My commentaries tell me that more ink has been spilt on this chapter of Romans than on any other passage in Paul’s Letters and it not hard to see why; Paul is disarmingly frank about his own experience and makes an extraordinary claim, that it is the Law which brought about Sin. Although approached subjectively and rhetorically, Paul’s subject is of universal and perennial interest – why do we carry on doing things which know are wrong, damaging to ourselves and others?
Paul does not always mean the same thing by the Law, but the important meaning which he contrasts with Sin, is the Law of Moses and specifically to the Ten Commandments. These were the Laws literally handed to Moses by God. They, with many amplifications, were to form the basis for the Israelites’ society in the Promised Land. If the Israelites keep these Commandments they will live long and fulfilled lives in the Promised Land.
The word which we translate as “Sin” is the Greek word, hamartia which means principally failure or failing; both an instance doing wrong and a propensity to fail. Failure to achieve the fulfilling life which is promised to those who obey the Law is a sort of death, and so Paul following the writers of the Books of Moses, equates sin with death.
The Law, and specifically the Ten Commandments are divinely inspired and in that sense spiritual. They are also contrasted with worldliness, the body and flesh as it is the specious but beguiling attractions of the world or our own carnal appetites which may tempt us away from doing what we know we should do. The flesh is fallible and its sinful failures are a sort of death because they deprive us of full life.
Plato and Aristotle would recognise the struggle that exercises Paul so vividly. Plato, following Socrates, thought no one would willingly do wrong; if we were fully rational, we would always see that the more attractive course was the morally better one. Aristotle saw that this was somewhat unrealistic and recognised a spectrum of dispositions, distinguishing between, first, the thoroughly bad (those who acknowledged no sort of evil) ; through to those who knew what was right but failed to do it- the akratics or those lacking self-control; then those who had the self-control to overcome their desire to do wrong, but still had those desires; fourth , and last, the saintly- or philosophical- individuals who never even wanted to do anything wrong, living something very like what Paul describes as the Spiritual life. Paul, as he describes himself in Romans would be akratic; he knows what is right, but can’t manage to do it. Most of us probably fall into that category; I certainly do.
Paul adds perceptive psychology to this mix. It’s a little farfetched to think that one would never have considered being covetous, if there had been no tenth commandment forbidding it. Innocent toddlers can be jealous. But Paul is right as anyone who has been a teenager, or who has been parent or teacher of one, will know; forbidding any activity is the surest way of making it exactly what a teenager wants to do. Prohibition engenders desire.
This alludes, subtly, to another divine prohibition that first brought about disobedience and sin. It has always seemed to me that God was asking for trouble in telling Adam and Eve on no account to eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden.
There is a contrariness in human nature which Paul pinpoints with this dramatic account of his own experience. This sinfulness is hamartia as fallibility- a disposition to fail morally and for Paul its origin and cause is essentially the sinfulness or weakness of the flesh, or the body and equally the physical and social world around us. For Paul the only escape is to ignore or control our bodily desires and adopt a spiritual existence. This high minded advice is made a little easier because, of course, Paul believes the second coming is imminent.
Paul’s account of his struggle is highly subjective and his resolution idealistic, but he must be intending to generalise from his own experience. Why else recount it? He would want us to ask how that experience is relevant to our own condition.
Although not quite as we might frame it, his belief in divine Law and our potentially spiritual nature still has force. Conventional contemporary ethics- such as a belief in human rights; a qualified respect for personal property; and values which put society’s and the environment’s interests above those of the individual or the powerful, all derive from the thoughts of Christian philosopher theologian. They would ultimately base their as his creatures have the same duty of love to our fellow creatures and creation. Aligning ourselves with that loving imperative is another way, I suggest, of living a Paul’s spiritual and Christ-like life. It is, I think, the absence of this imperative which makes humanism seem so barren. However, idealistic, the possibility of acting as Christ’s agent, even in the smallest way is life enhancing.
The aspect of Paul’s philosophy with which I find harder to empathise is the association of sin with the body, the world and death. Our physical appetites are clearly prone to selfishness and anti-social behaviour, but they are also the source of great enjoyment -and much of it shared with others. And we are only part of the world which God created and saw that it was good. So, spiritual values should direct carnal action; they need not be divorced from our physical selves and become meaningless if they are.
Sex is an obvious example of physicality which in its kaleidoscopic variety can be an expression of enjoyment and of life giving love but is equally capable of distortion and a means of cruelty and selfish empowerment. It is largely thanks to Paul that the Church has managed for so long to equate sex with sin, and paradoxically death. We should be thankful that the absurd phrase “Living in sin” is little heard now.
Generally, I suggest Paul lets his own experience overemphasise our sinful frailty; the word, hamartia is used 49 times in all four Gospels. Paul uses it 57 times in his epistles (42 of them in Romans) and the Paul’s epistles are half as long as the Gospels. I have not counted but I suspect a similar comparison would be found between Common Prayer and Common Worship. Paul’s perceptions are valuable, but need not be overwhelming, and they need not suffer from reinterpretation for our own condition. Amen.