Adam, Moses, Jesus
A reading of Romans 5:12-21
Few texts of any length have had such a massive effect on the development of Western theology and civilization as Romans 5:12-21. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin was formulated in terms of this passage (among others),1 and it remained central for Augustinian scholastics in the medieval period.2 The basic structure of Reformed covenant theology rests on the Adam-Christ analogy that Paul develops most fully here.3
Centuries of attention to this text, however, have failed to address the question of the role of Moses in the history of Adam and the Last Adam adequately. In his commentary on Romans, John Murray comments on Paul’s statement that “sin is not imputed when there is no Law.” He argues that this
enunciates a general principle on which Paul is insistent. “Where there is no Law, neither is there transgression” (4:15). Since sin is transgression of Law, it is apparent that there can be no sin if there is no Law. It is not consonant with Paul’s teaching nor with the Scripture in general to suppose that what Paul means here is that although there may be sin yet it is not imputed as sin when there is not a Law. This would contradict 4:15. Apart from the provisions of justifying grace, which are not in view in this verse [5:13], when sin is not imputed it is because sin does not exist.
In a footnote, he adds that between Adam and Moses, sin must in fact have been imputed: “If sin was not imputed during that period, then the sentence of death could not be inflicted. But the sentence of death was inflicted. Therefore it must have been inflicted on the ground of the sin that was imputed, namely, the sin of Adam, a sin that could still be imputed because it was the violation of expressly revealed law.”4
Murray has a point: If all men suffer death because of the sin of the “one man,” then they must somehow be participants in the guilt5 of the “one man.” If each suffered only for his own sin, if Adam was the only one liable for his sin, then Death would not have spread to all men. Yet, in the end, Murray turns Paul’s statements into their opposites. First, he is clearly using “sin” and “transgression” in a different way from Paul. The point of Romans 4:15 is not to provide a definition of sin (as “transgression of Law”) but to point to the effect of introducing Torah. Paul’s argument flows this way: Those who are “of Torah” – that is, Jews – are not the heirs; those who are of faith are heirs (v. 14). Torah does not have the power to bring life and health but instead brings wrath, and the reason for that is that Torah raises the profile of sin to the level of “transgression” (v. 15). If sin and transgression are simply identical terms, then the intervention of Torah would be immaterial. Second, whereas Paul says “sin is not imputed” before Torah enters the world, Murray says it must have been imputed then because people died. It appears that Murray is using “impute” in a different sense than Paul, and if he is not, then his interpretation flatly contradicts Paul’s assertion.
Finally, Murray treats the period “from Adam until Moses” as if Paul had chosen it merely for illustrative purposes:
Why did Paul select this segment of history – from Adam to Moses – to support his thesis? For is not this same truth exemplified in every era of human history, namely, that Death reigns over those who do not sin after the similitude of Adam’s transgression? This is true. But there was an appropriateness in selecting this period. The period after Moses, because of the more abundant revelation of law and ordinance, did not provide the apostle with as suitable an example of what was now his particular interest, namely, that Death reigned over those who did not sin after the pattern of Adam. This would have been more especially the case when he had in mind his Jewish readers. They appreciated the significance of the Mosaic revelation and in respect of its concreteness and definiteness would compare it with the revelation given to Adam. The pre-Mosaic period furnished a better example of those who did not sin as Adam did.6
The concession at the beginning of the paragraph is worrisome: Paul could have chosen any “era of human history.” Though Murray defends the wisdom of Paul’s choice, he does not recognize that the Torah plays a crucial role in the development of Paul’s point. Murray’s Paul makes claims about the effect and spread of human sin in general, rather than about the way Torah affects the pre-existing situation of fallen humanity. To put it in other terms, he is taking Paul as a systematic rather than a biblical theologian, making synchronic or timeless claims rather than thinking diachronically.
Commentators more or less connected with the “New Perspective on Paul” have given more attention to the role of Moses in Romans 5. Thomas Schreiner assumes that Paul is concerned with the effect Torah had on a world already under the reign of Death. That is, Paul’s concern is not “statically” with the condition of sin, but with the history of redemption and Torah’s role in it. He begins his exposition by addressing the supposed contradiction between Romans 2:12 (“those who sinned without Law shall perish without Law”) and 5:13 (“sin is not imputed where there is no Law”). As he bluntly states the objection: “If people truly perish because of their own sin as Paul says in Romans 2:12, then the statement that sin is not reckoned apart from the Law is a technicality that is virtually meaningless.”7 Following the text carefully, however, removes the contradiction. Paul has stated (in 4:15) that there is no transgression without Law, and so he must explain “how those who never had the Law can be guilty of sin.” His statement that “sin is not reckoned where there is no Law” cannot mean that sin did not exist prior to the Law, nor that sin was not punished prior to the Law. Instead, Paul draws the same conclusion in 5:14 that he does in 2:12, namely, that before the Law was introduced sin was already punished with death and those who were without Law perished without Law.
The point of verse 13, then, is that “apart from the Mosaic Law sin is not equivalent to transgression,” the latter term referring to violations of specific commandments. Schreiner concludes:
One could still object that the distinction is rather trivial since those who do not “transgress” the law are punished with death anyway (e.g., the flood generation). In response I would say that Paul’s objective is twofold. First, the power of death is so great that it exercises its dominion over people even if no law exists. Second, violating a commandment revealed by God increases the seriousness of sin in the sense that the sin is now more defiant and rebellious in character.8
Schreiner’s analysis of the text takes Paul’s reference to the Mosaic system more seriously than Murray, but in the end he finds himself in a bind: The distinction between sin and transgression does not seem to carry much weight, since, as Maynard Keynes might have observed, in the long run sinners and transgressors are both dead.
N. T. Wright takes a line close to Schreiner:
What Paul needs to explain here [in 5:13-14] is that sin did indeed spread to all people, including those who might at first sight (from a Jewish point of view in which sin meant breaking Torah) have seemed to be without sin. His explanation is simple: sin must have been there (5:13a) because death was there, ruling like a king (5:14a). He acknowledges (5:13b) that sin is not reckoned up, not logged in any register, in the absence of the law. (We might note that, although it would be easy to take “law” here in a more general sense than the Mosaic Torah, the context makes it quite clear that Torah is what Paul has in mind. . .). As a result, the subjects over whom death ruled, though sinners, were not the same type of sinners as Adam had been, that is, sinners against a specific known commandment. They did not, he says, sin “in the likeness of the trespass of Adam.”9
Wright’s treatment, however, runs into the same difficulties as Schreiner’s, difficulties of which he shows no awareness.
In what follows, I offer a reading of 5:12-14 that takes Paul’s reference to the Law seriously yet escapes the charge of triviality by insisting that the introduction of Torah significantly changed the configuration of Sin and Death10 in relation to Adamic humanity. This reading will in the end suggest a more positive reading of the role of Torah than Schreiner or Wright have suggested.
I.
As many commentators have suggested (Douglas Moo most clearly),11 there is an inclusio around Romans 5-8 that frames it as a distinct unit. The inclusion is marked by a number of repeated key words:
1) dikaioo: “justify”: 5:1, 9; 6:7; 8:30, 33: This verb, prominent in Romans 1-4, is used only a handful of times in this passage. Strikingly, the one time it is used between 5:9 and 8:30 is in 6:7, in the apparently unusual sense of “justified from Sin.”
2) elpis: “hope” (n); elpizo: “hope” (v): 5:2, 4, 5; 8:20, 24-25. Though hope has been introduced in Paul’s discussion of Abraham (4:18) as a constitutive aspect of faith, this theme comes into its own in this section. Paul moves from justification to hope in 5:1-2, and the whole section concludes on this note as well, suggesting that hope is a key theme of the passage. This is hope for glory, which in context refers to hope for the restoration and enhancement of Adamic humanity; and it is a hope for a renewed creation, for the inheritance of the “world” promised to Abraham (4:13).
3) agape: “love”: 5:5, 8; 8:35, 39. The verb form is used in 8:28, 37. 5:5 is the first use of the word in Romans, and it is not used between 5:8 and 8:28. Hope and love are clearly linked as well, as when Paul grounds the certainty of our hope in the fact that God's love is poured out through the Spirit (5:5).
4) asthenes: “weak” and “weakness”: 5:6; 8:26.
5) thlipsis: “tribulation”: 5:3; 8:35. The only other uses in Romans are at 2:9 and 12:12. The connection between “hope” and “tribulation” is obvious: In the midst of trials we hope for ultimate rescue. The link of tribulation and justification is less obvious, but no less important in the biblical picture. Noah, the first man described as “righteous” in the sight of God, is designated as such when the world is heading toward decreation. To be judged “righteous” means being picked out for rescue from tribulation, and not just rescue: Noah hopes that he will inherit the new world that God will construct on the other side of the decreation. So for Paul, justification is never the end of the story; justification is the beginning of a story of perseverance and deliverance, a story of new creation and inheritance.
6) hupomone: “patience”: 5:3-4; 8:25. Again, the link with tribulation is self-evident, and also the link with hope.
7) sozo: “save”: 5:9-10; 8:24. Between these two occurrences, the word is not used at all. In both cases, salvation is a future reality, for which we hope.
From a narrative perspective, N. T. Wright gives a characteristically stimulating overview of Romans 5-8 as a retelling of the exodus account.12 Romans 8 describes the church’s future inheritance of the cosmos, as the cosmos will be transformed at the revealing of the sons of God who will rule the new cosmos. Earlier in Romans 8, Paul describes the gift of the Spirit in terms that recall Israel’s wilderness wanderings. The church is “led” by the Spirit, and must walk by the Spirit if she is going to attain to the inheritance promised. The Spirit is described as the Spirit of adoption, in contrast to the spirit of slavery – which again recalls the transition from slavery to sonship in the exodus. Not only the new humanity, but the entire creation will participate exodus, as the creation is “set from its slavery to corruption, into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God” (8:21). The church is not only the new Israel here, but the new Adamic race, receiving the glory that Adam forfeited and ruling the world as Adam was called to do.
The slavery/freedom contrast goes back to chapter 6, where it is worked out in terms of baptism. This is the crossing of the sea that unites the baptized to Jesus as Israel was united to Moses (1 Cor. 10:1-4), and initiates the progress toward one's inheritance. This means that chapter 7 corresponds to Sinai, the giving of the Law. And that is precisely the theme of Romans 7: The effect that the Law has on people of flesh, and the reasons for the Law’s failure to bring the promised inheritance. The role of Romans 5:12-21 in this narrative is to put the specific story of Israel’s exodus in the larger context of humanity’s history between Adam and Jesus. Romans 5:1-11 introduces the whole section by emphasizing the theme of hope and the promise of glory.