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The ‘cosmic terrorist’: Reconsidering sin as personal agent
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 August 2022
Abstract
An important contemporary approach to understanding a Pauline account of sin takes sin to be a self or personal agent who acts in the world. This article engages with such a proposal by offering theological analysis. It is argued that the exegetical arguments in favour of the proposal that sin is a personal agent are less than convincing, and it is argued further that the theory encounters serious theological problems.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 de Boer, Martinus C., ‘Paul's Mythologizing Program in Romans 5–8’, in Gaventa, Beverly Roberts (ed.), Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5–8 (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013), pp. 12–13Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., p. 13.
3 Ibid., p. 14.
4 J. Louis Martyn, ‘Afterword: The Human Moral Dilemma’, in Apocalyptic Paul, p. 161.
5 Ibid., p. 163.
6 Beverly Roberts Gaventa, ‘The Shape of the “I”: The Psalter, the Gospel, and the Speaker in Romans 7’, in Apocalyptic Paul, p. 77.
7 Gaventa, Beverly Roberts, Our Mother Saint Paul (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), p. 130Google Scholar.
8 Croasmun, Matthew, The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans (New York: OUP, 2017), p. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Ibid., p. 13.
10 Ibid., p. 12.
11 Ibid., pp. 12, 14.
12 Ibid., pp. 12–13. Croasmun draws from David J. Southall at this point.
13 Ibid., pp. 15–20.
14 Ibid., p. 20.
15 Ibid., p. 21.
16 Ibid., p. 23.
17 Ibid., p. 25.
18 See ibid., pp. 27–35.
19 Ibid., pp. 189–90. This is Croasmun's own example.
20 Ibid., p. 60.
21 Ibid., pp. 60–1.
22 Ibid., pp. 74–80.
23 Ibid., p. 99.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., pp. 124–5.
27 Ibid., p. 176.
28 Or, minimally, can be personal agents.
29 Croasmun, The Emergence of Sin, p. 27. In context, I take this to be a prescriptive (rather than merely descriptive) claim.
30 Ibid., p. 102.
31 Ibid., p. 57.
32 De Boer, ‘Paul's Mythologizing’, p. 13.
33 See further Röhser, Günter, Metaphorik und Personifikation der Sünde (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987)Google Scholar.
34 See Gaventa, Our Mother Saint Paul, p. 134.
35 Croasmun, The Emergence of Sin, p. 117.
36 Ibid., p. 118.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 According to the law known as the ‘Indiscernibility of Identicals’: (∀x) (∀y) [x = y => (∀F) (F(x) <=> F(y))].
41 The use of the distributive singular is not uncommon in the LXX – which was, after all, Paul's ‘Bible’. For further discussion, see Sunny Chen, ‘The Distributive Singular in Paul: The Adequacy of a Grammatical Category’, Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism (2015), pp. 104–30. On the use of sōma in the LXX, see Gundry, Robert H., SOMA in Biblical Theology: With an Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (Cambridge: CUP, 1976), pp. 16–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 Paul's ability to use these formulations interchangeably is not uncommon; with respect to σώμα, Paul uses it as a singular with plural personal genitive pronouns in Rom 6:12, 8:23, 1 Cor 6:19–20 and 2 Cor 4:10. He uses it as plural with plural personal genitive pronouns in Rom 1:24, 8:11, 12:1 and 1 Cor 6:15. For further discussion see Chen, ‘Distributive Singular’, p. 113.
43 A similar sort of claim was made in the latter part of the sixteenth century, when the so-called Gnesio-Lutherans, led by Matthias Flacius Illyricus, insisted that we should straightforwardly refer to sin as a ‘substance’. Other Lutherans recoiled at this notion, and a debate ensued. A resolution was hammered out in the Formula of Concord, according to which sin is not a substance but instead is an accident. The defenders of this position argued for their conclusion from christology and the doctrine of creation, and their decision left no room for doubt: a recognition of the Creator–creature distinction and the conviction that the Creator is wholly and simply good demands it.
44 In the incarnation, the Son who is divine becomes human; i.e. the person who existed as a divine person also takes upon himself a human nature. Whether this human nature is best understood as abstract or concrete need not detain us here; for non-Nestorians, at least, the person who is the Son does not add another human person to his identity. So the incarnate Son is both divine and human, but he is not a human person who is added to a divine person. The incarnate Son is not, then, strictly speaking, a created person but instead is an uncreated divine person who is also fully and completely human in virtue of the created human nature that he has assumed.
45 The Formula of Concord, art. 1, in The Creeds of Christendom: With a History and Critical Notes, vol. 3: The Evangelical Protestant Creeds, 6th edn, ed. Philip Schaff, revised by David S. Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2007), pp. 97–106.
46 For detailed discussion, see McCall, Thomas H., Against God and Nature: The Doctrine of Sin (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), pp. 124–35Google Scholar, 227–34.