There are a few debates going on around the question of sin and the believer at the moment. They seem to link back to a current fascination amongst reformed academics about concupiscence. I’m intending to write a little bit more about this over coming months.
However, one strand I’ve just picked up on s a little debate about the meaning of Romans 7. This is the bit where Paul appears to describe a form of inner turmoil, wrestling between being the man he wants to be and knows he should be and the man that he is.
For a detailed look at the text and interpretation issues, see here. TLDR, you can roughly divide the debate between those who think that Paul is talking about the normal Christian life, he is speaking biographically about himself as a believer and those who think that he isn’t.
In terms of current debate, I want to pick up on one specific thing. The view that Paul is describing the life of the believer here has been labelled by some as the traditional or classical position. I’m picking up, that as with other debates, they are going on to suggest that those who disagree with their interpretation of various historical commentators are in danger of undermining orthodoxy and ushering in perfectionism.
I think I can see why this is the case. Romans 7 understood as being about the normal life of the believer is definitely problematic for those who take a perfectionist view of the Christian life, that it is possible to know complete victory over sin in this life so that all temptation is resisted.
However, just because one view is problematic for another view, does not mean that those who disagree with the first view do so for the same reasons. As I noted in my previous article, there are a number (not just two) of interpretations of Romans 7.
It’s like the debate over Brexit. Some people were for Brexit because they were in favour of tighter immigration controls, however, there were many who saw the EU as something to get out of that didn’t care much at all about immigration. Meanwhile there were also a lot of people who wanted tougher controls on immigration who voted against Brexit. That of course is the problem when we assume that every disagreement is binary.
You will notice in my previous article that I do think that Paul is talking “biographically” in the sense that he is saying “this is how I relate to sin and the Law.” However, I also argue that he is not giving us a chronology. This means that we cannot say that Romans 7 offers us a view of the normal Christian life.
My point though is not that Christians can’t and don’t experience the kind of challenges that Paul describes in Romans 7. Rather, it is that Romans 7 is not intended to tell us what the Christian life is or should be like. That’s not the exam question that it, or indeed the whole section around is answering. Rather, the question Paul is interested in is to do with the Law and what it can/cannot do versus what the Spirit can do.
This is important because it means that what Paul says in Romans 7 may be true of the believer but that is not what the text is about. I can say that it isn’t about that in order to get people to focus in on the question Paul is addressing without denying that the believer does experience a battle with sin. This is because I’m not dependent on Romans 7 for that, there are plenty of other Bible passages that show that the Christian has this battle and so will need to resist sin and repent, not least the very next chapter in Romans.
What concerns me is that instead of having a discussion about the text, what it says and what it means, once again we have evangelicals talking past each other along the lines of “if your position doesn’t sound quite like my interpretation of what x (historical figure) said, then you are leading us into serious danger. Once again, we seem to have people finding great dangers not based on what Scripture says and in so doing I would suggest are distracting us from the real dangers of deserting Scripture and denying the Gospel.
Faithroots 