Re: Roma 7:5 TA PAQHMATA TWN hAMARTIWN

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Tue, 22 Apr 1997 19:28:36 -0500

At 2:11 PM -0500 4/22/97, Jeffrey Gibson wrote:
>On Tue, 22 Apr 1997, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>
>> Roma 7:5 (GNT) hOTE GAR HMEN EN THi SARKI, TA PAQHMATA TWN hAMARTIWN TA DIA
>> TOU NOMOU ENHRGEITO EN TOIS MELESIN hHMWN, EIS TO KARPOFORHSAI TW QANATW:
>>
>> TA PAQHMATA TWN hAMARTIWN is almost always translated "sinful passions".
>> When I read this though, I first read it as "the sufferings of sin". Here's
>> a traditional translation from the New American Standard, followed by a
>> translation from the Little Greek Translation which reflects the way I had
>> read it initially:
>>
>> Roma 7:5 (NASU) For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which
>> were [aroused] by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear
>> fruit for death.
>> Roma 7:5 (LGT) For while we were in the flesh, the sufferings of sin, which
>> were effected in our bodies through the law, that we might bear fruit
>>for death.
>>
>> This makes sense in terms of the suffering we have under the weight of the
>> law, our inability to live up to its demands, and the inevitable
>> condemnation we fall under if we try to earn our way by following the law.
>>
>> What do you think - does this second translation also have merit?
>
>It makes some sense but not, I think, for the reasons you think it does.
>No where does Paul express anything about anyone's (especially
>his own) inability to keep the law, or that he ever perceived the Law as
>something which would break those who attempted to keep it. In fact his
>testimony in Phil 3 is quite the opposite. And his statement about the
>Law being a "tutor" unto Christ - a statement that is often used as a
>prooftext for the idea that the Law exists to break us, to make us
>realize that we fall under condemnation if we try to earn "salvation" by
>following its demands, and therefore as a filter through which this
>passage in Romans is read - misunderstands what PAEDAGOGOS
>meant in 1CE and in Paul's intention. Perhaps the passage needs to
>be read, as Krister Stendhal implies, as the sufferings that Paul
>inflicted upon Christians before his "call", suffereings which arise not so
>much from trying to follow the itself Law (which, after all, is holy, just,
>and good), as what now appears to Paul as a misreading of what
>the Law demands.
>
>In any case, here is an instance of a question of exegesis that
>cannot be settled on grammatical grounds alone. It needs to be answered
>within the wider context of Paul's view of the "keepability" of the Law.

I'm sorry not to know how to abbreviate the material cited above, but the
little bit I have to add to this discussion addresses both Jonathan's and
Jeffrey's messages. And what I have to say is more in the way of
reservations and hints at alternatives than of any notion of how this
phrase, TA PAQHMATA TWN hAMARTIWN, ought necessarily to be read.

(1) I think Krister Stendahl's little book of essays (I forget the title,
perhaps _Paul among Jews and Gentiles_?) containing that important study
asserting that Paul was called rather than converted is one that people
ought to read and think about. I have to say that I'm not as convinced of
his viewpoint as I once was, one major reason being that I think that
Paul's rhetorical thrust and the context of his addressing concerns of
different congregations in different letters led him to formulate his ideas
in ways that are not so easily reconciled with each other from one writing
to the next. I don't mean that I think he was inconsistent, just that his
focus in different contexts led him to different emphases--such that a
reader of 1 Corinthians might have some difficulty discerning the same
attitude toward traditional Jewish standards as is expressed in Galatians.
So I am not altogether convinced that the passage in Philippians 3:6b KATA
DIKAIOSUNHN THN EN NOMWi GENOMENOS AMEMPTOS is to be taken at pure face
value any more than his claim in Gal 1:16 that he didn't communicate after
his call with any human being ("flesh and blood"). I'm not trying to say
Stendahl is wrong, just that one needs to evaluate his argument carefully.
At any rate, I don't think Phil 3:6b is sufficient evidence that Paul
consistently held that perfect obedience to the Law of Moses is within the
capacity of any human being.

(2) With regard to the phrase PAQHMATA TWN hAMARTIWN I think that it might
be worth taking into account the possibility that the word PATHHMA is being
used, as was the word PAQOS/PAQH, in a sense akin to or even identical with
the Stoic usage for "irrational emotions"--uncontrollable impulses. The
objective of Stoic ethics was achievement of a condition of APAQIA, which
doesn't mean quite what our word "apathy" does, but which definitely
involves liberation from subjectivity to impulses that upset one's psychic
equilibrium, among which PAQH the Stoics counted joy and grief, love and
hatred, which emotions they deemed powerful enough to overwhelm the self's
freedom to respond rationally. Now it seems to me that Paul's conception of
SIN is very much like the Stoic conception of the PAQH: it is an enslaving
power that compels human beings to do what is self-destructive and
mutually-destructive. I think that such an understanding of the meaning of
PAQHMATA may in fact underly the traditional phrasing of our translations
of this passage: "sinful passions." And of course, there's also the
principle that genitive nouns can very often be readily converted into
adjectives qualifying the nouns to which they refer.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/