Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Chris W. Lee on εφ' ω in Romans 5:12 in Death Warning in the Garden of Eden (2020)

  

Rom 5:12 was the foundational text on which Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) formulated his doctrine of “original sin.” In particular, Augustine highlighted the prepositional phrase εφω in the final clause of Rom 5:12 as a proof-text to make his case for “original sin.” Augustine interpreted ω as a masculine relative pronoun referring back to “one man” in 5:12a: “death spread to all men in whom [Adam] all sinned.” According to Augustine, the sin of Adam has been transmitted down to all his descendants, therefore it is not necessarily the actual sin of each individual, but instead Adam’s sin that automatically makes all human beings sinners because “all sinned in Adam.” It has long been suggested, however, that there is an error in Augustine’s interpretation in that he relied on a faulty Latin translation: in quo omnes peccaverunt (“in whom [Adam] all sinned”). Further, as Fitzmyer points out, treating ω as a masculine pronoun referring to “one man” does not read smoothly as the distance between the pronoun and the antecedent (“one man”) is too great. Augustine may have taken up this idea from 1 Cor 15:22, “in Adam all die” (εν τωΑδαμ παντες αποθνησκουσιν), but as Fitzmyer suggests, if Paul meant to say “it is Adam in whom all sinned,” he would have used the prepositional phrase εν ω (lit. “in whom”), as in 1 Cor 15:22, instead of εφω (lit. “on which” or possibly “on whom”). (Chris W. Lee, Death Warning in the Garden of Eden [Forschungen zum Alten Testament. 2. Reihe 115; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020], 163-64)

 

Most modern scholars followed by major English translations, now take the prepositional phrase εφω as functioning as a causal conjunction that is somewhat equivalent to διστι (“because”) or επι τουτο οτι (“for this reason that”); hence the translation “death spread to all men because all sinned.” This causal use of εφω could possibly yield an interpretation that “death spread to all men” because of their own personal sin; therefore the immediate problem with this interpretation is that it seems to contradict what Paul emphatically asserts earlier in Rom 5:12, as well as in later verses (5:13-21): that death entered because of the transgression and disobedience of one man (διενος ανθρωπου). It must be noted, however, that even if the causal use of εφω in 5:12d, which stresses the individual sin of human beings, is presumed, this does not need to preclude or lessen the stress of Paul’s main idea, which emphatically attributes the entering of death as the effect/consequence of Adam’s sin, as Paul clearly states in the main clause of Rom 5:12ab. Further, with the causal use of εφω Paul may possibly be expressing the idea that the deaths of all men can be ascribed to their own sins on the premise that Adam’s sin brought about the condition in which are all destined to sin. (Ibid., 164-65)

 

After discussing εφω in the Pauline epistles:

 

In light of the other Pauline uses of εφω that can be explained as a relative clause (exclusively in Phil 4:10), the third interpretative option for the prepositional phrase εφω, which I suggest is a more likely option in the case of Rom 5:12d, is taking the relative pronoun ω as neutral with its antecedent being the entire idea of “sin and death entering the world and spreading to all men” in the previous clause (5:12ab). If this interpretation is assumed, the suggested translation of the prepositional phrase εφω is “on the basis of which” or “under which circumstances.” Not only does this make good sense contextually and grammatically, but this usage also better reflects the presence of the relative pronoun than the causal usage of εφω (“because”). The relative-pronoun understanding of εφω would also certainly help to avoid the misunderstanding that would have developed from the causal usage (“because”), i.e., “one’s death is due to his own sin.” In the LXX, the phrase εφω appears twice (the Letter of Jeremiah 1:58; Prov 21:22) and it is noteworthy that ω in these two occurrences is exclusively used as a relative pronoun referring back to its antecedent: 1) “A wise person attacked the strong cities and demolished the strongholds (το οχυρωμα) on which (εφω) the impious trusted” (Prov 21:22); 2) “So it is better to be a king who displays his manliness or a useful vessel in a house, which (εφω) the owner will use, then these fake gods . . . “ The above Pauline and LXX examples suggest that it is acceptable, or perhaps even commended to take εφω in Rom 5:12d to also mean “on which” referring to the statements in the preceding clauses. (Ibid., 166-67)

 

What is more important to note in each interpretation is that the subordinate clause at the end of Rom 5:12, “all sinned,” does not counter Paul’s main point in the logical sequence of Rom 5:12 that attests: death and its universal influence on all humanity had its origin in Adam’s sin. The causality of Adam’s sin on the death of all people, i.e., Paul’s stress on Adam’s act and role as the instrument through which sin and death came into the world, has been so clearly and emphatically expressed by Paul (both in Rom 5:12-21 and 1 Cor 15:21-22) that it outweighs other possible meanings and the force of εφω that would suggest otherwise. Therefore, based on Paul’s overwhelming linguistic and thematic references to the entering/existence of death in relation to Adam’s disobedience to God’s command, there is no reason to deny the correlation made by Paul between death of all and Adam’s disobedience. In Paul’s own words, it is clear that both sin and death entered the world through Adam’s transgression. (Ibid., 169)