Fragments on Romans

1The divine apostle became an unblemished image of good works for his disciples, which is why he cried out, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). So what he said is not literally about himself: “I know that nothing good dwells in my flesh” (Romans 7:18), nor “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). Rather, he says these things and others like them playing a part in an inserted persona, to refute those who love sin.

Just as divine Scripture knows how to call people by their actions—fleshly, soulish, spiritual, and countless other names—so too it knows how to call the devil not only Satan, the Adversary, the devil, the serpent, the lion, and Beliar, but also flesh, law, sin, and death. For we were enslaved to these through disobedience, and not to Christ. That is why Paul says, “When we were in the flesh” (Romans 7:5), making clear that they are no longer in the flesh, even though they are in the flesh—so he is not slandering the flesh we wear, but the flesh that bears the same name, from which we have been set free because we died in Christ by being buried with him through baptism.

We have truly been set free from this flesh. For Paul goes on to say, “But now we have been released from the law of sin, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter” (Romans 7:6). Then he began again the assumed voice by way of hypothesis, starting from “What then shall we say? Is the law sin? By no means!” (Romans 7:7) up to “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). He set down an unshakable foundation in his prologue, making his defense by saying: “What then? Is the law sin? By no means!” and that “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12).

Here by “law” he does not mean the law warring against the law of our mind, but the law that admonishes beforehand, the law that punishes those who sin. That is why he voted with it as holy and just and good. Then he began again to explain in sequence what he had said earlier, prefacing it with a word of thanksgiving: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25).

Then, to condemn those who seize on this as a pretext and abuse the flesh we wear, he asks interrogatively: “So then, do I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh the law of sin?” (Romans 7:25). Am I, Paul, divided—serving the law of God in one part and the law of sin in another? Do I hold Christ and Beliar in myself at the same time and in the same place? Am I the one who said, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20)—and have I lied, having living sin within me? I who proclaimed to others, “Do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” (1 Corinthians 6:19) and “Glorify God in your members” (1 Corinthians 6:20)—do I myself have nothing good in my body? But he is not like that; he is not. By no means! For a child of wrath and a vessel of wrath before, he changed his manner, not his nature, and became a precious vessel of election.

2The words spoken in an assumed voice fit neither the inspired Paul nor anyone buried with Christ through baptism. For such people have been freed from what is called the flesh. They will no longer be condemned because of Adam's disobedience. Sin no longer reigns over them, nor does the death that came through sin. For they were buried with the life of Christ, who wiped out disobedience by his obedience and drove out the death that came upon us from it by his voluntary death. He willingly placed himself under the law of disobedience so that he might redeem us who were under the law of condemnation. This is why every redeemed person says, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:25). For what the law could not do, weakened as it was through the flesh, God did: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, he condemned sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3).

That these things have been rightly observed, the divine apostle shows by adding: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:1-2), and what follows.

Let me now attempt to speak briefly, in passing, about the very words spoken in an assumed voice, beginning from: "But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me" (Romans 7:11). The name "sin" does not indicate an existing substance, but rather a manner and way of life in which someone has missed the mark of what is reasonable and correct. For "sin" is a most general name, predicated of many different things. Every sin comes about neither by reason nor by a commanding law. For if it came about according to law and right reason, it would no longer be a sin, since it would have a defined and ordered principle of origin. But since the divine apostle does not mention mere sins, but a most general sin that has a mind, that has a law, that is able to deceive and to procure opportunities for the preparation of evil, he is not naming anyone else as sin in the most general sense except the originator and father of sins himself, the devil. For this reason the apostle also declared that he reigns over sins: "Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body" (Romans 6:12). For just as we call people by the craft they practice, so also he calls the devil himself "sin," since he was the first inventor of sin.

So then, through the commandment given to Adam he deceived the man, and through it he deceived Adam, procuring opportunities through the commandment. This is what he said: "Why did God say, 'You shall not eat from every tree in the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1). "And on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). He deceives them by hiding the deception under a greater promise. He promises more, so that he might cast down the keepers of the commandment from the foundations of virtue by a fall like his own. For having goaded the man to want to become equal to God, he procured the opportunity for his deceitful conversation from the commandment that had been given. This is why Paul said, "But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me" (Romans 7:11).

3But so that no one would blame the commandment or the God who gave it, he used a neighboring and kindred word, saying: "We know that the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good" (Romans 7:12). Since sin itself—that is, the devil—is not sin by nature or substance, he brings in the next statement: "so that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment" (Romans 7:13). For what exists as a substance will not admit the more and the less; it is what it is, always being what it is in its substance. But for something that comes into being and has things come upon it—whether little or beyond measure—it is other in substance than the things that come upon it. For quantity is not substance but is around substance, not being substance itself. Therefore the one called sin by the apostle, since it admits the more in its sinning, so that sin might become sinful beyond measure—this one also received a beginning of being sin, in the way that it is sin, not being sinful beyond measure in the beginning according to its having sinned. This is why he indicates the increase of its becoming sinful beyond measure in a time to come, saying: "so that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment" (Romans 7:13). But if they should say: How could the commandment and the law be good and just? How could they be holy, when through the occasion they provided sin became sinful beyond measure? Let them hear in response that it is not the case that if something is harmed, the occasion through which it is harmed is already base and evil. For it is not because those who gaze at the sun immoderately and without measure are harmed in their eyes that we call the sun evil; nor is it because the devil became sinful beyond measure by having plotted against the Son of God that we say the Son of God is base and evil. "I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh" (Romans 7:18). Now he interprets this into the person of Adam. And because he was deprived of having God in himself, he exchanged death for true life—for not only did the common death of his members seize him, but also the death of disobedience entered against his soul. For the ruling death reigned especially before the coming of Christ, holding disobedience as the law and scepter of its kingdom over all. But the kingdom of death is not without beginning or unbegotten; for dying comes from the living, and one person's disobedience comes from the obedience of those who obey. "For the willing lies beside me, but the working out of the good does not" (Romans 7:18). "For the good I want, this I do not do, but what I hate, this I practice" (Romans 7:19). If the willing alone is in us, and the working out of the good that is willed is not in us, then the good God sent the souls of the same substance as himself into bodies in vain. For what is dear to him and to them they do not do; they do not enact it, but only will it—and perhaps not even that, for it is unclear.

4But if this is true, I will speak as the impious do: then the good never was and never will be in human life, and no one ever enacted it—if they take the words “the good I want, this I do not do, but what I hate, this I practice” (Romans 7:19) as the abolition of the good and beautiful for every human being. And from where did the names of virtues ever appear in human life? But if there are people who enact the good—even if those who do it are few—will not all of them say, “We know that good does not dwell in us; for the good they wanted, this they practice”? If those who enact the good do so while they are in the flesh, and those who do not do this but do evil are also in the flesh, then the cause of the good not coming to be should not be attached to the flesh, but to their softness of soul. For if evil lies beside those who want to do the good, and likewise the good does not lie beside those who want to do evil, but they deliberate and choose beforehand and only then come to action—are our bodies then evil by nature and substance? For deliberation and willing lead the way before our actions, and these belong to a soul that has a self-determining mind, able to incline toward whatever actions it wishes.

“But now it is no longer I who work it out, but the sin dwelling in me” (Romans 7:17). Through this saying he made his defense: the flesh is not evil by nature. For it is not the flesh we are clothed in that dwells in us, but the devil who dwells in the lawless. For in the same way that I say Christ dwells in every righteous person who works the good, I think the devil dwells in every evildoer. Therefore we are not wicked insofar as we have flesh, but the sin dwelling in us is—and it is something other than the flesh and the soul of the human being. For the devil is said to make his home especially in the soul, according to “Satan entered into the heart of Judas” (John 13:27), and according to “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart?” (Acts 5:3). And it was well said: “no longer I work it out, but the sin dwelling in me.” For there is a great distance between a work and a working-out, because the working-out precedes the work—as, for example, with a house or a ship: the working-out is the advance preparation of the material. So the sin dwelling in sinners—that is, Satan—admittedly works out beforehand in our thoughts the form of the evil to come, its construction, while the soul that has received him cooperates with him in the wickedness, just as the womb of a woman cooperates with those who sow, so that what is sown may be brought to maturity. And since evil thoughts come out of the heart (Matthew 15:19), from the conception of the devil that has taken place, the divine oracle cries out: “destroying thoughts and every high thing lifted up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Just as the Holy Spirit is said to labor together with virtue-loving souls, according to “I labored more abundantly than all of them—not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10), so when a careless soul is persuaded by the devil's promptings, it has the devil himself as its coworker for evil. For he himself worked out beforehand in the soul the pattern of the sin to come. This is why it is said: “no longer I work it out, but the sin dwelling in me” (Romans 7:17).