Chapter five.
The Paschal Community and the Body of Sin.
Introduction.
The Exodus was not of an individual Jew, but of the
Jewish people as a community. Obviously it was individual Jews who benefited,
but it was essentially a corporate event. Likewise, although each individual
Christian has shared individually in the redemptive benefits of Christ’s death,
it is not historically an individual experience. The description of salvation
that Paul, and I would argue the rest of the NT writers give, is about the
salvation of God’s people, corporately.[1]
It is this corporate salvation, which must be personally received, that I want
to explore in the next 2 chapters.
The focus of Romans chapter six is not
individualistic, as is so often claimed, but corporate. I will argue elsewhere
that baptism in this context does not refer to individual initiation, but
rather to the creation of the believing community as the body of Christ.[2] If this interpretation is accepted then
it will lead to the need to reappraise the meaning of what Paul meant when he
said ‘that the body of Sin might be destroyed’ (6:6). The Jews died to the
reign of Pharaoh through their deliverance during the night of the Passover. Is
there any dependence on this model when Paul speaks of Christians having died
to Sin?[3]
Recent debate
In his New Testament Theology,
Rudolf Bultmann argued against the then prevailing consensus that Paul’s view
of man was Greek, and claimed that it was in fact Hebraic. A result of this
reappraisal he claimed that when Paul spoke of 'the body', in the majority of
cases the reference to the term should be extended to include the whole
personality of man. This was a distinct advance in understanding, for Bultmann
argued that Greek thinking limited the term sōma (body) to the corpse of man. Bultmann had argued that Jewish
thinking was not analytical, and examination of the use of sōma in Jewish literature showed that it was used in speaking of the
whole of man, including his personality or self. Bultmann’s argument was
presented to the wider English-speaking world by Robinson in his work, “The
Body, a Study in Pauline Anthropology.” Bultmann’s argument was convincing
enough to enable Best to say: “it is now generally recognised that in his
anthropology Paul is a Jew rather than a Greek.”[4]
Detailed discussion.
The
following section will probably only interest those who are aquatinted with the
literature covering the topic. It is provided for those who want to
[1] “Paul’s background in early Christianity, no less than in Judaism, demands that we cease to interpret his relation to the law solely in individualistic or moral terms and recognise that Pauline Christianity is not primarily an antithesis to law” Davies, People, 6. Note also Grogan, “Solidarity”, passim, who though writing about the author of Hebrews still speaks of the NT Jewish mind when he says “Christians are shown to have not simply an individual relationship with God, but also membership in community with as much sense of common interest as was the case in the OT”.
[2] See my forthcoming volume, Paul and the Spirit.
[3] As indicated earlier, I use upper case to signify that Sin represents Satan. See Murphy O’Connor, Paul, 345, “ One of the most distinctive features of Romans is its use of hamartia in an unusual sense. It first appears in Rom. 3:9, ‘all, both Jews and Gentiles, are under sin’. Clearly Paul is not thinking in terms of the personal sins of individuals, and in order to underline the difference ‘Sin’ should be capitalized.” O’Connor goes on to say that the same usage can be found in a whole series of texts and cites virtually all the of Paul’s usage’s of the term hamartia in Romans 5-8. See also Kay, Structure, 53.
[4] Best, Body, passim see also Ellis, Recent, 42.