I’m sorry I’ve not been clear. So, here it is:

Romans 7:7-11 describes Saul’s experience of becoming enraged at Christians and falling into a love of death.

Romans 7:13-25 describes Galatians 1:15-18.

I do not believe that upon conversion Saul/Paul instantaneously and miraculously came to all the theology he expresses in his epistles. I believe he had a lot of stuff to work through, just like anyone else converted. And Saul was the Super-Israelite who understood better than anyone else in the history of the world exactly how the Torah system functioned. He was the perfect man for the job of working through what the New Creation meant for Torah-Man. That’s what he was doing in his early years, and it took time.

I submitted that Romans 7:14-25 is a three-fold explication of this working-through process. I provided an outline that shows to my present satisfaction that v. 25a is not an interjection but is parallel to the ends of the first two cycles. It is, of course, the climax of the whole argument and leads to Romans 8.

I believe that it was important for Paul, the Super-Israelite, so lay out these arguments for converted Jews in the apostolic age. In my opinion, this is exactly one of the things we should expect to find in the NT writings. Paul is helping other converted Jews to think though the problems of Torah and the meaning of the New Creation.

And, as I’ve written, I think that these kinds of arguments, this three-fold psychological cycle, can be helpful to Christians going through dark nights, etc.

I hope that makes clear how I’m seeing it.

Have been away, and only now get to your question. Yes, I believe Saul was provoked to envious wrath by Stephen’s sermon and final vision. This was but a summary instance of the reality of the New Creation church. I suggest a comparison with a fantasy novella by Pushkin called “Mozart and Salieri,” which was made into an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov and into a film a few years back called “Amadeus.” In Pushkin’s tale, the young Mozart is gifted by God to be able to write effortlessly music that is better than what Salieri can write with much blood, sweat, and tears. Salieri is consumed with envy.

The 1st century Jews could see that the promises of God were being fulfilled. Elijah had come. The distinctive thing about Elijah and Elisha were that they raised people from the dead. Now this is happening again. Moreover, the promised speaking in other languages is taking place. Etc. Etc. The Christians were visibly and openly manifesting all kinds of things that the Jews expected to receive for themselves in the age to come. But it was not happening under their control. It was manifest among fishermen riffraff, Greek-Jews, and even Gentiles.

I do not accept the notion that Saul was a politicized follower of Shammai. He tells us he was of the “stay cool and wait and see” school of Gamaliel. It is clear that he did not take up a stone and join in the mob killing Stephen. The change that came over him is dramatic, and I personally think it is alluded to in Romans 7:7-11, as a prelude to his discussion Romans 11.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I don’t see how Romans 11 makes sense after the apostolic age. Post-Biblical Jews do not have the religion of the Old Testament, and hence are not angered by Christians using other languages, breaking bread and using musical instruments outside the Temple, mixing “Jews” and “Gentiles” together in the church, and claiming that the first century resurrections fulfilled the Old Testament predictions. The religion of Rabbinic Judaism is not about these things, so that there is nothing in Christian experience to provoke them to orgee wrath. Romans 11 only makes sense in the apostolic age, and it makes sense as the same kind of thing that Saul/Paul underwent.

I think you’ve got some of your exegetical facts about Romans 7 mixed up. The only times Paul mentions his fleshly nature in chapter 7, he either says “I am [of] flesh” (v.14), or he is telling us something about the flesh/sin that is in him/in his members (vv.17-18, 20, 21, 23). I take v.14 to be a summary of Paul’s post-conversion covenantal situation. He knows where he comes from (i.e., flesh and sin); and he knows where he ought to be (i.e., spiritually obeying God’s Law). But notice, he never uses the preposition ‘in’ here in order to describe a state of being in the flesh.

Then I take vv.15-25 to be his existential summary of what it is like being-in this situation. It is the “Sarx-ein” of Paul. So if you read very carefully through vv.15-25, you will notice Paul never once says anything to the effect of “I am in the flesh.” Only that the flesh/sin is in him. Then in chapter 8, he goes on to make it even clearer to us that those who are in the flesh” cannot please God (8:8), and then he tells us “you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit” (8:9). He then adds the qualifier, “if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.” This would seem to comport well with the covenantal fact that both the flesh and the Spirit dwell in the same man, thus allowing Paul to have said things like: “I see another law in my members [i.e., flesh], warring against the law of my mind [i.e., the law of the Spirit] (7:23); “So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God [which is spiritual], but with the flesh the law of sin [which is fleshly]” (7:25).

To sum it up, there were two laws at work in Paul creating a covenantal dualism: the law of the flesh and the law of the Spirit. And he never once says of himself I am in the flesh. The all-important word there being the preposition ‘in’ and how it is being used. Paul is dealing with the issue of who is in what state, with the focus being on in-ness. All who are in the flesh cannot be in the Spirit. But all who are in the Spirit have both the Spirit and the flesh in them. Or, to put it another way, if you are in the flesh, then you are not in the Spirit; but if you are in the Spirit, then the flesh still abides in you. I think the issues Paul is dealing with in chapters 6-8 revolve around his use of the covenantal ‘in.’ I also think Paul was a very careful thinker, like an analytical philosopher of our day, and so was very careful and precise in how exactly he used the preposition ‘in’ throughout these chapters.

And I won’t now. But a couple more thoughts.

Is Rom 7.25a an interjection? Absolutely. For the predicament Paul has been describing is the law of sin and death – which immediately he says the believer is set free from in Rom 8.2.

The person in the latter part of Roman 7 is “in the flesh”; “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” (8.9).

As I’ve said before: 7.7ff is about life under Torah and in the flesh. There is no reference there to the Spirit at all. And conversely, the situation in 8.1ff is reversed.

All of this fits perfectly with what I’ve insisted: 7.5-6 serve as a heading to the two sections that follow, and collapsing those headings into one another makes nonsense of the inherent antithesis between “living in the flesh,” where the sinful passions are aroused by the flesh and bear fruit for death (7.5), on the one hand, and being released from Torah, having died to captivity, so that we can serve in the newness of the Spirit (7.6).

Honestly, I can’t make coherent sense of your position, JBJ, because sometimes you make it sound like the passage is about Paul’s preconversion life, and others like his postconversion life. (The only way you can preserve 7.25a as part of the existential reality of the foregoing, rather than as an interjection, is by making the preceding a Christian experience.)

There is absolutely no problem saying that Paul repeats in 7.9 what he said before in 5.20: he does this ALL THE TIME. 8.2, for example, repeats much of what we are told in 7.6. This is common pedagogy: repeat a point and put it to further use.

In truth, Rom 8 largely unpacks 5.21 while Rom 7 largely unpacks 5.20. Romans 6 deals with an angle raised by 5.20-21: If grace abounds where Sin has increased (gained further power for its reign), why not continue living under Sin’s reign?

What do you think Paul was covetous of? Of what Stephen possessed by being able to see God? If so, in what sense can we call that covetousness?

It seems to me that not only has the relationship of Torah to self changed, but so has the relationship of “flesh” to self? Yes? No?

>Paul says “when the commandment came, sin revived and I died” (7.9). This is directly parallel to 5.20: “Now nomos came in, in order to increase the trespass.” In context, the trespass is the occasion of death (5.12ff). Thus, Paul is saying exactly what he said in chapter 5: when Torah entered, death re-entered.<

Jim replies: Aha. Yes indeed. I agree, save for the word “exactly” in the last sentence. Why say exactly the same thing again, and more important (to me) why go into all the psychological and existential angst of the matter? Why? Because, I submit, Paul is specifying the general principle to himself, using himself as an exemplar to new Jewish converts.

Rather than seeing 7:25 as an interjection out of context, I see it as the climax of the whole existential presentation. Paul has said that Torah is Spiritual, but apart from the Spirit it seems that Torah works death. (Galatians 4). Flesh defeats Torah. Of course, the Spirit was present in the Old Creation, uniting with Spiritual Torah to defeat flesh. But now, thanks be to Jesus Christ out Lord, Spirit has come fully and the Deathbody is slain and resurrected. As Paul has already said, this means Torah is “established” in a new context.

Summary: IMO, “Romans 7″ recapitulates for us the arguments Saul had with himself after his conversion while he was rethinking the entirety of the Old Creation situation and revelation. This took some time. He presents it here as part of his argument about the coming of the new creation, and in particular as a way of addressing that Israel for which he would have been willling to give his life. Jewish converts need to think this through, following Paul, and not become “Judaizers.”

I hope this makes more sense, even if you still reject it. It was what I was trying to set forth in my original post.

As I presently (NB) see the passage, SaulPaul is using himself to replicate the history of Adam. As a son of Gamaliel and a faithful believer, Saul was alive apart from Torah once (though, like Abraham, he had God’s torahs, ordinances, statues, etc. and loved and followed them).

At some point the sin of covetousness took possession of him and he replicated the fall of Adam. This, I agree, is analogous to the arrival of Torah at Sinai. For Saul himself it was his fall into orgeewrath at the stoning of Stephen.

Historically, the arrival of Torah “officially” at Sinai is a glory, in that it fills out more fully the meaning of human life and rule under God; but at the same time it is killing because fleshly-man now has a more full revelation of God to rebel against. That is, the “the Law is Spiritual (of the glory-Spirit), but I am fleshly.”

Saul was grabbed by Jesus and brought to Himself, but that conversion did not process itself through all at once. Saul believed, while being blinded. He was baptized and his blindness removed. He then spent three years working through what the New Creation meant.

I am arguing that Romans 7:13ff. is SaulPaul’s working through these matters as a new believer during those three years. (continuation below)

Personally, I would prefer to work from Romans 8 to do the bulk of the sort of application most people want to do from Romans 7. I believe that the anticipation of the new creation depicted there involves a groaning that does bear a real analogy to the situation under Torah depicted in Romans 7. This indicates both that one can address that fact when dealing with Romans 7, but also that Romans 8 would be a better place to bear the brunt of such work.

As far as Romans 7, I would prefer to work further with what I believe Paul himself is doing – i.e. providing a contrast between life under Torah and life in the Spirit. While that involves contrast between periods of redemptive history, one of which has now past, according to the principles Paul elucidates elsewhere (e.g. Gal 4), Torah is an element of the old creation, and therefore my primary applications from Romans 7 would deal with the contrast between the life of the believer and life under the old creation; this would serve well (as Paul’s own argument does) to further work out what Paul has been saying already in Romans 6 about the submission of our members to life and righteousness through the freedom granted in Christ.

Contrary to some in pietism, I don’t think Christians are supposed to wallow in Romans 7. The application, as I see is, is that there are times when believers go through dark nights of the soul, or come under terrible conviction of sin. Working through the arguments in Romans 7 and continuing into the assurances of Romans 8 is like working through one of the psalms. The Christian realizes that while he feels worthless and under conviction, in fact he hates sin in his innermost being, and that is a comfort. Progressing, he comes to the greatest comfort of trust in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the life of the Spirit.

Regardless of who is right as regards the first-order meaning of this passage, all must confess that, as is true of all Scripture, it has application to Christians.