On “What I do not want, I do” (Rom 7:19)

Contents

Reading pages: 664–669 · 672

1. 664Severian rebukes his hearers for leaving church for the hippodrome the day before, contrasting the races with God’s chariot of apostles and prophets, and then begins on Rom 7:15–23: Paul is not excusing sin but speaking in the person of Adam, who “once lived without the law” before the commandment in paradise.
2. 668Death is not natural to humankind but came through sin, as Enoch and Elijah show; the righteous before Abraham were neither Greeks nor Jews but Christians in power, and Christ’s answer on divorce (“from the beginning it was not so”) shows the Gospel restoring the original order, the law having only “come in alongside,” like Leah beside Rachel.
3. 669Jacob’s wives typify the church and the synagogue (the law “came in alongside” like Leah), Jacob’s journey, ladder, and well typify Christ, the cross, the church, and baptism; Severian then reads Rom 7:11–15 as the voice of humanity under sin, which “sold itself,” not as Paul’s own state.
4. 672Severian completes his reading of Rom 7–8 as the voice of humanity enslaved to sin and freed by Christ, then argues against Apollinarians, Arians and Eunomians that Christ took a human soul as well as flesh, and explains “spirit” in 1 Thess 5:23 as the gift of the Holy Spirit.