Romans 5: 12-21 Tangled Theology

Introduction
When writing about Paul, the presenting story is often not the whole story. Too often, we approach biblical text and tune in to the story that makes sense to us. But Paul’s writing does not allow this. His letters are not simply narrative accounts of the purpose or function of Christ’s presence in the world, instead, his text is potent theology, dense, but with enormous gaps, logical, but inconsistent, linear, but tangled.

The purpose of this essay was to explore the passage of Romans 5:12-21, with particular reference to Paul’s understanding of sin. However, of course, it’s not that simple. How do you arrange an essay to cover the most salient points of this area, when other issues, such as the relation of sin and the law, or the absence of Eve, or the concepts of space and time, keep intruding into the discourse?

The solution is to break the text into distinct parts, all the while acknowledging that such an approach risks separating ideas that are in some way inseparable.

The first part will cover the text and commentary with a “linear approach”. That is, it will discuss the history and context of the text, and approach the text in a form that follows the pattern: A happened, B happened and C is the result.

Paul’s context as a first century Jewish writer will be explored, particularly those underlying influences in his social context which clearly had impact on the way he wrote and thought. Following this, (with the assistance of a number of commentators whose work fits within a linear framework), the primary notions of Adam, sin and its effect and Christ will be canvassed.

The second part will deal with the tangle of theology and interpretation that Paul’s approach evinces. It is in this chapter that the gaps, the questions and the limitations of the linear approach become more apparent. As such, understandings of sin and grace become more amorphous and less stable and the Adam/Christ illustration invites us into paradox.

The third part will conclude the essay, but in the end provides no conclusion at all. Instead, it will stay within the paradox of the reality of those who as contingent creatures in history, name themselves Christian.

Part 1 - The Linear Approach

1 Introduction
Paul wrote with passion. He used all his skills as a rhetorician because he wanted people to understand what they believed – he wanted to convince those to whom he wrote that the death and resurrection of Christ signified more than just a prophetic event in human history. Rather that something had happened that had transformed not only their existence, but creation itself.

The juxtaposition of Adam and Christ in Romans 5:12-21, is designed to illustrate, with a broad sweep of significance, the concepts of sin and death, with grace and righteousness. On first reading the logic of the argument is apparent. Through one man, Adam, sin and death came into the world; through Christ grace and justification now exercise dominion in life. While this is not all that Paul says in this text, the broad sweep of the language implies a historical pattern, and it is this approach which dominates commentary.

2. Paul as a writer
2.1 Literary form
The use of Adam and Christ as parallel examples can be understood as a literary technique to illustrate a theological point. The naming of Adam, (in Hebrew the word for the plural sense of “man”) can be read as the naming of humanity. This, it has been argued would be consistent with contemporary Jewish thought, so that the sin and death of Adam, is read as the story of the sin and death of all who are human.
Dunn elaborates by explaining that Paul would have been operating well within the stream of Jewish theological method when he drew on Adam to illustrate all that embodied the human experience of sin and death , and the broader context of Genesis itself to explain the human condition.
2.2 Use of scripture
Throughout his letters Paul uses scripture to emphasise his arguments. Adam is used several times to illustrate a fallen existence, most notably in 1 Cor 15: 21-22, which again contrasts “death in Adam” and “life in Christ.”
Watson argues that Paul engages with Old Testament text in a manner that brought new meaning out of old paradigms. He asserts that Paul’s exegetical approach to the text was unique. Paul used the text, in conversation with Jewish tradition, to illustrate the epochal transition that had occurred with Christ. As such, the biblical stories in the Old Testament were used to illustrate the transition from promise (Genesis) to legislation (Exodus), from law as the promise of life (Leviticus) to law’s curse (Deuteronomy).

Within this paradigm Watson argues that the typological exegesis of Adam and Christ was in order to emphasise the singularity of Adam’s act which had universal scope, and the singularity of Christ’s action, which was the antithesis of Adam’s action.

2.3 Literary purpose
Thus, on an immediate reading Paul’s text allows for an understanding that the fate of Adam/Humanity which is sin and death has been overcome by Christ. But greater appreciation of the theological significance of the statement is gained when it is understood that the Adam/Christ juxtaposition was a typology unique to Paul.

Thus it becomes more than a neat illustration of the effect of Christ on the world, but also a theological commentary on those who chose to live in Christ, those who did not, and their respective status at the end of history.

The same position is advanced by Esler, however he posits an alternative view to the use of Adam and Christ as anthropological prototypes. Instead he argues that while the two may serve as contrasts in epochs,
“Paul also makes much of the fact that it was a single person who brought about these results, with the word “one” used in relation to Adam or Christ eleven times in these five verses.”

His assertion is that Paul establishes the two as polarities in order to “press the case for belonging to one rather than the other.” That Paul was pressing people to make a decision about Christ is axiomatic. What appears even more important to Paul is that people understood the nature and consequence of that choice. Kasemann argues that the parallel use of Adam and Christ was to stress the “antithetical correspondence of the two bearers of destiny” arguing that;
“The context proves that the justification of the ungodly is at issue. We do not have a mere change of course or expunging of prior guilt but transition from one aeon to another and to that extent existential change.”
Further it appears that Paul’s intention was to convince his readers that making this choice had consequences for their daily lives. Dunn argues that Paul’s conviction was that,
“the epochal transition from the first Adam to the last Adam, from death to life must be echoed in human lives, that the transition made by Christ himself must be mirrored in individuals (and communities) themselves making or experiencing a similar transition.”

2.4 Apocalyptic paradigm
Paul’s use of the Christ/Adam typology was in order not just to reassure believers about their faith, but to explain the cosmological consequence of their choice, and the concrete implications of that. This approach is not surprising when it is considered that Paul spoke in an era when apocalyptic cosmology was not foreign to the Jewish worldview. Paul thus adapts this apocalyptic framework and incorporates Christ as a signifier of the power of God in the new era.

The power of the images used by Paul, are not fully understood unless the impact of the contrast between life and death are fully appreciated. Paul’s association of Adam with fallen-ness contains within it the association of the uncontrolled and powerful thrall of death. Within this framework Christ does not just overcome the death, but restores the world to its pre fallen state. The world returns to the original state that God had created, and it is the end of the age of Adam.
The message was implicit that Paul and the followers of Christ were, or were shortly to be witnesses to the inauguration of this new, restored age. Paul’s assertion was that Christ event was a decisive act of God, but was not the final act of the restoration. The “full and visible establishment (of the Kingdom would)…occur when Jesus returns to judge all humankind.”
It is at this point that we can begin to understand the development of the concept of atoning sacrifice. If the argument was that Christ inaugurated a new aeon, why was it not yet here? From this perspective it is easy to see how the death of Christ can be reduced to the precipitator of a chain of events which would culminate in the realisation of the kingdom.

However, Elliot has argued that Jesus’ obedience to death and resurrection has greater significance than the concept of the atoning sacrifice. He maintains that Paul, by arguing that “the free gift does correspond to the trespass, it is much more” is asserting that by rising from death, Christ brought life out of death. The implication is that Christ does not just reverse a mistake, but transforms the power of death.

On this reading, the apocalyptic framework is insufficient to contain the event that Paul is attempting to explain.

3. Paul the Theologian
Paul’s approach therefore pushes the reader into what appears to have been a new theological paradigm. Exploring the concepts that Paul uses within the text is useful in grasping some of the implications inherent in his approach.

3.1 Adam
Paul names Adam as the one person through whom sin came into the world. Verse 12 reads as if this was an accepted fact among the readers. However, approaches differ as to what this might mean.

One approach is to see Adam as an active agent. Namely it was his transgression which was met with obedience, his condemnation which was met by justification and his death which was met by life. Adam as a character is placed in the position where his action originates sin, which then becomes a condition of the world.

Another approach however is to see sin as the active presence, which uses the transgression of Adam to enter the world. Adam in this scenario is almost cast as a hapless harbinger, rather than an originator of sin. The implication is,
“that sin is more than something people do that is wrong. It is a power that can act, and once let loose, cannot easily be stopped.”

The different approaches have dramatic effect on understanding what Paul may have understood when he wrote of sin’s worldly existence. Did people inherit the sin because of the flaw in Adam, or did they participate in the sin because of its overwhelming nature? Both Zeisler and Esler argue that Adam’s action was to “unleash sin into the world”, and the idea of transmitted sin comes too close to absolving people from their own responsibility for sin.

What does appear clear however is Paul’s use of Adam sets him at least in a theological camp with perceives sin as “other” than God’s intention. God is not responsible for a flawed creation; Adam had something to do with it.

3.2 Sin and death
Trying to derive a picture of Paul’s understanding of sin from this passage alone is not possible. Instead Dunn notes that the primary intention of the text was to illustrate the effects of sin in the human experience.

However, while Paul may not have intended to explore the origins of sin; his unique use of the Adam/Christ parallel forces a re-examination of the concept. Especially as it appears that Paul’s approach differed significantly from that of his contemporaries.

Dunn notes that while there had been scriptural tradition for understanding humanity’s condition for evil, “it is not really possible…to speak of a Jewish scriptural tradition of “the fall.” Further, while post biblical literature in 2nd temple Judaism showed that the “human condition” was a theme which had been taken up in common discourse, the concept was not so much as “original sin”, but the consciousness that humanity had great capacity for sin.

Using Adam to explain why humanity was beset by sin radically alters this understanding, especially in light of other Pauline texts referring to sin. One point to note is that Paul treats sin as if it were a separate identity or power: sometimes personified, as in Rom 6:12 and, at 5:13 as an attribute. This approach, which appears to be mainly confined to the letter to the Romans, is explained by Dunn as,
“indicat(ing) a tremendous sense on Paul’s own part of sin as a power bearing down upon himself and upon humankind generally.”

So Paul’s use of Adam as the originator of sin is to emphasise the singularity of the event. It is this interpretation that drives the Augustinian notion of “original sin”.
St Augustine’s theology that humanity is a lump of sin which can do nothing toward its own salvation (despite the misreading of 5:12) is based on the effect that Adam’s action in the world condemned all.
The global breadth of sin is explained by Paul through the use and repetition of apocalyptic terms such as “death spread to all,” “death exercised dominion,” “trespass brought condemnation” and “judgement.” The language continues the implication that rather than sin being a matter of individual behaviour, cosmic forces were at work in the world. Thus,
“The person is not seen primarily as the subject of his history; he is its object and projection. He is in the grip of forces which seize his existence and determine his will and responsibility at least to the extent that he cannot choose freely but can only grasp what is already there.”
The immediate effect of the power of sin is named by Paul as death. This was the immediate reality of the earthly life for Paul’s readers and having stated the nexus between sin and death, Paul goes no further in explaining this.

Thus death is named as a cosmic consequence of sin, rather than as a natural state. It is by framing the mortality of humanity in this way that Paul sets up the extraordinary claims he makes of Christ, and why the concept of atoning sacrifice is not sufficient to explain his claims.

3.3 Christ
If Adam represents the cosmic force of sin, a parallel reading would name Christ as the cosmic force of life. But as we have seen, neither the parallel or apocalyptic reading of the text appears sufficient to capture Paul’s Christology.

While Paul’s reference to Christ as the second Adam at 1 Cor.15, 45, 47 points to the eschatological character of his thought the Adam/Christ parallel tends to focus the impact of Christ on his ability to overcome death. Romans 5:12-21 however, emphasises that there is no equivalency between the characters; and Christ, even as an eschatological Adam introduces more than the cancelling out of sin and death. Instead the introduction of grace through Christ into the fabric of history, transcends any form of creation that had come before.
The implication of this understanding is where the historically linear approach to the text starts to unravel. If the free gift is not like the trespass, then what is it like? Zeisler says it is a new way of being human that is free from the oppressive power of sin. Kasemann says it is the power of grace to effect a new creation, which finds its outcome in dikaioma (justification).”
Watson’s approach is to argue that Paul uses Adam as an analogy from the dawn of human history, which as a type is subordinate to Christ. He uses examples of Paul’s language such as “abundance of grace” and even “hyperabounded” (v.21) to make the point that Paul was emphasising the incommensurable asymmetry of the two.
Elliot tries to capture the concept when he writes,
“This is why the atoning significance of Jesus’ death disappears in Romans 6, supplanted by an apocalyptic scheme of fields of power…Through baptism, the death and resurrection of Christ transfers men and women from the cosmic sphere of the power of sin and death to the sphere of God’s justifying, sanctifying and life giving power.”

It is here that we leave the linear approach behind. Paul’s attempt to convey the theology involved in the effect of God’s grace in human history must be drawn from more creative ways of approaching the text.

Part 2 – The Tangled Approach

1. Introduction
The difficulty in the tangled approach is that our contingent reality and the constraints of our understanding of time and history do little justice to Paul’s letters. As a result those who grapple with the inherent “God” themes in Paul either find neat packets of meaning or move in realms of theology which are difficult to comprehend.

The result is that we find threads of meaning that disappear into the distance, vanish into thin air, or even appear from the gaps in the text. What does become apparent however is that using Christ to signify a new creation as an “eschatological Adam” loses its usefulness as a metaphor the closer one looks. This section of the essay will attempt to follow some of those threads.
2. Much more
Kasemann, still operating in a linear exegetical framework, struggles with the opening out of the implications of those who receive “the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness.” But he knows it is there. He writes that participation in the basileia is anticipated in justification. But as only Christ has already been raised, our eschatological reality is that we participate in the life of the future world. Thus, we live in the realm of possibility.
It is Barth however who truly explodes the linear notion of history. In his commentary on Adam and Christ, his premise is that the starting point of the theology is Christ. Reading Paul’s text then is only about the special anthropology of Jesus Christ. Adam and heirs of Adam all stand in relationship to the central reality of Christ’s saving power. Thus he can assert that humanity’s essential and original nature is to be found not in Adam but in Christ. In Adam we can only find it prefigured.
As such the relationship between sin and grace is also reconfigured. In relation to Paul’s text, Barth writes,
“…grace is not to be measured by sin; in spite of the formal identity between them, the sin of Adam is not comparable to the grace of Christ…(although) the sin of the one Adam brought about the death of the many, not only as a consequence but as something directly involved in itself…and then, with sin, death also broke into the world of men.”
However he concludes,
“We have seen that Paul dares to draw this conclusion because he sees Adam not in isolation but in his relationship to Christ. And for him Adam and Christ do not represent two conflicting interpretations of human nature…vv13-14 and 20.. (show that ) …the formal correspondence and identity between Adam and Christ is based upon their material disparity. In the encounter between them Christ has more right and power, and Adam less.”
Barth’s approach in centralising Christ, does not discount the historical nature of our existence, but reconfigures how we must approach notions of sin and death. The consequences of Barth’s approach are of course still being worked through. The notion of sin as an outside force or power is not within his Christocentric theology, and as such Paul’s text offers more opportunities for exploration. But this essay cannot explore this thread further.
3. Much less
How then are Pauline notions of sin understood in a tangled framework? Barrett writes that while we might imply that we “can find a unifying and intelligible principle within history…Paul affirms bluntly that the only unifying and intelligible principle is outside history.” Kasemann explains that Paul’s text can only be understood in the apocalyptic framework. Salvation from sin is messianically determined, and thus occurs with the reign of Christ. Paul writes believing he was in the throes of end time.

3.1 Cosmic meaning; anthropological reality
The common approach to the text is to separate the cosmological implications of Paul’s argument from our contingent reality. This can be named as the eschatological paradox. It is this approach that shapes a good deal of the theological explanations for the continuing presence of sin in the world.

Barrett’s approach epitomises this theology. He introduces the idea of Paul gathering nodal points within meaning/history which “crystallize upon outstanding figures…notable as representative figures…they make up a dialectical pattern which provides clues to Paul’s understanding of Mankind (sic) and of its history.” These are Adam, Abraham and Moses.

As such he attempts to avoid the linear notion of sin and grace, but still slides his commentary back into “epochs.” Our post resurrection epoch has too much similarity with the Mosaic epoch to allow this notion to rest comfortably. A glance at sin’s relationship with the law illustrates this.

Paul argues that the Mosaic Law did not bring salvation, but intensified sin. The law’s function can be understood to “make clear what sin is.” Is it possible however that we exist in an epoch which is in part the reverse of the post-Adam pre-Moses epoch? We believe that sin has been overcome, but the law is still part of our contingent reality. Further, the consequences of sin, namely death are still part of our earthly world, even if we believe in an alternate cosmological reality.

Is the only way that Paul’s text and notion of sin can truly speak to us, is to move ourselves into such an apocalyptic dualism? Such an approach in the end could get lost in arguing the distinction in the meanings of sin, trespass and disobedience and undoubtedly this has been done, but it is here that we leave this thread.

3.2 Where’s Eve?
It is Esler that notes that despite Eve’s role in the story of human disobedience, Paul ignores her in his determination to fix the singularity of the event of sin onto one person. But that is the extent of the contemporary commentary I was able to find on this point without consulting specifically feminist texts. The question is just not asked.

While the Early Fathers did a lot of talking about Eve’s role in the fall of creation, it is Irenaeus, who tackled the relationship between the creation myth and the Christ event and included women in the doctrine of recapitulation. This poetic parallel between the disobedient Eve and the obedient Virgin is grounded in the understanding that mortality had been replaced for all by immortality. This doctrine however has never been accepted as orthodox, despite its optimism and symmetry.

Feminist theologies of sin, mostly grounded as they are in lived experience do not appear to have done much with this text. Perhaps because in the end it stands as an approach that has little meaning for women. While the implication is that women are caught up in the broad cosmological sweep of history, the text itself becomes an object of alienation and oppression, as women are relegated to unnamed characters in a drama initiated and driven by two men. And so this thread also comes to an end.

Part 3 Conclusion
Finding meaning in the Pauline text offers up a multiple of possibilities, however, the main reason we engage is to find clues for our own meaning as post resurrection, and at the beginning of the 21st century, post holocaust Christians.

That our theology is grounded in a historical epoch without precedent is the reality. That we continue to refer to that cosmic event as described by Paul, when the grace of God, given as a free gift overwhelms all that is human, is our belief.

This is the paradox in which all the commentators, whether they approach the text from the linear perspective or are tangled in the web of theology, must attend to. A particular example of this is Dunn, who writes,
“Sin is that power which makes human being forget their creatureliness and dependence on God, that power which prevents humankind from recognising its true nature, which deceives the adam into thinking he is godlike and makes him unable to grasp that he is adamah.”

Such a philosophical approach is brought into sharp relief by the implications of Paul’s text however. It is Kasemann who reminds us that far from only being a treatise on cosmological destiny, Paul’s text is also an account of immediate responsibility. He writes,
“The real problem in interpretation lies in v12d, where the motif of destiny which dominates v.12a-c is abruptly set aside by that of the personal guilt of all mankind.”

It is at this stage that the tangle starts again.
Bibliography

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Elliott, Neil. Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle Biblical Seminar. Sheffield ; New York: Sheffield Academic ; Orbis Books, 1994.

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