One Man’s Rhetoric is Another Man’s Decisive Evidence

Most commentator will admit that deciding the identity of the egō in Romans 7 is difficult. Thomas Schreiner:

The identity of the “I” (ἐγώ, egō) in verses 7–25 has generated intense controversy.[3] (Romans, BECNT, 2nd ed., p. 356)

Footnote three fleshes this out with some examples:

…Lambrecht 1992: 59–91, who sees some truth in all proposals … B. Dodd (1999: 221–34) argues for a composite theory, but Jewett (2007: 443) complains that it “is almost bizarre in its complexity.”

Douglas Moo:

The diversity in interpretation that we have just sketched is due not only to differing theological agendas and concerns; the exegetical data do not all point in one direction. Much will depend on the particular perspective from which one approaches the passage and which arguments are given greater weight. Interpreting Rom. 7 is like fitting pieces of a puzzle together when one is not sure of the final outline; the best interpretation is the one that is able to fit the most pieces together in the most natural way. (Emphasis mine; The Letter to the Romans, NICNT, 2nd ed., p. 469).

Perhaps an indirect piece of evidence for Moo’s claim that “the exegetical data do not all point in one direction” is the fact that commentators who differ over the egō of Romans 7:14–25 both appeal to Paul’s rhetorical use of language to account for what others take as “decisive evidence” for their interpretation.

Here, I’ll point out two examples from Moo (since I’m working through his commentary right now).

In response to the argument that the way in which the mind of the egō is described in 7:14–25 is evidence of a Christian, Moo says:

But this does not follow. Granted that the mind of people apart from Christ is tragically and fatally flawed, it does not follow that the mind cannot understand and respond to God at all. (488)

And yet in the very next paragraph, Moo says,

That the struggle between the law of God, the mind, and the will, on the one hand, and the “law of sin,” the flesh/members, and what is done, on the other, has so negative an outcome is an important reason for thinking that Paul must be describing the experience of a non-Christian.(ibid)

But this doesn’t follow anymore than it follows that the unregenerate mind cannot understand and respond to God at all. After all, the idea that the negativity of the passage is such that it weighs against the Christian identity of the egō is a subjective judgment. Moo goes on in the next sentence to say that the believer may “even be continually overcome by a particular, individual sin” and it seems likely that Christians who happen to be in the middle of that struggle will find Moo’s subjective judgment less convincing.

That next sentence also provides us with the second example:

The believer, while he or she may, and will, struggle with sin, commit sins, and even be continually overcome by a particular, individual sin, has been freed from sin’s power (chap. 6; 8:2) and could therefore hardly be said to be “held captive in the ‘power’ or ‘authority’ of sin.” (ibid)

This example ties more directly to the rhetorical issue. Throughout this section, Moo has appealed to a rhetorical use of language to smooth over some bumps.[1] The most immediate example in the commentary is found in Moo’s interpretation of nomos in the very same verse: “Paul plays on the word nomos to create a rhetorically effective antithesis” (487).

But similar explanations can be given for the intensity of the captivity language. For example, even though John Piper doesn’t explicitly say that this sort of captivity language is rhetorical, it is implicit to his point that Paul doesn’t intend to describe a steady-state. In fact reading the “negative” language (captivity, power, and authority) rhetorically in this passage might be said to have more exegetical precedent than reading the positive language (“I delight in God’s law”) rhetorically, given that Paul has already stated that his enslavement language is not to be taken literally (6:9).

Thus, from my limited study, much of what Moo resists as evidence for the Christian reading comes by an appeal to rhetorical language that can often be employed just as reasonably for what he takes to be decisive evidence for his non-Christian reading. To his credit, Moo expresses a lot of humility going into this section:

“I do not deny that advocates of other views can marshal good arguments of their own … [My] conclusion does not mean that Christians do not struggle with sin. Paul makes it abundantly clear, both explicitly — for instance, Gal. 5:17 — and implicitly — by the amount of time he spends scolding Christians in his letters — that believers are not delivered from the influence of sin. While transferred into the new realm, ruled by Christ and righteousness, believers are still prone to obey those past masters, sin and the flesh. I do not, then, deny that Christians struggle with sin — I deny only that this passage describes that struggle” (472).)

Further, Moo is certainly correct to say that “the central topic of these verses is not human nature, or anthropology, but the Mosaic law. Because this is the case, the most important teaching of the section is the same however the ‘I’ is identified” (449). But I would push back against the extent to which he says that the way we interpret the egō effects “the way we understand the Christian life” (ibid) and precisely because of what he says on page 472 and, partly, because I think if we extracted 7:14–25 from its context there is not a single Christian who would not see much of his or her own struggle reflected in this passage. Or, in other words, where Moo says that he does not “deny that Christians struggle with sin — [he] den[ies] only that this passage describes that struggle” I might add that Paul could have written vvs. 14–25 from the vantage point of a Christian, even if he did not in fact write this passage from that vantage point.

The idea of extracting the passage from its context gets at the real issue though, because I think it’s impossible to settle the issue from within the confines of vvs 14–25. It is Moo’s exegesis going back to chapter 6 that gives his reading its force and it is some of what comes in chapter 8 that gives the alternative its force.

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[1] This is inevitably something all commentators do whether they see the egō as autobiographical or not.

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For a list of all of my posts on Douglas Moo’s commentary on Romans, see here.