Talk:Rom 5:1-8:39

7:6-10: Law--Torah or Garden reference?

In light of the discussion of Adam in chapters 5-6, Dunn seems to take the references to "the law" here as referring to the commandment in the Garden of Eden. Here's Dunn's reasoning:

Paul’s first answer to the question (“Is the law sin?”) is to refer in effect once again to Adam and the story of Gen 2–3: the relation between the law on the one hand and sin and death on the other as depicted in Gen 2–3 is the vital clue. Initially the reference to Adam is not so clear, but the sudden transition to the first person singular (“I would not have come to know”) signals to the readership that what at first might seem simply a generalization from Paul’s personal experience is intended also as a statement of typical experience, of (as becomes clear) the prototypical experience of Adam.

Paul asserts as a universal truth that sin is experienced only through the law, and in particular that the desire of covetousness is known only by virtue of the law which forbids coveting. Thus he picks up immediately the key phrase of v 5, “sinful passions which are through the law,” and breaks it down into two component parts: the law both provokes the actual experience of sin and makes the coveter aware that his desire is illicit. That this can refer to man as such is hardly clear to modern readers, either man in general (so few have ever heard the tenth commandment given to Israel) or man as represented in Adam (the law was given much later than Adam, at Sinai). But it would have been much more obvious then. For one thing the creation of man and the giving of the law were probably already associated in Jewish thinking, not least the idea that in disobeying “the commandment” of God (Gen 3:1–6) Adam was breaking “the law” of God. Moreover, what was certainly well established at the time of Paul was the view that covetousness or lust is the root of all sin (cf. James 1:15). So Paul’s readers would probably have had no difficulty in associating the commandment against the basic sin of lust (desire, covetousness) with the primeval sin of Eve and Adam.

[Dunn, J. D. G. (2002). Vol. 38A: Word Biblical Commentary  : Romans 1-8. Word Biblical Commentary (399). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.]

I hadn't thought of reading it like this before. Can anyone give me a sense as to whether this is a common or the standard reading by scholars? --RobertC 15:42, 25 August 2007 (CEST)

--RobertC 15:36, 25 August 2007 (CEST)

Verse 8:18

Just reading verse 18 I get excited to think of the Glory of heaven. Paul puts it beautifully when he compares our little sufferings in this life to the Glory of the after life if we endure to the end. --Bhardle 1 Sep 2005