Resources On Romans 7

Romans 7 is one of the more difficult passages in Paul’s epistles and perhaps in the New Testament. On Romans 7:14, Chrysostom wrote of man generically “comporting himself in the law.”1 He explained the struggle of sin as the struggle between the soul and the body. George B. Stevens correctly detected in Chrysostom no hint of controversy over the identity of the speaker in Romans 7. There does not seem to have been much controversy over the passage until when, in the late 4th century, Pelagius asserted that Paul was adopting a persona, a mask, and speaking as though he were an unbeliever.2 He knew a priori, before he ever came to the text that this passage could not be speaking of a Christian. Augstine, however, consistently, in his anti-Pelalgian writings, understood Paul to be speaking as a Christian about his own struggle with sin.3 He appealed repeatedly to Romans 7:14–15 as though those verses spoke of Paul as a believer. Augustine’s position became the default view of the Western Church through the post-Reformation period with a notable excpetion (below). The Augustinian view was taken up by Calvin and confessed by the Reformed churches uniformly.

In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, however, Arminius proposed a version of the Pelgian reading of Paul, that, in Romans 7, for rhetorical purposes, he adopted a persona He concluded, “the Apostle in this passage is treating neither about himself, such as he was then was, nor about a man living under grace; but he has transferred to himself the person of a man placed under the law.”4 He also phrased his view thus: “The Apostle in this passage is not treating about a man who is already regenerate through the Spirit of Christ; but has assumed the person of a man who is not yet regenerate.”5  See Joel Kim’s 2010 essay on the history of interpretation from Erasmus to Arminius (see below).

There have been a bewildering number of interpretations of Romans 7 in the modern period. Stephen Voorwinde surveyed them in 2018. The tendency among evangelical and even Reformed interpreters has been to move away from the Augustinian view. Below are some resources which re-state the traditional Augustinian and Reformed view.

Table of Contents

Articles

Podcasts and Sermons

Quotations

More Resources on Romans>

NOTES

  1. John Chrysostom, Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, in Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. J. B. Morris, W. H. Simcox, and George B. Stevens, vol. 11, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1889), 427.
  2. Pelagius,  Pelagius’s Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: Translated with Introduction and Notes. Trans. Theodore de Bruyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 105.
  3. Augustine quotes and alludes to these verses dozens of times in his anti-Pelagian works, e.g., Augustine of Hippo, A Treatise on the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and on the Baptism of Infants,” (1.27.43; 2.10.15) in Saint Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Peter Holmes, vol. 5, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1887); Augustine of Hippo, A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter in Saint Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Peter Holmes, vol. 5, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1887), (cap. 25).
  4. The Works of James Arminius, trans. James Nichols and William Nichols, The London Edition, 3 vols (repr. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 2.491.
  5. Ibid., 2.491.

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