[I've been having a discussion over at
Drinking Deeply about Total Depravity, which has become a discussion of Romans interpretation. This (long) post is an installment in that discussion. If you're interested, I suggest you
pick up the thread from the beginning.]
I think I was unclear and/or mistaken on a lot of important points in my last comment. This is an attempt to repair that.
(One specific point of unclarity: I made it sound as if there was no difference at all between the believer and anybody else; clearly that's not what Paul is saying.)
The goal here is to outline a reading of Romans 7.7-8.11 that coheres with
its context. I'm making up a lot of this as I go, but my reading is definitely heavily influenced by
this paper by N.T. Wright, which I read a while back. Unsurprisingly, I'm unconfident in a lot of what I'm saying. Correction and criticism is (as always) much appreciated.
***
First, the big picture. The passage in question is continuous with the discussion of sin, the law (i.e. Torah), and grace starting at the end of ch. 5. In fact, I think the last two verses of chapter 5 are a good summary of the argument that runs up to the middle of chapter 8:
Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (5.20-21)
Before that, Paul summarizes his argument up to that point: "death spread to all men because all sinned" (5.12); but "while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly" (5.6), reconciling us to God through the justification of faith. In chapter 6, then, he takes up the implications this has for our relationship to the law, sin, and grace. Here is Paul's main imperative, which governs the whole discussion in 6.1-8.11:
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (6.12-14)
He argues that the grace of God releases us from the law and from sin in one stroke: it is
because we are no longer under the law that "sin will have no dominion over" us. And it is because we are free from sin that we are free from death--"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (6.23).
Paul then goes on to explain this reasoning in ch. 7 and 8: why is it that being no longer under the law makes us free from sin?
***
For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit. (7.5-6)
We were "in the flesh", captive to sin, which produced death in us (6.21). This sin was "aroused by the law"--so when we were released from the law, we were free of what held us captive.
This is confusing---is the law sin? "By no means!" (7.7) Then in 7.7-8.11 (finally we reach our original question), Paul talks about what the law
is.
"Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin" (7.7) and so "when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died" (7.9). Because of the law, I am seized on by guilt where before there was none; sin which was dormant in me springs to action. The law pokes the hornet's nest in my soul.
Why does the law (which is good) do this? "...In order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure" (7.13). What was invisible and at peace becomes a visible battleground. And so the law brings about a split in the person, a state of war where originally sin had untroubled dominion. This is the split that Paul describes in 7.14-20:
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (7.14-17)
I recognize sin whereas before I did not, and in recognizing it I also recognize the Good. And so the same stroke that makes me a captive, in a sense makes me free: "it is no longer I who do it"--but what a terrible sense! I am demolished, disintegrated.
For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. (7.18-19)
And just as I am disintegrated, the law itself is split: "For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members" (7.22-23). And there's the rub: the war that the law begins
the law cannot win, for when it enters me even the law itself becomes fleshly. And so I am a captive under the law, captive to sin, captive of my own flesh.
"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (7.24-25)
***
But! in the hour of despair, the trumpet is sounded:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. (8.1-3)
The law at work in me was weakened by my own nature, and so became a law of sin and death, driving me to despair. But "the law of the Spirit of life" has set me free from this:
By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (8.3-4)
This sums up again the argument that has been made earlier in Romans. God sent his son to die for the ungodly, and as we share in his death we are liberated from our own flesh: our flesh dies with Christ. We "died to that which held us captive"--the law of the flesh, the law of sin (7.6). And so we no longer walk "according to the flesh", but are now free to walk "according to the Spirit", living by the law which is not "the old written code" but which is "the new life of the Spirit" (7.6).
And here Paul describes two ways of life, set in dramatic contrast: "those who live according to the flesh", and "those who live according to the Spirit". This parallels the split described in chapter 7, and the implication is: which side will you take in the war over your soul? This brings the discussion back home to the question raised back in 6.15: "What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?" Only now the answer should be obvious. We were captives of the flesh, and were set free by God's grace. Would we then keep our minds "set on the flesh", "hostile to God", unable to please him--just as we were under the law, only fighting on the side of death? "By no means!"
But Paul doesn't use question marks here. Paul echoes what he said before in the imperative mood, this time in the indicative mood. The command---"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions" (6.12)---becomes a declaration: "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you" (8.9)." But this declaration is also a prediction--for in fact, we are still in the flesh, "this body of death" (7.24).
But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (8.10-11)
The victory is completed at the final resurrection, when "The body that ... is sown in dishonor ... is raised in glory" (1 Cor. 15.43). This future victory is sealed in the present: "The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (8.16).
The war is won: the war will be won.
***
I hope that the above offers a compelling way of reading Romans 6-8, which hangs together coherently and makes sense of some confusing passages. (If you don't think so, I want to know.) Now I want to bring this back to the original question. What does any of this have to say about the question of Total Depravity?
Well, the passage certainly has a lot to say about sin. It is made abundantly clear that sin affects everybody (Universal Depravity), but that God's people are set free from sin. Okay, we agreed on that much already. What about the extent of sin?
Clearly it runs deep. Romans 7.13-24 shows that we are so far under the dominion of sin that it is not nearly enough for us simply to
know what is good. This is in contrast with the Greek thinkers: Plato diagnosed the human predicament as a problem of ignorance. Paul says, no! even when I see that the law is good, it is still beyond my power to do what it commands.
(Paul echoes Plato on a lot of points in this passage, putting the conflict in terms of "mind" and "flesh"---but he parts ways with him on crucial points. The solution to the predicament is not merely to liberate the soul from the body, as Plato thought; but rather the Spirit will "give life to your mortal bodies" (8.11). But I digress.)
I think the case is strong for a version of Total Depravity: that every human faculty is affected by sin---or more evocatively, mxu's "Radical Depravity": the problem of sin goes right to the root, right to the very core of our being. Sin is not merely a question of flawed knowledge or flawed desires. "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out" (7.18).
But what about "Total Total Depravity": that every human aspect is
entirely sinful, that there is nothing good at all in humanity? I don't think this passage decides that question one way or the other. We see that sin thwarts every effort toward the Good. But I see no evidence that Paul in fact thinks there is nothing good whatsoever in the person so thwarted. Or again, "the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot"---but I see no evidence that (even if Paul really thinks that describes a particular set of people) Paul thinks that there is nothing good, nothing of value in such people whatsoever. He describes the state in extreme terms---for of course it is bad! very bad! to be so enslaved to the passions, so set against God. But I still see no case here for TTD.
(And if we look elsewhere, I think there's a good case to be made against TTD. But there's enough on the table as it is.)
