SHORT STUDIES 339

New Test. Stud. 19, pp. 332-354

THE THEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE

OF ROMANS V. 12
Romans v. 12 has perhaps received more attention in the past than most
verses in the New Testament, and yet we remain very far from any consensus
as to its interpretation. A large part of the difficulty arises from our uncertainty
as to the background to Paul’s views at this point: is it gnostic or Jewish?
If it is the former, does Paul’s thought simply adopt these ideas or does he take
them over only to revise them radically? Or if it is Jewish, to what area of
Jewish thought does it belong? Some seek to trace it back to O.T. ideas of
‘ corporate personality’, but this article will argue that it is rather to be seen
in the light of the developed theological reflections of later Judaism.
Of the proponents of a gnostic background both R. Bultmann1 and E.
Brandenburger2 are in basic agreement in seeing Rom. v. 12 a-c as reflecting
gnostic cosmological mythology which is then corrected by Paul in v. 12 d
by the introduction of Jewish ideas of the Law and man’s responsibility
before it. The degree to which that correction invalidates the gnostic parai-
lelism between Adam and Christ is differendy estimated : Bultmann seems by
no means unambiguous on this point, but E.Jiingel claims his support,
against Brandenburger, for his own view that the correspondence is not
decisively broken.3
The interpretation of Rom. v. 12 in terms of‘corporate personality’ is
favoured particularly, but by no means exclusively, by Roman Catholic
scholars ; it often involves the assertion that the έφ’ φ of Rom. v. 12 d is to be
interpreted, following Augustine, as ‘in him (Adam) ’. But, even if that is not
involved, it is usually denied that ήμαρτον in this clause refers to individual,
responsible sins ; rather it refers to a sinfulness that is somehow imputed to all
men because of Adam’s.4 Hence it will be particularly important to investigate
1 ‘Adam and Christ According to Romans 5’, Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation,
Festschr. for O. A. Piper, ed. W. Klassen, G. F. Snyder (London, 1962), p. 154.
2 Adam und Christus : exegetisch-religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu Römer 5, 13-21 (/. Kor. if)
(W.M.A.N.T. vu, Neukirchen, 1962), pp. 168-80; cf. P. Lengsfeld, Adam und Christus: die Adam-
Christus- Typologie im Neuen Testament und ihre dogmatische Verwendung bei M. J. Scheeben und K. Barth
(Koinonia ix, Essen, 1965), pp. 76-8.
3 ‘Das Gesetz zwischen Adam und Christus (eine theologische Studie zu Röm 5, 12-21)’,
Z-T.K. lx (1963), 43, 58-60, 66; cf. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament 1 (London, 1952), 174:
‘Rom. 5: 12 ff. interprets Adam’s fall quite in keeping with Gnosticism, as bringing (sin and) death
upon mankind’; however cf. also his ‘Adam and Christ’, p. 154, and Theology 1, 251, where his
views seem closer to Brandenburger’s (n.b. Brandenburger, op. eit. p. 178).
4 So G. Feuerer, Adam und Christus als Gestaltkräfte und ihr Vermächtnis an die Menschheit·, zur christ-
liehen Erbsündenlehre (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1939), pp. 94-100; E. E. Ellis, Paul’s Use of the Old
Testament (Edinburgh, 1957), pp. 58-60; R. P. Shedd, Man in Community: a Study of St Paul’s Applica-
tion of Old Testament and Early Jewish Conceptions of Human Solidarity (London, 1958), pp. 108 f;
J. de Frame, Adam and the Family of Man (New York, 1965), pp. 144 f; L. Ligier, Péché d’Adam
34° A. J· M- WEDDERBURN

in this study the function of the fourth clause within the structure of the verse
as a whole, but before that it is necessary to assess the views expressed in the
earlier part of the verse.

I. THE BACKGROUND OF ROM. V. 12 d-C

Paul opens his description of the Adamic side of the comparison in a manner
that seems to assume that his readers are well aware of what he is describing.
He refers simply and allusively to the narrative of Gen. iii by the words
61’ ένός άνθρώττου; the obvious inference seems to be that his readers knew
both the story of Adam and the theological interpretation that Paul now puts
upon it. The Gnostics too both knew this story and put many and varied
theological interpretations upon it, but is Paul’s interpretation one of them?
Through Adam, Paul goes on, sin entered the world; probably he
is thinking primarily of the world of men, although he is prepared to
speak of creation in general being subjected to ματαιότης in viii. 20. Yet
he does not go on to say of sin, as he does of death, that it εις πάντας
ανθρώπους. . .διήλθεν. That he adopts the chiasmic structure of v. 12 may
thus be significant : v. 12 d is no afterthought but is essential to the structure of
Paul’s thought. Death in the sense meant here was not an antecedent to
human sin, but was its consequence; all sinned, not as part of an inevitable
sequence, but voluntarily, and so death came upon all. The text does not
force us to see any stronger determinism here.
Even if one resists J. Cambier’s tempting suggestion that Paul is here de-
liberately adapting Wis. ii. 24,1 yet it is significant that his language is so
similar to that of this Hellenistic Jewish work. No other parallel is so close.
Another Jewish work, Sirach, also attributes the αρχή (‫ )תחלה‬of sin to Eve
(xxv. 24) : ‘From a woman sin had its beginning and because of her we all
die.’ Brandenburger holds that this verse sits ill at ease in its context and is
at variance with the views of death expressed elsewhere in the book,2 but it is
none the less a valid parallel. It may simply mean that Eve’s sin marked the
temporal beginning of sin, but it could be that, like Lachish, the ‫ראשית חטאת‬
in Mic. i. 13, she and her sin were a snare to the rest of mankind, leading
them astray and so to death. Given this sense the verse fits tolerably well into
its context, which deals with the evils that can be inflicted on life by an evil
woman. Similarly Eve states in Apoc. Mos. xxxii. 2 that ‘all sin hath begun
et péché du monde: le Nouveau Testament (Théologie xlviii, Paris, 1961), p. 284; F. F. Bruce, The
Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London, 1963), p. 129; cf. also A. Nygren, Der Römerbrief (Gottingen,
'950‫ ־‬P· '59·
1 ‘ Péchés des hommes et péché d’Adam en Rom. v. 12’, N. T.S. xi ( 230 ,(964-5 ‫ ז‬f. ; cf. A. Feuillet,
‘Le règne de la mort et le règne de la vie (Rom. v. 12-2 0 ’‫ ־‬Ä.B. lxxvii (1970), 482 f.
2 Op. cit. p. 53; but cf. A. M. Dubarle, The Biblical Doctrine of Original Sin (London, 1964), pp. 96 f. :
he holds that the verse fits into its context as a sarcastic comment rather than a dogmatic statement.
It may be granted that Sir. seems to regard death as the ordained end of all flesh (cf. xiv. 17, xli. 3 fi,
also xi. 14), but it does not follow that this is regarded as a natural or divinely willed state of affairs.
 THEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ROMANS V. 12 34I

(γέγονεν) through my doing (61’ εμοϋ) in the creation’. Both Brandenburger1

and F. R. Tennant2 argue that δι’ έμοϋ implies a causal relationship and not
just a temporal one, but the Armenian text, according to F. C. Conybeare’s
translation,3 suggests more of the latter sense : ‘ for sin and transgression have
from me originated in the world’. Probably, however, the temporal and
causal senses cannot be completely separated. Nevertheless this is not to say
that Eve is the only or sufficient cause of all evil in the world ; Brandenburger’s
appeal to Apoc. Mos. xxx and xl is to that extent irrelevant, since an appeal
to avoid evil is only out of place if men’s evil followed inevitably upon Eve’s
act.4
Some see a stronger determinism in SI. Enoch xli. 1:5 Morfill and Charles®
there translate the longer text as ‘ And I saw* all our forefathers from the
beginning with Adam and Eve, and I sighed and wept,* and spake of the ruin
(caused by) their wickedness (Forbes and Charles:7 the ruin of their dis-
honour):* Woe is me for my infirmity and that of my forefathers...’;
A. Vaillant confidently asserts that the phrase Ta perdition de leur impiété’
is ‘sur le péché originel’.8 But is this ruin more than the woe brought by
Adam and Eve upon mankind? The writer laments, not the wickedness
caused by Adam and Eve, but the disaster brought about by their wicked-
ness. Hence this passage need not be out of line with the stress in the rest of
the book on human responsibility.9 The same is true of Syr. Bar. xlviii. 42 £,
particularly when seen in the light of vv. 46 f. : Adam and Eve may be blamed
for having set in motion a process of human self-destruction, but God knows
how much men have sinned against him and have not confessed him as their
Creator; they have transgressed his Law and will be judged accordingly.10
We have to wait at least till the later Testament of Adam11 before we find a
statement that would be closer to a doctrine of hereditary sin if the trans-
lation of it by E. Renan and P. Rießler is correct: ‘For as a result of the sin
of your mother Eve they (presumably Cain and his sisters) have entered the
world as sinners’ (iii. 16).12
1 Op. cit. p. 40.
2 The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin (Cambridge, 1903), pp. 198 f. E. Larsson,
Christus als Vorbild: eine Untersuchung zu den paulinischen Tauf- und Eikontexten (Acta Seminarii Neotesta-
mentici Upsaliensis xxm, 1962), p. 145, argues that the text attributes the Sündhaftigkeit of men to
Eve, but even this goes further than the text warrants.
3 ‘On the Apocalypse of Moses’, J.Q.R. vn (1894-5), 229. 4 Op. cit. p. 40 n. 2.
5 So Tennant, op. cit. pp. 2098, A. Vaillant, Le Livre des Secrets d'Hênoch (Paris, 1952), p. 107;
S. S. Cohon, ‘Original Sin’, Hebrew Union College Annual xxi (1948), 288; Brandenburger, op. cit.
p. 42, is more cautious.
3 W. R. Morfill, R. H. Charles, The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (Oxford, 1896), p. 56.
7 In R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament π (Oxford, 1913),
456.
8 Op. cit. p. 107. 9 Cf. SI. Enoch xli, liii. 1 A. 10 Cf. Tennant, op. cit. pp. 217-20.
11 As P. Rießler, Altjüdisches Schrifttum außerhalb der Bibel2 (Heidelberg, 1966), p. 1332, remarks,
this document shows affinities with the Book of the Cave of Treasures (cf. iii. 20).
12 This citation is a translation ofthat in Rießler, op. cit. p. 1088; he follows E. Renan’s rendering in
Journal Asiatique, sér. v, π (1853). However, M. Kmosko’s edition of this text in R. Graffin (ed.),
Patrologia Syriaca 11 (Paris, 1907), shows that this verse is found only in one of the three recensions of
342 A. J. M. WEDDERBURN

From this evidence we may infer that, unless Paul has either formed a
doctrine of hereditary sin de novo or has borrowed it from some other source,
it would be best to interpret Rom. v. 12 in such a way as not to involve such
an idea. The first possibility we must leave aside for a moment, but we must
reckon with the second suggestion, that Paul has borrowed this idea from
another source, notably gnostic deterministic ideas. In favour of this is his
treatment of sin as an overwhelming personal power subduing all men.1
But against such an inference there are a number of weighty arguments :
(i) Whether or not we accept L. Ligier’s claim that sin tends to be personi-
fied in certain passages in the Old Testament,2 it is true that personification
is a favourite device of Paul’s which he uses of a considerable number of
concepts ; it is hard to claim for all of these that they reflect gnostic ways of
thought.3 Moreover, is sin ever personified like this in gnostic texts? In
gnostic thinking evil tends to be a negative concept, a defect, a lack, and while
wisdom and revelation and the various figures in the gnostic pleroma are
personifications of human qualities sin is not so treated.4 The defect in man
is usually the object of activity by powers, rather than acting as a subject in its
own right.
(ii) It is doubtful whether Gnosticism was any more consistently deter-
ministic in its thinking than Judaism; indeed L. Schottroff has recently
argued that the naturalistic thinking of Gnosticism did not deprive it of its
Entscheidungscharakter.5 Hence in the Apocryphon of John either the spirit of
life or the άντίμιμον πνεύμα may enter a man as he chooses.6 J. Zandee
argues that in the Treatise on the Three Natures the middle of the three
this work; moreover he interprets the text differently (p. 1344) and translates it ‘per Hevam enim
matrem tuam creata sunt peccata’. This seems slightly more probable, in view of the rarity of
with the sense of ‘ sinner ’.
Against this possible instance of a form of doctrine of hereditary sin in a document that owes much
to Jewish apocalyptic traditions we must set the evidence of IV Ezra iii. 21 : ‘cor enim malignum
baiolans primus Adam transgressus et victus est’. Despite Box’s (incorrect) translation of‘baiolans’
as ‘ clothing himself with ’ (in Charles, Apocrypha and Pscudepigrapha 11, 563), which would suggest that
Adam did not originally have this evil heart, this verse implies that Adam had this heart from the
first and before his trangression (cf. iv. 30, vii. ga, also W. Ο. E. Oesterley, IIEsdras (London, 1933),
p. xxv; P. Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch 1 (Sources Chrétiennes cxliv, Paris, 1969), 404 f.).
1 So, e.g., Brandenburger, op. cit. p. 161, Bultmann, Theology 1, 351.
2 Op. cit. pp. 19a f. (cf. K. Condon, ‘The Biblical Doctrine of Original Sin’, Irish Theological
(Quarterly xxxiv (1967), 33) : he cites Zech. v. 8; Is. xxiv. ao; Hos. xiii. 1a. We may add to this the
view of sin as a mysterious power found in the Qumran Hodayot (e.g. 1QH v. 36 f., fr. 50. 5) and the
way in which Oßpis is addressed in Sib. v. aa846‫־‬.
3 Grace reigns too (Rom. v. ai), obedience and righteousness have their slaves (vi. 17-19). The
Law is a husband from whom we are freed by death (vii. 4) and a commandment can also be said to
‘come’ (vii. g). Faith too ‘comes’ in Gal. iii. a3, 35.
1 J. Zandee, ‘ Gnostic Ideas on the Fall and Salvation ’, Numen xi ( 1964), 34-41, lists as the defects
of man ignorance, deficiency, weakness, sleep, passion (πάβο;) ; αμαρτία (Coptic nobe) is rarely used,
for ‘sin is not a break, an act for which man is held responsible’ (p. 35).
5 Der Glaubende und die feindliche Welt: Beobachtungen zum gnostischen Dualismus und seiner Bedeutung
für Paulus und das Johannesevangelium (W.M.A.N.T. xxxvn, Neukirchen, 1970), e.g. pp. 11 f., 96-9,
134, 236 f.
3 Cod. Berol. 67. 7-18; cf. Schottroff, op. cit. p. 12. This is apparently very close to the view of
1QS iii. 18 fT., where all men possess more or less (‫ )בין רוב למועט‬of the two spirits.
 THEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ROMANS V. 12 343

classes of men, the ψυχικοί, are free to turn in either direction while the
destinies of the other two, the υλικοί and the πνευματικοί, are fixed.1 A
more explicit optimism is found in the Simonian μεγάλη απόφασή where the
blessed and immortal is êv παντί κεκρυμμένον δυνάμει2 and in Justin’s Book of
Baruch, of which E. Haenchen comments that in it ‘ist der Geist die urzeit-
liehe Gabe der Schöpfung, und kein Mensch ist von ihr ausgeschlossen’.3
Often, too, not all of Adam’s descendants share his nature and its effects ;
Seth in particular, and the Gnostics descended from him, are often exempted.4
If Paul sounds more deterministic than his Jewish contemporaries in his think-
ing it is because for him the reign of sin is more universal; his arguments for
that universalism are set out by him in Rom. i. 18 - iii. 20 and they are not
gnostic ones; if he differs from his fellow Jews in excluding none from the
reign of sin it is because he realizes that even the most righteous ofJews, like
Abraham or even himself (Rom. iv; Gal. i. 14; Phil. iii. 4-6), is saved by
grace and not by works ; hence the incentive to find righteous exceptions to
the general rule is lacking and indeed the attempt to find them is undermined
from the start. The presuppositions for his view of the universalism of sin are
thus as little gnostic as those for his setting forth of the presuppositions for
the universalism of grace in Rom. v. 6-10.5
(iii) Moreover at its most typical Gnosticism had little room for a real
concept of sin : man’s woe was due to his ignorance or deficiency and this was
a tragedy rather than a fault;6 if anyone was to blame it was heavenly
powers who through ignorance or wantonness had set in motion a process of
deterioration. These ideas are very far removed from Paul’s stress on the
deliberate offence of the first man, his παράβασις of God’s command (Rom. v.
14), his παράπτωμα (aa. 15, 17 £), and above all his παρακοή (‫ע‬. ig).7
(iv) Moreover it is integral to Paul’s thought that the sin of Adam intro-
duces, not a defective physical nature, but an existence that is blighted by a
defective relationship to God ; Adam does not fall into matter, he is matter
that has sinfully asserted itself against its Creator and stands under his
1 I.e. Nag-Hammâdi Cod. I. 106. 18 - 108. 8, 119. 20, cited by Zandee, loc. cit. pp. 33 f., 48-52;
Rom. v. 12 is there cited as saying that ‘ because of the transgression of the first man has death become
the lord and entered into association with all men’. The entry of sin into the world is omitted.
This would correspond to the Valentinian notion of the ψυχικόν as αυτεξούσιον (Iren. Hoer.
I. vi. ! = ed. Harvey I. i. 11).
3 Hipp. Ref. VI. xvii. 1 ; cf. E. Haenchen, ‘Gab es eine vorchristliche Gnosis?’, Gott und Mensch
(Tübingen, 1965), pp. 279 f.
3 ‘Das Buch Baruchs: eine Beitrag zum Problem der christlichen Gnosis’, op. cit. p. 327. See also
Epistula Apostolorum 39.
4 Cf. A. Böhlig, P. Labib, Koptisch-gnostische Apokalypsen aus Codex V von Nag-Hammadi im Koptischen
Museum zu Alt-Kairo (W. Z■ Halle, Halle-Wittenberg, 1963), pp. 86 f.
6 Cf. Cambier, loc. cit. especially pp. 221 f., 231.
6 Cf. Zandee, loc. cit. pp. 21-3, 34 f., also Ev. Mar. 7. 13-16. This leads E. Fuchs, Die Freiheit des
Glaubens·. Römer 5-8 ausgelegt (Beitr. Ev. Theol. xiv, München, 1949), pp. 18-20, to suggest that the
mention of άμαρτία is a later insertion into an original gnostic substratum.
7 Pace E. Lohmeyer, ‘Probleme paulinischer Theologie: III. Sünde, Fleisch und Tod’,
Z-N.W. xxix (1930), 43-53, Adam’s sin is not a timeless reality but a concrete, historical act of
disobedience.
344 A. J· M· WEDDERBURN
judgement.1 He stands under κατάκριμα (vv. 16, 18) and needs grace (vv.
15 ff.) ; his defect is remedied, not by a new creation or liberation of the old
nature, but by the obedience of Christ (v. 19). The new life is bestowed, not
by some natural process, but by δικαίωσή (18 .‫)ע‬. It is only on the basis of a
prior justification that God brings about a physical change of nature in his
creatures (Rom. viii. 30).
We conclude, therefore, that Rom. v. 12 a does not demand a gnostic
background for it to be intelligible and that indeed there are very weighty
arguments against such a hypothesis ; on the other hand such a statement is
perfectly consistent with Jewish ideas and forms of expression. However, is
the same true of the following two clauses?
The statement that sin brought death is consistent both with the Old
Testament2 and with Paul’s theology.3 But what is the background presup-
posed by the statement that death passed (διήλθεν) to all men? It is perhaps
even easier to find parallels to this statement in Jewish literature than was the
case with that about sin, although the problem then still remains as to the
sense that Paul here gives to the word θάνατοί.
A number of different explanations of the origin of death are given in late
Jewish literature; as the same work often represents more than one of these
it is perhaps better to regard them as complementary rather than mutually
exclusive.4 Death was an accepted, but nevertheless not necessarily natural,
part of human life. Its existence could be variously laid at the doors of Eve,5
the devil,6 the sins of men in general7 or Adam. That either Adam or his
wife could be blamed need not surprise us, since, although Eve in fact started
it all, in a patriarchal society it would be natural to hold a husband re-
sponsible for his wife’s actions; certainly he was under no obligation to
follow her lead.8
We have already seen the treatment of Eve’s sin as the origin of all sin in
Sir. xxv. 24; the same verse also says that ‘because of her (δι’αυτήν, ‫)בגללה‬
we all die’. ‫ בגלל‬is often used in the Old Testament of punishment coming to
someone because of another’s guilt or fault (or of reward because of another’s
1 But cf. W. L. Knox, St Paul and the Church of the Gentiles (Cambridge, 1939), pp. 83, 98 f., 107,
and also Lohmeyer, loc. cit. pp. 48-50. Here Paul is at one with contemporary Judaism; cf. W.
Bousset, H. Greßmann, Die Religion des Judentums4 (H.N. T. xxi, Tübingen, 1966), pp. 404 f. ; G. F.
Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era i (Cambridge, 1927), 479.
2 Gen. ii. 17, Deut. xxx. 17 f.
3 Rom. vi. 23; cf. vi. 9, viii. 6, 13.
4 The Book of Wisdom can speak both of death originating at the devil’s instigation (ii. 23 f.) and
of the righteous inviting death by their own actions (i. 12, 16, iii. 17-19). In Tg. Qoh. vii. 29 Eve
and the serpent are made jointly responsible.
3 Apoc. Mos. xiv. 2 ; Vita Ad. xlix. 2. However, it would be misleading to place too much weight on
Eve’s attempts to draw the blame on to herself (e.g. Vita Ad. xviii. 1) ; that is accepted neither by
Adam nor by God (Vita Ad. viii. 1 f., xxvi. 2; Apoc. Mos. xxiv. 1, xxvii. 2, xxxix. 1).
6 Wis. ii. 23 f. ; cf. Vita Ad. xii. 1 ; SI. Enoch xxxi. 3, 6; Pirqê deR. Eliezerxiii; L. Ginzberg, The
Legends of the Jews v (Philadelphia, 1925), 94 f. (the motif of the devil’s envy).
7 Eth. Enoch lxxxi. 9; cf. Qoh. vii. 29; b. Sab. 550-564.
8 Cf. Vita Ad. xxvi. 2 ; Apoc. Mos. xi. 2, xxiv. 1 ; Slavonic Vita Ad. xxxii. 1 ; Philo Quaest. in Gen.
i. 47, also Ps.-Philo Biblical Antiquities xiii. 8; but cf. Brandenburger, op. cit. p. 40 n. 5.
 THEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ROMANS V. 12 345

merit).1 Somehow all men share the penalty for Eve’s sin. Hence in Apoc.
Mos. xiv. 2 she is responsible for death’s reign over all the human race.12
But rather more often it is Adam, who by his very name represented the
human race, who is singled out as the one responsible for mankind’s woes;3
these woes include death, both in the weaker sense of a shortening of man’s
life-span and in a more absolute sense. This is particularly true of IV Ezra and
Syriac Baruch.4 Syr. Bar. lvi. 6 lists a whole series of evils brought by Adam,
not only on himself, but on the whole world and even the angels.5 In IV Ezra
the angel, asked by Ezra for an explanation of the woes besetting mankind,
says that Adam’s disobedience (and that of his descendants) has thwarted
God’s whole benevolent purpose for the world.6 In other writings the curse of
Adam’s sin extends in its effects to the animal world,7 the whole earth8
and even the heavenly bodies.9 It is in the context of this cosmic upheaval
that the irruption of death finds its place.
So Syriac Baruch speaks of Adam bringing death and cutting off the years
of his descendants,10 II
even of the great Moses.11 The view of Syriac Baruch
seems to be that while physical death or, at least sometimes, its premature
onslaught12 is the result of Adam’s sin, yet each man is responsible for his own
fate after death.13 But it does not seem to be true that it is always only pre-
mature death for which Adam is responsible: according to one strand of
thought in this apocalypse Adam may have been regarded as originally
immortal;14 this state would then be lost by the fall, as in Wis. ii. 23 f. IV
Ezra too does not only recognize that this world is afflicted because of Adam’s
sin15 but also that all his descendants expect his fate [casus) ; that means

1 Cf. Gen. ii. 3, xxx. 27, xxxix. 5; Deut. i. 37; I Kgs. xiv. 16; Jer. xv. 4 (also Sir. x. 8, xli. 7).
2 L. S. A. Wells’ reasons for bracketing the last phrase ‘lording it over all our race’ seem inade-
quate (in Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha 11, 145); the MS C in fact only omits κατακυριεύω‫״‬
■rravTôs, i.e. reads ‘ the death of all our race’; cf. C. Tischendorf, Apocalypses Apocryphae (Leipzig, 1866),
p· 7·
3 The interchange of the individual and collective aspects of the name is present in Gen. v. 1-3;
cf., e.g., Dubarle, op. cit. pp. 67 f.; C. K. Barrett, From First Adam to Last: a Study in Pauline Theology
(London, 1962), p. 6.
I Cf. also Vita Ad. xliv. 4.
5 Cf. also Syr. Bar. xxiii. 4, lvi. 10.
0 IV Ezra vi. 55, vii. 11 f., 21-4 (also implicitly in iv. 27-30); cf. Philo Virt. 205.
7 Jub. iii. 28 f. (perhaps also Jos. Ant. 1. 41 ; Philo Quaest. in Gen. 1. 32, 11. 9).
8 Gen. R. v. 9, xii. 6; Qph. R. vii. 13; j. Kil. i. 7 (ed. Schwab IP, p. 230); PirqêdeR. Eliezerxiv.
8 Gr. Bar. ix. 7.
10 Syr. Bar. xvii. 3 (cf. CD x. 8 f., !/‫ הארמי‬is to be taken as a proper name).
II Syr. Bar. xvii. 2, 4 (cf. Qph. R. vii. 13, also Deut. R. ix. 8; b. Sab. 55b).
18 Cf. Syr. Bar. liv. 15, lvi. 6.
13 Ibid. liv. 15; cf. xlvi. 3. This would seem to be contradicted byxlviii. 426, but this is in its
turn qualified by m. 45-7.
14 This may be implied by Syr. Bar. iv. 2 f. ; however it is also possible that it merely means that
Adam was granted a vision of what would be his; cf. Ps.-Philo Biblical Antiquities xiii. 8 f., also
xxvi. 6. Some such idea as Adam’s previous immortality is called for by the statement that after his
sin a ‘decree of death’ was passed on him and his descendants (xxiii. 4.; cf. xix. 8, Ps.-Philo Biblical
Antiquities xiii. 8; Gen. R. xvi. 6, xxi. 1 ; Sifre Deut. 323 (138(1) cited by R. Scroggs, The Last Adam:
a Study in Pauline Anthropology (Oxford, 1966), p. 36).
15 IV Ezra vii. 11 f.
346 A. J. M. WEDDERBURN

physical death, but, beyond that, wrath to come,1 although that may again
be seen more as the fruit of the ‘deeds that bring death’ of each individual.2
At this point we need to emphasize the overall pessimism of this apocalypse
in which, amidst the ruins of the holy city, the seer seems to plead for a ray
of hope from the divine mercy and is answered instead by a gloomy message of
divine justice from his angelic interlocutor. This emphasis is necessary because
Brandenburger seems to overlook the joylessness of the angel’s replies and
denies that Ezra’s pessimism is an apt parallel to Paul’s view of man in
Rom. v. 12.2 Yet Ezra’s views are surely not just ad hominem arguments to
serve as a foil for the exposition of legal orthodoxy by the angel.4 C. G.
Montefiore more convincingly suggests that Ezra’s heart-searchings have the
real sympathy of the author and that chs. iii-x represent his reluctant journey-
ing to a position of grudging acquiescence in Jewish orthodoxy.5 Otherwise
the author would have played the part of devil’s advocate too well as he
protests at the callousness of the angel’s replies : can men made in God’s image
be destroyed like so many grains of corn (viii. 44) ? The angel’s stress is on
righteousness according to the Law; man is free and responsible before the
Law (vii. 20, viii. 1, 38 f., 55), to choose life or death, obedience or disobedi-
ence (vii. 20-4, 127 f., ix. 32 f.); he can and should resist the evil in his
heart (vii. 92) and he should choose for the Law which is opposed to it (vii.
72, viii. 56). Men are therefore under judgement; Ezra himself will be saved
through his humility (viii. 48 f.),6 but not many will enjoy that privilege
(viii. 1). Despite Ezra’s protests the angel merely grants that a few will be
saved (iii. 36) ; sin holds almost all in its grip (iii. 35, iv. 38, vii. 46, 68,
viii. 35) and the innate evil in the human heart stifles the fruits of the Law
(iii. 20-2, ix. 36) and bars men from inheriting God’s promises to Israel
(vii. 119-25). Brandenburger seeks to reinforce his case by appealing to
Syriac Baruch as a better illustration of Jewish orthodoxy;7 passages in the
book do speak more of the rewards of the righteous and the possibility of
1 Cf. ibid. x. 9 f.
3 That seems to be the balance contained in IV Ezra vii. 116-ig. The word ‘casus’ should be
rendered ‘fate’, ‘lot’, and not ‘fall’; cf. iii. 10.
3 Op. cit. pp. 27-36, 54-8, 69; cf. W. Mundle, ‘Das religiöse Problem des IV. Esrabuches’,
Z-A.W. vi (1929), 222-49.
4 Brandenburger, op. cit. p. 36, concedes that there were circles in Judaism influenced by such
fatalistic ideas as Ezra expresses. These may have been more widespread among the common people
(cf. P. Volz, Die Eschatologie derjüdischen Gemeinde im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (Tübingen, 1934), pp.
87 f.), but we should remember that these views were also given literary expression. Tennant argued
(op. cit. pp. 221 f.) that, as Judaism already possessed a belief in the inherent sinfulness of the human
heart, so a humbled Judaism formed a soil in which doctrines of a universal fallenness and ingrained
sinfulness might spring up; Judaism could have arrived at a view like Paul’s by a similar route. If
anything Tennant’s view has been confirmed by the appearance of the Qumran Hodayot with their
stress on the pitiful weakness and wickedness of men in contrast to the sovereign grace of God towards
his chosen community (cf., e.g., 1QH i. 21-3, 32, iii. 21 f., iv. 29-38, xi. 10-12, xiii. 15-18).
5 IVEzra: a Study in the Development of Universalism (London, 1929),pp. 13 ff.; cf. Volz, op. cit. pp.
112 f., Cohon, loc. cit. p. 289.
0 Cf. Test. Abr. xi-xii.
7 Op. cit. pp. 36-9.
 THEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ROMANS V. 12 347
man’s winning eternal life through obedience to the Law. But amidst the
heterogeneous material in this book1 there are other passages less congenial to
his argument: Baruch too is pessimistic even as to his own fate (xiv. 14) and
sees darkness engulfing the light lit by Moses (xvii. 4 - xviii. 2 ; cf. xlviii.
42 f.) ; men have deserved judgement, it is true (xlviii. 45-7), yet Adam has
caused much evil which seems to come inevitably upon so many (xxiii. 4,
lvi. 6).
Yet even if it may be granted that Paul’s pessimism as to man’s hope of
salvation if left to his own devices is paralleled in these late Jewish texts, the
question also arises as to whether his concept of death is quite the same as
theirs. We have seen that in works like IV Ezra and Syriac Baruch it is
difficult to distinguish clearly between the physical fact of death and what lay
beyond it; the two merge into one another so that it is hard to say just how
much Adam is there blamed for. When we compare this with Rom. v. 12
we need to be clear from the start that there is nothing in this text to suggest
either that Paul thinks of death as a natural part of life which is an inevitable
consequence of man’s being set in a physical world, or that he does not here
refer to physical death. If his views find no complete parallels in Jewish
apocalyptic thought, it may be, not because Paul has some different concept
of death which he has borrowed from another tradition, but because for him a
new factor has emerged, the death of Christ; this has set the evaluation of
death in a new light. This new factor is mentioned earlier in the chapter, and
it would be to divorce this passage too much from its context to deal with the
question of death here in isolation from what precedes it. The life that Christ
brings is set against the death that Adam brought in Rom. v. 17 and 21 ; the
life that Christ brings is set against the death that he endured in the bringing
of it in v. 10. That death of his for sinners was undoubtedly a physical fact;
it is therefore hard to argue that the death imposed on mankind because of
sin is not similarly physical. And yet how much more than just a physical
fact this death of Christ was: for Paul it was an accursed thing (Gal. iii. 13)
and yet one transformed by the fact that it was God’s own Son who endured
it (Rom. v. 10) ; now it was the most perfect assurance of God’s love to us and
of his will to be reconciled with us (Rom. v. 8, 10 f.). So too the death that
Adam brought was more than just a physical fact: it was a sign of God’s
judgement; it was part of the ματαιότης that he imposed upon the world
(Rom. viii. 20 f.).2 It was a judgement on human sin. It is not apt to describe
Paul’s use of the term here as ‘ eschatological ’ f death may be the last enemy
1 Cf., e.g., Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha n, 474-6; however, cf. also the arguments of
Bogaert, op. cit. e.g. pp. 80 f
* The depths of this ματαιότης are plumbed when the curse falls on man who was to have ordered
and upheld creation; but by God’s grace he will yet do so (Rom. viii. 21).
3 Cf. Bultmann, Theology 1, 246 (but note p. 24g also) ; G. Schunack, Das hermeneutische Problem des
Todes: im Horizont von Römer 5 untersucht (Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie vu, Tübingen,
■967)‫ ־‬P· 265; E. Gutwenger, ‘Die Erbsünde und das Konzil von Trient’, Zeitschrift für katholische
Theologie lxxxix (1967), 436.
23 NTS xix
348 A. J. M. WEDDERBURN

to be vanquished (I Cor. xv. 26), and it may be a terror now to those who
know that beyond it God’s judgement at the last day awaits them and that
they are not prepared for that. But its continued existence as a physical fact
reminds us constantly of God’s ‘giving up’ of his creation because of sin
(Rom. i. 18-32) ; it is a present judgement, part of the revealed wrath of God
in this present world. This present and physical perspective means that it
would also be misleading to call death here ‘ spiritual ’ such a phrase also
invites a highly misleading comparison with the view of sin as the death of
the soul which is found in Hellenistic Judaism;2 for Paul those that sin do
not ipso facto die but are worthy of death (Rom. i. 32). Paul’s view of death is
intelligible within the categories of apocalyptic Judaism, with its stress both
on the penal nature of physical death and on a final judgement; Paul’s view
is a theological re-evaluation of these categories, in that for him God’s
wrath no longer awaits a future revelation but is now revealed (Rom. i. 18).
For Paul as for much of early Christianity Christ’s coming, death and resur-
rection meant that what for apocalyptic Judaism was a secret still to be
revealed in the future was to a large extent already anticipated in present
experience.
Hence it would follow from our investigation of the Jewish evidence and
our exegesis of Romans that in his teaching on death and its reign Paul was
basing his statements on the views of a deterministic tradition of thought
within first-century apocalyptic Judaism, a tradition which blamed Adam for
bringing death (as well as other evils) on his descendants ; however this existed
there alongside the important qualification that, if as a matter of fact all were
afflicted by death, this was so because all (or almost all) had, equally as a
matter of fact, merited this fate.3
Against the hypothesis of a gnostic background here many of the arguments
applied to Rom. v. 12 a to show the irrelevance of that hypothesis there also
apply equally forcibly. We should add here that physical death should be no
evil in gnostic thinking since it is a liberation of the immortal soul or spirit
from bondage in the body.4 The idea in Apoc. Adam 76. 18-20 that because
of their earthly natures creatures will be subject to the εξουσία and the day of
death is no real parallel to Paul at this point : death’s reign is still in the future
and will only affect the πλάσμα that does not possess knowledge ; it is simply
made of‘dead earth’; its fate is not the product of sin. However in 67. 12-14
Adam knows that the power of death has come upon him, in that his days are
shortened because of the weakness arising from his desire for Eve ; as far as the
concept of death is concerned this passage seems to owe more to the Old
1 So C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London, 1932), p. 81.
2 Wis. i. 16 -ii. 24, v. 13; Philo Leg. All. 1. 105-7; ^et· ^ot■ 49‫^ ־‬er■ D*v· Her. 29°> π.
66, Quaest. in Gen. i. 5/, etc.
3 All according to some statements (e.g. IV Ezra iii. 8, 10); but there were exceptions {ibid. 11
with ix. 76, xiv. 34 f.; Test. Abr. viii, xvii; Eth. Enoch lxx. 1 f., xc. 31; Syr. Bar. xxv. 1, xlviii.
30, lxxvi. 2 f., etc.).
4 Cf. R. Bultmann in T.W.N.T. iii (1938), 12. 14-17.
 THEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ROMANS V. 12 349
Testament and to Jewish apocalyptic than to gnostic ideas. For Gnosticism
the evil power that reigns in the world is more typically not death but rather,
e.g., sleep and darkness, that is, at the most death in a very figurative sense.
To take ‘death’ in this sense here would mean that Paul regarded it as an
inevitable part of earthly life inflicted upon man by another being, which
could only be finally eluded by physical death; it would be a ‘death’ of
darkness and ignorance which was if anything" the cause of sin rather than its
result. To fit Paul’s thought into these categories would indeed be an exegeti-
cal tour deforce ; in fact, however, most proponents of a gnostic interpretation
here have not forced upon Paul a fully gnostic concept of death.

II. THE BACKGROUND TO ROM. V. 12 d

All the evidence gathered so far has suggested that Rom. v. 12 a-c can be
satisfactorily set against the background and the presuppositions of first-
century Judaism and that gnostic analogies are inept as an explanation of
Paul’s thinking. It is the purpose of this section to argue that, so far from its
being the case that Paul breaks into a gnostic determinism in v. 12 d with a
typically Jewish qualification of it,1 the balance of an apparent determinism
with a stress on individual responsibility and guilt is a pattern of thought well
attested in Judaism.2
However, we cannot take it as self-evident that this fourth clause qualifies
what precedes it. Allusion was made at the beginning of this article to that
view of this clause which sees it as referring in some way to the corporate sin
of all men in Adam, not as his imitators or as those who in their own sinning
bear his image (cf. I Cor. xv. 49), but as those who already prior to their own
individual sins bear a share in Adam’s guilt. It has been argued that φ is a
relative pronoun, but the prevailing view is that εφ’ φ is an adverbial phrase,
meaning either ‘in so far as’ (or a similar qualificatory phrase) or ‘since’.3
Usually these are seen as alternatives, but they can be regarded as comple-
mentary if it is realized that the causal sense of έφ’ φ is that of a fulfilled
condition. S. Lyonnet4 rightly pointed out that the qualifying use of the phrase
was better attested in secular Greek, where it was usually followed by a future
indicative or an infinitive ; here, however, the stipulation or condition that it
1 Cf. Brandenburger, op. cit. pp. 168-80; Lengsfeld, op. cit. pp. 76-8.
2 Cf. H. St J. Thackeray, The Relation of St Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought (London, 1900),
pp. 37-40; W. G. Kümmel, Man in the Hew Testament (London, 1963), p. 66; O. Michel, K.E.K.
ivl‫( ־‬Gottingen, 1963), 139; D. E. H. Whiteley, The Theology of St Paul (Oxford, 1964), p. 49; but cf.
H. Conzelmann, An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament (London, 1969), p. 197.
3 For a survey of the different interpretations of these words cf., e.g., Brandenburger, op. cit.
pp. 169-76; F. W. Danker, ‘Romans v. 12: Sin under Law’, N.T.S. xiv (1967-8), 435-9; C. E. B.
Cranfield, On Some of the Problems in the Interpretation of Romans 5. 12’, S.J.T. xxii (1969),
330-40.
4 ‘ Le sens de έφ' φ en Rom. 5, 12 et l’exégèse des Pères Grecs ’, Bib. xxxvi (1955), 436 ff. ; cf. also
his article ‘Le péché originel et l’exégèse de Rom., 5, 12-14’, Recherches de Science Religieuse xliv
(1956), 73 f·
23‫־‬2
350 A. J. M. WEDDERBURN

expresses is no longer one that may or may not be fulfilled. It is a past one that
has in fact already been fulfilled. In such cases the adverbial phrase has a
causal sense, but a causal sense of a specific kind, that of a sine qua non. Here
biblical warnings like ‘ in the day that you eat of it you shall die ’ (Gen. ii. 17)
and ‘if your heart turns away, and you will not hear. . .you shall perish’
(Deut. xxx. 17 f.) provide the terms under which man shall or shall not be
afflicted with death. In obedience to God he could live, but he has eaten and
he has turned away and therefore he has died ; hence one can say that he has
died because he did these things, or in that he did these things. Thus, despite
the following past tense, έφ’ φ does not lose its qualifying sense here and is
perhaps best translated ‘in that’ or ‘inasmuch as’.1 Bearing this sense it is
well fitted to provide the connecting link between the two contrasted strands of
thought which we are arguing that Paul inherited from contemporary Judaism.
This pattern has already been alluded to; in IV Ezra vii. 116-19 in parti-
cular, the fate of men both now and after death is lamented and Adam
seems to be blamed for inflicting the fate incurred by his sin on his descen-
dants as well as on himself: ‘ For though it was you (the ‘ tu’ is surely empha-
tic) who sinned, your fate (casus) was not yours alone, but ours also who are
your descendants.’ Yet the passage continues : ‘ For what good is it to us, if an
eternal age has been promised to us, but we have done deeds that bring
death?’2 Adam is not here blamed for their doing those deeds. All that can be
held against him is that he has set this sequence of sinning in motion and has
set a fateful precedent and a bitter example. This pattern is reinforced in
ch. iii : God has ordained death for Adam and his descendants (v. 7), but then
every nation sinned and ‘ as death came upon Adam, so the flood came upon
them’ (v. 10) ; yet even so there was the righteous exception, Noah and his
descendants (11 .‫) ע‬. This pattern is further reinforced by the balance struck in
Syr. Bar. xlviii, where vv. 42 f. seem to imply that Adam and Eve are respon-
sible for the fact that ‘ all this multitude are going to corruption ’ and yet in
vv. 45-7 it is emphasized that God knows how much Adam’s descendants
have sinned and how they will be condemned by God’s Law. This is almost
the same idea as is contained in the well-known statement of liv. 15: ‘For
though Adam first sinned and brought untimely death upon all, yet of those
who were born from him each of them has prepared for his own soul torment
1 Of the other uses of έφ’ φ by Paul, two, Phil. iii. 12 and iv. 10, fit this interpretation quite well :
in the former Paul’s being grasped by Christ is the precondition for his purposive striving; Phil. iv. 10
is an example of a qualifying use without any sense of formal preconditions ; it does, however, refer
to a former state of affairs which explains both Paul’s joy and the fact that their concern needed
reviving. II Cor. v. 4 is a notoriously difficult verse, but it is no true parallel in that it is followed by
a present tense. Here too ‘inasmuch as’ would be as apt a translation as ‘since’. In Rom. vi. 21,
έφ’ 01s, the έττί picks up the prefix in έπαισχύνεσβε.
2 Here follows a series of laments (vii. 119-26) introduced by the words ‘quid enim nobis prodest
...?’; Brandenburger, op. cit. p. 35, sees here evidence of a Sündenverhängnis, but the argument of this
article is that this is a misunderstanding of the tension between determinism and responsible action
inherent in this work. The righteous resist the evil cogitamentum of their hearts and receive their
reward (vii. 92).
 THEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ROMANS V. 12 351
to come, and again each one of them has chosen for himself glories to come.’1
We have referred above to the similar balance in the Apocalypse of Moses
between the statement that sin began through Eve (xxxii. 2) and the exhorta-
tion to her descendants not to sin (xxx, xl). The Apocalypse of Abraham
similarly depicts Azazel and his evil spirits let loose upon the earth, yet
stresses that he only has power over those whose will it is to do evil.12 Ps.-Philo
Biblical Antiquities xiii. 8 tells how Adam sinned and ‘tunc constituta est
mors in generationes hominum’, but then v. 9 adds that men have lost the
ways of paradise by not walking in them, for they have sinned against God. In
Eth. Enoch lxxxiv. 4-6 the hope is expressed that it will be possible for Enoch’s
posterity to overcome the prevailing evil and stand firm in righteousness.
A further interesting parallel occurs in 1QH xv. 18 f. where it is stated
bluntly that God has created the wicked for wrath and has assigned them
from birth to the day of slaughter; this seems unequivocally fatalistic and yet
the writer continues : ‘for (‫ )כי‬they walk in the way that is not good and they
despise [thy] co[venant] and their sons abhor thy [Law], and they take no
pleasure in all thou hast commanded and they choose all that which thou
hatest’. Is it going too far to suggest that the function of the ‫ כי‬here is analo-
gous to that of έφ’ φ in Rom. v. 12?
It will be apparent that the πάντες ήμαρτου of Rom. v. 12 is, on this inter-
pretation, a reference to the responsible, active, individual sinning of all
men. As we have seen, this is by no means universally accepted by exegetes.3
Not that it would be right to deny any influence or connection between
Adam’s sin and that of his posterity;4 what is suggested here is that that idea
is conveyed more by Rom. v. 12 a than by the fourth clause ; in the latter the
stress is rather on individual guilt and responsibility, and this is the function of
that clause within the verse.
This position is supported by the fact that Paul usually uses άμαρτώνειν
of responsible and personal sinning;5 this is true particularly in the case of the
two previous occurrences of the verb in Romans, at ii. 12 and iii. 23. In the
latter passage Paul’s whole argument would be vitiated if any mouth were not
stopped by the consciousness of its own guilt before God.6 Modern dogmatic
or apologetic considerations should not lead us to demand that Paul should
reckon with the deaths of infants and so be able to say of them too that they
ήμαρτον.7 Further, the whole question of the period between Adam and the

1 The distinction of the this-worldly death that comes on all as a legacy from Adam and the eternal
fate that rests in the individual’s own hands is clear here (cf. liv. 19). 3 Apoc. Abr. xxiii.
3 Particularly by those interpreting the verse in terms of‘corporate personality’ (see p. 339 n. 4
above). 4 Cf. Lyonnet in Recherches de Science Religieuse xliv, 70.
5 Cf. Cambier, loc. cit. pp. 239 f. ; the same is probably true of αμαρτωλός in v. 19, but cf. Bultmann,
‘Adam and Christ’, p. 159: he takes the word as expressing a relation to God and not an ethical
quality; this would be to divorce too much the relational and ethical in this word and in δίκαιο;.
3 Jüngel, loc. cit. p. 52, sees in Rom. v. 12 an allusion to the wording of Rom. iii. 23; cf. Lengsfeld,
op. cit. p. 76.
7 See B. Weiß, K.E.K. iv6 (Göttingen, 1881), 261; Gutwenger, loc. cit. p. 438.
352 A. J. M. WEDDERBURN

coming of the Law only really arises if mention has been made of a concept of
sin that seems to involve the presence of the Law;1 if all simply inherited
Adam’s guilt or sinned against God’s commandment in Adam the question
of how they could sin without further commandments just does not arise.
It is because Paul accuses all of having actively sinned against God that he
must deal with the possible objection that God’s will was not revealed to men
between Adam and Moses. Furthermore, the fact that Paul can say in I Cor.
xv. 22 that all die (present) in Adam does not justify the inference that he
could also say that all sinned (aorist) in Adam; death comes to a man unsoli-
cited and it can come to him by the hand of another, but sinning is by defini-
lion his own act, his own rebellion, into which another can lead him but
cannot force him ; when he is compelled to do it it is no longer his own act and
no longer his sin.2 We must therefore infer that not only is a reference to
individual guilt intelligible at this point in the light of Jewish parallels, but
that it makes the best sense of Paul’s argument in its context.
Yet there is one verse here that seems to contradict all this - v. 19:3 there it
says that through the disobedience of the one man άμαρτωλοΐ κατεστάθησαν
οί ττολλοί. It is true that the force of this is rather weakened by the considéra-
tion that κατεστάθησαν may have a reflexive or middle sense, ‘become’,
rather than being a true passive;4 moreover the causal sense of διά with the
genitive is weaker than that of a dative of the instrument or ύπό with a
genitive of the agent. It refers to the ‘ means by which ’ and need not imply
the sole means. Adam’s sin may thus be a necessary, though not a sufficient,
cause of all future sinfulness.5 κατεστάθησαν could also have an inceptive
force: ‘men became (and are still becoming) ’.6Yet the real clue to the right
interpretation here lies in the second limb of the comparison: through the
obedience of the one man δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται oi πολλοί. Here too the
sense of the verb is surely not just ‘will be made’ or even ‘will become’. Men
are righteous now by faith in Christ.7 The clue to this verse lies in Paul’s
polarization of tenses : the characteristics of the old age are put in the aorist
1 In v, 14 too αμαρτάνει‫ ״‬clearly refers to a concrete act of transgression. Jiingel, loc. cit. p. 52,
argues that the charge of πάντε5 ήμαρτο‫ ״‬is implicitly brought by the Law as in Rom. iii. 23.
2 It is at this point that those interpretations of this verse based on ‘corporate personality’ border
on the unethical and the incredible ; they are unethical if they represent God as holding a man respon-
sible for that in which he could have had no part, and they seem incredible in that they seek to make
this palatable by claiming it to be a feature of Semitic psychology; for a critique of this reconstruction
of Hebrew ways of thinking cf. J. R. Porter, ‘The Legal Aspects of the Concept of “Corporate
Personality” in the Old Testament’, V.T. xv (1965), 361-80; J. W. Rogerson, ‘The Hebrew
Conception of Corporate Personality: a Re-examination’, J.T.S. xxi (1970), 1-16.
2 Cf. O. Kuss, Der Römerbrief (Regensburg, 1963), pp. 231 f.
1 Cf. Jas. iii. 6, iv. 4, Brandenburger, op. cit. p. 161, W. F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, A Creek-English
Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature4 (Chicago, 1952), p. 391 b.
5 So Scroggs, op. cit. p. 79.
6 Cf. F. G. Lafont’s view on the aorists of 15 .‫‘( ע‬Sur !’interpretation de Romains V, 15-21 ’,
Recherches de Science Religieuse xlv (1957), 484).
7 So Paul uses the present tense in iii. 24, 26, 28; although this tense may imply no more than the
anticipation of future acquittal (cf. the future in iii. 30), Paul uses the aorist in v. 1 and contrasts the
reconciliation already achieved with the still future salvation in v. 10.
 THEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ROMANS V. 12 353
even though that old age is not wholly done away with and the characteristics
of the new age are put in the future even though the firstfruits of that age are
already with us.1 So too in I Cor. xv. 49 Paul says that we have borne
(aorist) the image of the earthly man and shall bear (future) that of the
heavenly f what then do we bear in the present? The answer is surely in a
sense both : we are still mortal men and yet as Christ’s we bear within us the
making of the new.
However it is also argued that, because of the analogy of the Christ side of
the comparison, where salvation is so manifestly a gift, something that comes
to one without one’s earning it, therefore both here and elsewhere the Adamic
side of the comparison must be so conceived of that the condemnation comes
to man from outside himself, as something that overtakes him.3 Yet it must
first be established that this analogy holds good; after all Paul does very
obviously qualify it, both by his negative qualifications in vv. 15 and 16 and
by his avoidance of any neat parallelism in v. 17, where, as Brandenburger
notes,4 (i) the future βασιλεύσουσιν is in contrast to the aorist έβασίλευσεν,
(ii) the reign of life is effective only for those receiving it (λαμβάνοντες), and
(iii) in place of the ‘life’ that we might expect as the subject of the verb
‘reign’ it is the recipients of grace who become the rulers. And yet this would
not necessarily weaken the argument from analogy, since if anything there is
a tendency to make the Christ side of the comparison less deterministic than
the other.5 Hence we need to make the further point that it may be at this
very point of the qualification of any determinism that an analogy does exist
between the Adamic and the Christ sides of the comparison. Just as the life
that is in Christ comes as a gift to men, but as a gift which they must still
receive, so the decree of death and a whole environment and pattern of life
blighted by sin and forsaken by God are handed down to man from his
ancestor, and yet he must responsibly make his own decision as to whether to
follow his fellow men or remain true to God’s word and will. It is this last,
crucial point that is made in Rom. v. 12 d and it is this verse above all others
that justifies us in rejecting either an automatic universalism in the ol
πολλοί of ‫ע‬. I g or a fatalistic determinism in the κατεστάθησαν.

That there is a tension between these two strands of thought, the universal
and the individual, is undeniable ; that applies not only to Paul’s thought and
to Jewish theology, but also to subsequent Christian theology. This article
does not seek to resolve that tension, but rather to guard against a false
1 In view of this eschatological perspective to Paul’s thought here it is not enough to regard the
future as merely logical; cf. Lengsfeld, op. cit. pp. 94-6.
2 The hortatory φορέσωμεν is better attested, but the context seems to favour the indicative : cf. the
introductory καί as opposed to the unambiguous ώστε before 0. 58, also Lengsfeld, op. cit. pp. 62 f.
3 Cf. Nygren, op. cit. p. 159.
4 Op. cit. pp. 229-31; cf. Cambier, loc. cit. p. 230.
6 But cf. B. Malina, ‘Some Observations on the Origin of Sin in Judaism and in Paul’, C.B.Q.
xxxi (1969), 28.
354 A. J· M· WEDDERBURN
resolution of it by pointing out that it exists as an unresolved tension within
the unity of Paul’s thought and hence as a balance as well as a tension. It is
necessary to do so because mistaken attempts have been made to resolve that
tension; on the one hand there is that view which merges our personalities
with that of the historic Adam in the name of Hebrew psychology; those
taking that line would do well to heed the warning of H. W. Robinson, that
great protagonist of ‘ corporate personality ’ as a hermeneutic key : ‘ we do not
seem to be justified in ascribing to Paul in Rom. v. 12-21 any further idea of
the direct influence of Adam’s act upon racial sin than belongs externally to
the example and unique place in history of that act’.1 On the other hand there
is that view which sees in Rom. v. 12 a tension between two very different
ways of thinking; here Paul has to correct one way of thinking, to introduce
into it a qualification that was not originally there, perhaps even to break its
very structure. There is then the danger that one seeks to distinguish what was
‘really’ Paul’s view and intention (the individual and existential) and to
slough off borrowed and incompatible elements (especially when they can be
branded as mythological). Our argument here is that both elements belong
to Paul’s thought, both are part of his one view of the situation; hence it
would be wrong to regard one view as less his than the other. To obliterate
the responsibility of the individual or to make him guilty of that for which he
was not responsible may be unethical, but it is equally false to deny that de
facto it is human to sin and to die and that socially and physically we are thus
inevitably involved in a situation from which only Christ can release us. This
tension or balance between the social or cosmic and the individual must not
be destroyed, and it is to the impoverishment of Paul’s thought to seek to
eliminate it there.
A. J. M. WEDDERBURN

1 The Christian Doctrine of Man1 (Edinburgh, 1913), p. 120.

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