Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 55:2 (Fall 1993)
Article: The Obedience of Faith in the Letter to the Romans Part III: The Obedience of Christ and the Obedience of the Christian "continued")
Author: Don B. Garlington

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WTJ 55:2 (Fall 1993) p. 281

The Obedience of Faith in the Letter to the Romans
Part III: The Obedience of Christ and the Obedience of the Christian
continued)

Don B. Garlington

III. Rom 5:12-21: Adam and Christ: Disobedience and Obedience — continued

(2) The Reign of Death from Adam to Moses. Having stated his thesis that universal sin and death are the effect of one man’s disobedience, Paul, in vv. 13–14, seems compelled to defend what he has written. These verses commence the “B” section of our passage. Very noticeable, remarks Dunn, is the speed with which Paul’s thought reverts to the law—a further indication that it was the chief point of tension between Paul the Christian and the traditional emphases of Judaism.1 In particular, v. 12 appears, to the Jewish mind, to contain a puzzling proposition. Given Paul’s consistent denial of the existence of the law before Sinai, how could there have been sin strictly speaking, since, presumably, there was no law according to which sin could be reckoned? Sin, after all, is disregard of the Torah. It is this which Paul now seeks to clarify.

His explanation is a return to 4:15b, ου δὲ οὐκ νόμος οὐδὲ παράβασις, where these words are appended to the statement of the previous part of the verse, ὁ γὰρ νόμος ὀργὴν κατεργάζεται. By claiming, in 5:12, that all have sinned, Paul has implied that they have rejected God’s law and have, therefore, been the recipients of wrath (death). This, of course, raises a historical problem: if the law (of Moses) works wrath, and if sin is not reckoned apart from law, how could there have been sin and death before Sinai? For a sizable segment of Judaism anyway, the answer was obvious: the Torah has existed from the dawn of history, and the nations are exposed to wrath because they have spurned the eternal Torah. As early as Ben Sira this idea is in evidence: Abraham himself kept none other than the law (of Moses) during a time of testing (Sir 44:20). Afterward the author of Jubilees would make the same claim (24.11; cf. 23.10), as does Kidd. 4.4.2 Even more

WTJ 55:2 (Fall 1993) p. 282

striking in Jubilees is the pre-existence of the law on “heavenly tablets,”3 “the eternal books always before the...

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