Paul’s explanation, as why would sin being made evident by the law be the occasion for sin? Calvin seems to mean that sin was already present prior to the law but the giving of the law exposed what was already present. This is a perfectly logical thing to say, but it is not Paul’s point and does not accord with Paul’s overall argument. Paul is not explaining an easy thing or a thing that comes naturally, but the opposite; he is explaining how sin’s deception works through the law.

Set in the context of Genesis, the majority consensus as to understanding what law Paul is referencing and who the “I” is, there is not a time prior to the prohibition. The logical sequence of vv. 10-11 is that of Genesis 3: the prohibition posed the possibility of life; sin or the serpent deceived me; and “I” died. The prohibition or law is itself the indicator (the opportunity – ἀφορμὴν– the base of operations) that something more (life beyond God) is available – it points out the opportunity for life and knowledge. “You shall not die” (Gen. 3.4) indicates God is the liar and the prohibition a cover warding man away from enjoying the privileges of God. The serpent’s lie (3.4) negates death but then the negation is negated under a supposed truth (3.5) of life in the broken law (what Paul calls “the law of sin and death”). The serpent, which Paul simply calls sin, deceives in regard to the prohibition (“You won’t die, you will be like God”).  Breaking the law or manipulating the law or making the law one’s own, in the depiction of the serpent/sin, will provide access to life without resort to God or to the tree of life.

The prohibition was only life-giving in the sense that it kept open access to God’s life, but the law per se is not life giving. The perception that ἐντολὴ ὴ εἰς ζωήν is the promise of life in the law is skewed by sin so as to remove the necessity of God as the giver of life. According to Dunn, to still imagine, after sin, that life is in the law, reflects a common Jewish misconception (is it also Calvin’s misconception?). Dunn raises the possibility that the law contains life: “Does Paul mean that the commandment was intended to bring about life, to lead to life (NEB, NJB), that is, a life not yet possessed?” Such a reading, he maintains, does not fit with Paul’s understanding of the law as stated elsewhere but reflects a misreading which Paul is repudiating. What is not to be missed, he concludes, “is the implied sharp reverse to and rebuttal of the traditional Jewish assumption that the law/commandment promoted life.” The correct nuance is to understand that the law keeps one in a life-giving relationship with God, but it is this relationship to God (and not with the law or the negative prohibition of Genesis) that is the true source of life.[2]

 Calvin concludes that “we do nothing but wander from the right course, until the law shows to us the way of living rightly.” Paul’s depiction of how the law is distorted through sin, seeming to hold out life and in its deception producing death, is passed over by Calvin. He works with a blunt notion of sin that simply contrasts flesh and spirit, and equates being in the flesh or body as an incapacity to keep the law. In his explanation, all of human life stands outside of the spirit in its transgressive relationship to the law. In Paul’s version, according to Ernst Käsemann, the lie is embraced under the presumption that life is to be had in the law (7.10) through spiritual achievement – yet it is not clear how Calvin’s depiction of spiritual achievement (through Christ) is a departure from this lie.[3]

At a minimum, Calvin misses Paul’s explanation of the specific function of sin through the law and how this gives rise to a world of deception. The lie of sin is not simply a problem of the heart (though it is that); it poses itself as an alternative epistemology or means of gaining life and truth through knowing (the knowledge of good and evil). The lie of sin undermines truth: even God’s truth as given in the oracles of the law (Rom. 3.3) is subject to the deceit of sin. What truth can stand the distortion of the lie? This distortion is inclusive of the truth of the “I” or ἐγὼ; the most intimate truth, that of human identity. The human project is set upon saving the self, but the deception obscures access even to what a self might be. The notion that I have immediate access to myself or the law cannot stand in light of Paul’s picture of the delusion.

Does Christ Save from Sin and Death or from God?

If I am correct in my understanding of Paul, this also means that Calvin sets aside the work of Christ in defeating the lie of sin. By imagining a transparent access to God through the law and picturing the wretched man of chapter 7 as regenerate man, Calvin seems to be conflating Paul’s depiction of the problem with the solution. If the majority of commentators are correct, in seeing chapter 7 in connection to the portrayal of Adam, then Calvin is confusing the self-torturing sinful mind with a depiction of salvation. This fits with his notion of penal substitution, which reduces the work of the cross to a function within the economy of the law, which goes all the way with the lie that there is life in the law. This seems to miss that the biblical focus is upon salvation from sin and death, not deliverance from the wrath of the Father.

Taking into account that the original lie of the serpent was that the law could be manipulated so as to produce life and that God was perceived to be the obstacle to life, Calvin, in passing over the deception, seems to have reproduced it. By confusing the problem with the solution, is it possible that Calvinism is (at least at this point of confusion) a manifestation of the problem from which Christ saves?  

[1] Dunn, Romans, 383. Bornkamm, Early Christian Experience, 90. Thanks to Matt Welch for editing and discussing this article.

[2] Dunn, Romans, 384.

[3] Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, 198