Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by
M. WINGER
New York
1
In this case adjusting the noun and the verb so that their meanings correspond is
complicated in English, where the two are not cognate; in Greek, in contrast, the noun
is and the verb . But we should be able to handle the adjustment, choos
ing as necessary among "believe," "firmly believe," "trust," "am confident," or similar
expressions. It is certainly not the case that verbs are generally either stronger or weaker
than nouns; whatever the difference, it is something other than this.
Evidently, then, one of these two statements is true if and only if the
other one is: they are semantically equivalent. Similarly, for "I have
faith in him" we might substitute "I trust him," or perhaps, more elab
orately, "I believe that he will do what is right"; the particular con
text would guide us. So it seems that the expressions "faith that" and
"faith in" may be translated into expressions in which the noun "faith"
2
is replaced by the verb "to believe," or "to trust."
Does it follow that faith, at least, is an abstract noun which says
nothing that is not said by its cognate verb? Not necessarily. As always
in understanding language, meaning is not a function of particular
words by themselves, but of the statements in which the words are
used.3 Analyzing statements of the kind "I have faith in " and
"I have faith that " does not necessarily tell us what "faith"
will mean in a different kind of statement; moreover, even in these
sentences "faith" could have one sense with "John" in the blank, and
a different sense with "God." One must proceed cautiously. Further,
an equivalence between expressions with nouns and ones with verbs
cuts both ways: if we could replace the noun with the verb, could we
not equally replace the verb with the noun? Why then should one
have priority? And if the noun and verb forms can be used in exactly
equivalent ways, why do both forms exist?
We have merely scratched the surface here; the meaning of faith is
a very large topic, and even when we put quotation marks about "faith"
to indicate that we only want to define the term, not to explicate every
theological issue related to it, this line between the meaning of the
term and the meaning of statements in which the term is used is (as
we have just indicated) indistinct at the very best. In fact one major
2
It is an interesting feature of English that, besides "faith," we have the separate
noun "belief," which can often be used in nearly the same ways ("it's my belief she'll
return," "I have faith she'll return"), moreover, to have faith generally implies having
a belief, and m that case the faith and the belief might be said to ha\ e the same con
tent (that she will return) Nevertheless "belief" differs from "faith" on just the point
we are discussing We may think of faith as an attribute or quality of a person, but
not so with belief I think it likely that this difference reflects the special sense which
"faith" has acquired m Christian theology, and may thus be traced back to Paul, and
to Paul's use of Whether it accurately reflects that usage is another question
3
A classic expression of this doctrine is Gottiob Frege's injunction "never to ask for
the meaning of a word m isolation, but only m the context of a proposition" (The
Foundations of Arithmetic, trans J L Austin, revised ed [Oxford Blackwell, 1980] , orig
inally published as Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik [Breslau, 1884]) See also W V Quine,
Theories and Things (Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1981) 3, tracing "the
view of sentences as primary in semantics, and of names or other words as dependent
on sentences for their meaning," to Bentham
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 147
Spicq adds that, based on 1 Cor. 13, "Peter Lombard was not so far
from the truth when he identified charity with the Holy Spirit itself,"
a suggestion apparendy endorsed by Victor Paul Furnish (a believer's
life is "empowered by the Holy Spirit, poured into his heart as love")
and Hans Dieter Betz ("when the Christian receives the Spirit of the
Son of God ([Gal.] 4:6) he also receives the divine power of love").7
But if love is a power, then the term has evidently lost the abstract
quality which we began by assuming, and become concretealthough
just what sort of concrete entity it is, and what relation this entity
4
Summa Theologiae MI, Q, 62, Art 3, Q, 55, Art 1, Q, 49, Art 3
5
One of Aqumas's principal texts is 1 Cor 13 13, "Now there remain faith, hope,
love, these three " Id, I-II, Q, 62, Arts 3, 4
6
Ceslaus Spicq, Agape in the Mew Testament (3 vols , St Louis/London Herder, 1963-66)
2 174
7
Id, Victor Paul Furnish, Theology and Ethics in Paul (Nashville Abingdon, 1968) 238
(citing Rom 5 5), Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians (Philadelphia Fortress, 1979) 264 (on
Gal 5 6)
148 M. WINGER
Basic Considerations
8
See Ernst Kasemann, "On Paul's Anthropology," in Perspectives on Paul, (Philadelphia
Fortress, 1971) 1-31, 27, Martmus C de Boer, The Defeat of Death (Sheffield J S O T
Press, 1988) 160-169
9
2 Cor 11 7 "Did I commit a sin in abasing myself'1" = "Was it sinful to abase
myself?" (In ancient Greek LSJ records the apparendy adjectival form only
once Lampe cites uses of in the fourth century C E )
10 ?
Perhaps Rom 6 1, "Shall we continue in sin "
11
Perhaps Rom 6 12, "Let not sin therefore reign "
12
A rough measure of one's taste for philosophy might be found in whether one
sees any interest (or even any sense) in this dispute The reader may try this test by
examining Manlyn McCord Adams, "Universals in the early fourteenth century," ch 20
of Kretzmann et al, eds , The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambndge
Cambridge University Press, 1982) 411-39 For a modern comment see F Strawson,
"Universals," in Entity and Identity (Oxford Oxford University Press, 1997) 52-63, main
taining (p 59, emphasis in the original) that "universals, if they exist at all, do not
exist m nature [but] are incorrigibly abstract, objects, if objects at all, of thought alone "
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAULS LETTERS 149
(Strawson's position seems substantially the same as that of John Duns Scotus as Adams
describes it in her essay, 413)
13
John Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical ^guistics (Cambndge Cambndge University
Press, 1968) 337-38 Note that some abstract nouns are sortais for example, idea, num
ber, and, to recur to Aquinas's discussion of virtues, habit
14
See G Frege, " O n Concept and Object," in Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic
and Philosophy (Oxford Blackwell, 1984) 182-94
150 M. WINGER
15
Besides a one-place predicate like " is a horse" there are two-place rela
tions like " hit " and " is taller than ," as well as more com
plicated forms All of these are concepts Strictly speaking, grammatical subjects should
not be identified with objects, if they were, "horses" would become an object m "Horses
are mammals," but the meaning of this sentence is rather, "Whatever is a horse is a
mammal", the concept "horse" is put under the concept "mammal " No object has
been identified See Frege, "On Concept and Object," 187 Once again, grammar is
not controlling
Ib
"Love" would also represent an object in "Love makes me do all I do" (concept
" makes do "), which resembles "I do it all for love," but does not
necessarily mean the same thing
17
G Frege, " O n Sense and Meaning," in Collected Papers, 157-77 (In this translation
"meaning" is used for what I, following most wnters in English, have called "reference ")
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 151
18
The idea is scarcely coherent, but, since "faithless" is true of whatever "faithful"
is false of, "not-Paul" should lack whatever qualities Paul has
19
On entena of identity, see generally M Dummett, Frege Philosophy of Language (2d
e d , Cambndge Harvard University Press, 1981) 73-80
20
Although the presence or absence of a cntenon of identity has (like other points
I have touched on) been invoked to establish or deny that certain words refer to things,
this, as I have already said, is not the kind of conclusion I want to draw Whether or
not a term is associated with a cntenon of identity is rather a distinction which (like
the other points I have touched on) will help to clanfy what Paul refers to, on the var-
ious and specific occasions when he employs the abstract terms we are investigating
152 M. WINGER
Paul
21
Respectively, BAGD s 1, LSJ s II LSJ also offers (sv I) a slightly broader
sense, usay or do something agreeable to a person
22
Expressly "of God," Rom 5 15, 1 Cor 15 10 (3x), 2 Cor 12 9, imphcidy "of
God," Rom 5 20, 21, 6 1, 116 (2x), 2 Cor 4 15
23
Rom 16 20, 1 Cor 16 23, and, with vanous additions, 2 Cor 13 13, Gal 6 18,
Phil 4 23, Phlm 25
24
Rom 1 7, 1 Cor 1 3, 2 Cor 1 2, Gal 1 3, Phil 1 2, 1 Thess 1 1, Phlm 3 (In
1 Thess 1 1 the "from" phrase, omitted from many early manuscripts, was probably
added by scribes to match Paul's other letters )
25
Rom 6 17, 7 25, 1 Cor 15 57, 2 Cor 2 14, 8 16, 9 15
26
It also appears m the Deutero-Pauhne letters, Eph 1 2, Col 1 2, 2 Thess 1 2
The Pastorals have nearly the same form
154 M. WINGER
2/
Unless, that is, the expression is a term of art with a reference which need not
be specified These passages, however, do not suggest such a reference
28
Note that Paul uses the formula (see n 25) in connection with gifts
of God, it is for such gifts that Paul and his readers are grateful Nevertheless, the
dative in this phrase seems to rule out the use of to refer directly to God's
actions
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 155
ness resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our lord" (5:21),
and that "you are not under law but under " (6:14, 15). In these
passages not only becomes suddenly a concrete object, but, as
29
Fitzmyer observes, it is personified. To say this, however, does not
answer but frame our question: if here refers to an object or a
person, what object or person is that? If we work back from 5:21 to
see what is meantor better, if we begin at 5:1 or 4:1 and work
forwardthe impression of concreteness fades. In 4:4 and 16, as we
have just noted, the adverbial phrase means "as a gift"; the
noun is part of an adverbial expression describing a quality, which
might in principle be ascribed to anything, and in Romans 4 it is
attributed to inheriting the world, according to the promise made to
Abraham: the world is a , a gift.30 In 5:2, "this in which
we stand," the noun is used to refer to this state of inheriting the
world, but the use is figurative, a kind of metonymyas we might use
"gift" to refer to something given, but still meaning the specific thing
in question, and not some general state or quality of Giftness or
Gifthood. Then in 5:15-19 (with three other terms meaning "gift,"
, and ) is connected to the "righteous act" and
"obedience" of Christ. In 5:21, then, the attribution of ruling power
to can be taken for a reference to Christ, while the term itself,
invoking the thought of chapter 4, suggests the state in which humans
stand thanks to Christ; the ambiguity is inherent in the figurative speech,
and precludes a literal reading. Finally, "under " in 6:14 and 15
continues the image of ruling from 5:21. 31 Thus here, as else
where, marks a quality shared by many things, and not, itself,
a thing.
With this understanding we may contrast Bultmann's declaration
that in Rom. 5:20-21 "the meaning of 'grace' approaches actual iden
32
tity with that of 'spirit'. . . ," Probably this would be better expressed
(using our terminology) by saying that Paul uses to refer to the
spirit; but even with this modification, the statement confuses what
29
J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1993) 422, 447.
30
Or perhaps this is too imprecise. According to G.K. Barrett (A Commentary on the
Epistle to the Romans [New York: Harper & Row, 1957] 95; emphasis in the original)
refers to "God's plan," which "was m a d e to rest upon faith on man's
side in order that on God's it might be a matter of grace." Paul's syntax leaves
the exact reference in some doubt, but the sense of the phrase does not depend on
this.
31
We will return to Rom. 4 and 5 when we take up "sin."
32
Theology of the New Testament (New York: Scribner's, 1951) 1.290.
156 M. W I N G E R
Paul wrote with what he might have written. It may be that the spirit
rules in the fashion Paul ascribes to , and equally that the spirit
could be spoken of as a gift, using either or some other term;
but this is not what Paul says in Rom. 5:20-21.
Another contrast is with Conzelmann's interpretation of in the
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.33 Noting that may refer
to different things, Conzelmann identifies the principal referent in Paul
as "salvation," usually as an "event," but sometimes as a "state." 34 I
have no quarrel with this approach, provided it is understood that
while refers to something, this something is not identical to
itself; that salvation is a gift does not make these two terms inter
changeable. But in another paragraph Conzelmann speaks of "the
power of grace," and refers eleven times to grace as "it," without speak
ing of "salvation" at all.35 According to the analysis of as refer
ring to salvation we should be able to replace each "it" with "salvation,"
yielding (for example), "Salvation is not just superior to sin and its
result, death," and "Salvation makes generosity possible."36 Thus restated,
both sentences seem to have the same truth value as they would with
"grace," but the first has become so banal that I doubt Conzelmann
actually had it in mind when he wrote what he wrote. At the least,
his paragraph on "the power of grace" runs the risk of creating a dis
tinct entity out of something better understoodon Conzelmann's
analysis as well as oursin a different way.
The argument here also offers a useful modification to Hendrikus
Boers' recent analysis of . 37 Boers argues that in Galatians and
Romans has "a certain technical status" originated by Paul
that is, as "the defining characteristic of " and as "the power
under which the believer lives"; at the same time Boers acknowledges
that " did not become a technical term in a systematic sense,"
leaving one in some doubt as to what the "technical status" amounts
38
to. I think Boers tries too hard to press into itself meanings
which depend on the context in which the term is used. When a term
is used predicatively, as I maintain Paul uses , it can be employed
33
. D.2, T D N T 9.393-96 (1974).
34
Id., 393, 394-95.
35
Id., 394-95.
36
Id.
37
. Boers, "' and in Paul's Thought," CBQ59 (1997) 693-713.
38
Id, 709, 707, 708, 709. Boers adds (710), "Indeed, one has trouble defining the
specific meaning of in Galatians and Romans."
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 157
39
This is so whether refers to faith in Jesus or of Jesus, if the latter,
then Jesus' trust in God is meant The exceptions to the general rule involve a distinct
sense of , as in Rom 3 3, where refers to God's faithfulness,
here the noun stands for an adjective rather than a verb It has a contrary, as Paul
explains, contrasting God's with the of others Gal 5 22, listing
among the fruits of the spirit, may also employ the sense "faithfulness" (so NRSV, NAB),
or perhaps "trustfulness" (so NJB), the context does not tell us, except that the other
spiritual fruit are general and abstract in character
40
, Rom 3 3, , Rom 3 3, 4 20, 11 20, 23, , 1 Cor 6 6, 7 12,
13, 14 (2x), 15, 10 27, 14 22 (2x), 23, 24, 2 Cor 4 4, 6 14, 15
158 M. WINGER
if members of the church should cease to trust God they would aban
don the church; but in neither case is there apart from the
41
believers who trust God. Likewise, the "coming" of in Gal. 3:23
and 25 refers to the coming of a time when people trusted or believed,
as the close of the immediately preceding verse shows: ". . . in order
that the promise might be given, based on in [or: of] Jesus
42
Christ, to those who believe ( )."
Over all, strikes one as a much more specific term than .
Anything might be a gift; the same might be said of in its sense
of faithfulness (necessarily limited to humans and perhaps a few animal
species), but the far more common sense of trusting or believing is nar
rower, requiring a particular kind of object as well as a particular kind
of subject. As we have noted, in Paul this object is almost always God
(or Jesus), and we could perhaps define it more specifically: for instance,
as trusting that God will keep certain promises.
Still, is a quality, having a contrary. The noun can be elim
inated (as I have done in the preceding paragraph) in favor of its cog
nate verb, or sometimes adjective. It is a characterizing universal and
not a particular; even though Paul uses the term for faith with a par
ticular object, rather than faith in general, specification of this sort does
not render a universal into a particular; it merely distinguishes one
universal from another. It is still the case that , thus defined,
"can be instanced, or instantiated, by a number of different particular
things." 43 Thus Paul may have such a belief or attitude, and so may
the Roman Christians, and you, and I, just as different things may be
tall, or heavy, or blue.
Earlier I distinguished between "tall" and "blue," on the ground
that colors have a criterion of identity, but "tall" does not. is a
more difficult case. On the one hand, when Paul speaks of the
which a number of different people have (as in ) he means
41
Likewise with the other verb of 1 23, "to proclaim good news " Although at two
other points m Paul's letters this takes a direct object (God's son in Gal 1 16 and
"your faith and love" in 1 Thess 3 6), in each of these cases we must supply some
linking term the good news concerning God's son, or of your faith and love, or the like,
that is, what is directly proclaimed is not "Christ" or "faith and love," or, here, "faith,"
but newssome statementabout these subjects The three passages where the verb
takes the pleonastic object "good news" ( , 1 Cor 15 1, 2 Cor 11 7, Gal
111) reflect this
42
Whether means "in" or "of" Jesus, either way it is
personal to someone
43
S Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford Oxford University Press,
1994) s "universals "
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 159
that all have of the same kinda belief or trust in the same
person or same thing, more or less. On the other hand, we can also
make distinctions, just as with any term referring to something a person
does or is: my trusting in God is something I do, yours is something
you do; to say "I have faith" means something different than saying
"you have faith"we are not just declaring "faith exists," and then
affirming that I and you and others are each related to this one faith.
As we have already noted, there is no apart from the individual
persons who have .
What about Aquinas's thesis, that faith is a disposition or habit
not merely something in which one engages from time to time, but
an attribute of one's character? I doubt that Paul's letters allow a clear
verdict on this question, although perhaps it could be said (as with
other ideas of Christian theology) that Thomas's conception is a devel
opment of Paul's.
There remains the question of why Paul uses if he means
nothing that he could not express with . Probably this ques
tion has no general answer; but if we examine particular passages in
Paul's letters we find that while could usually have been used
in place of , the substitution would involve other changes as well.
In Rom. 1:8, "that your faith is proclaimed" might be changed to
"that proclaims that you believe"but then Paul would have to
specify who makes this proclamation, and the sentence would acquire
a detail unnecessary to Paul's point. In 1 Cor. 15:14, "your faith is
vain" might be changed to "that you believe is vain," but the Greek
is ambiguous and could also mean "it is vain
to believe you." Another alternative would be "you believe vainly,"
, but here too there is an ambiguity, for the adverb
could refer to the manner of one's belief rather than to its point-
lessness. Or perhaps or , "you believe for
nothingness" or "for nothing," would serve. I am not prepared to say
what nuances these expressions might have had which would have
44
made them inferior for Paul's purposes; but we know from our own
language that subtle distinctions lie behind the choice of expressions,
and that the sensitive exploitation of these distinctions is one of the
marks separating memorable prose from the pedestrian. According to
Frege, such distinctions need not touch the sense of what is said; that
44
Was (which I have not found) unacceptable? Did Paul prefer the -
stem to ? Did he want to avoid the tense (or mood) which a finite verb must
carry?
160 M. W I N G E R
is, they need not affect whether what one says is true or false: "In
other words, we must not fail to recognize that the same sense, the
same thought, may be variously expressed; thus the difference does not
here concern the sense, but only the apprehension, shading or colour
45
ing of the thought, and is irrelevant for logic."
What we have said so far about "faith" suggests that while the dis
tinction between a noun and its cognate verb need not entail any dis
tinction in sense, there may nevertheless be a distinction of sense
between particular phrases employing nouns and others employing
verbs. Such phrases may also be distinguished according to "shading
or colouring" rather than sense, and when they are it is not surprising
that we, for whom Hellenistic Greek is a dead language preserved in
only a handful of writings, may be unable to identify distinctions that
would have been felt by those who used the language. This difficulty
does not imply that Paul's choice of over
was (on the one hand) arbitrary, nor (on the other hand) does
it mean that the noun represents some distinct object to which
the verb could not readily refer.
We may take as an example an idea which is often associated in
English with the expression "your faith": that faith is something which
(in some sense) you possess. Likewise in Greek, could con
vey possession, for the genitive of possession is an established use of
the genitive case; but this interpretation is acceptable only if is
something which can be possessed, which is just the question. This is
not the only possible sense of with a noun; very often in such
cases is the subjective genitive which identifies the performer of
an action represented by the noun, as in (to use examples only from
Paul) , "your rational worship" (Rom. 12:1);
... , "your obedience" (Rom. 16:19; cf. 2 Cor. 7:15; 10:6);
, "your boast" (1 Cor. 5:6; Phil. 1:26; cf. 2 Cor. 1:14);
, "your sharing" (Phil. 1:5), and ,
"your prayer" (Phil. 1:19). All of these parallel the understanding I
have suggested for in Paul's letters.46
45
"Concept and Object," 185 n 7 One may wonder how sharply one should sep
arate distinctions in "sense" from distinctions in "colouring" (perhaps these are matters
of degree rather than kind), but certainly in some cases it is very difficult to distinguish
senses
4b
The genitive is also often used to identify the object of an action, as in
, "remembrance of you" (Rom 1 9, cf Phil 1 3), , "your calling"
(1 Cor 1 26), and , "testing of you" (Gal 4 14) This lies behind
the interpretation of as "faith m Christ," but it is not a plausible under
standing of the more common (in Paul, 13x vs 7x)
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 161
'
47
The record of usage suggests that the noun developed after the verb, and so from
it. Moulton and Milligan, Vocabulary, s.v.; LSJ, s.v.
48
Human subject and object: Rom. 13:8a, b, 9; 2 Cor. 11:11, 12:15a, b; Gal. 5:14;
1 Thess. 4:9. God or Christ as subject, human object: Rom. 8:37; 9:13, 25a, b; 2 Cor.
9:7; Gal. 2:20; 1 Thess. 1:4. Human subject, God or Christ as object: Rom. 8:28;
1 Cor. 2:9; 8:3.
162 M. WINGER
must choose among the possibilities; thus Rom. 5:5 ("the love of God
was poured into our hearts") was long taken to refer to human love
for God, but now is generally interpreted in just the reverse way. In
other cases one may conclude that multiple subjects and objects are
intendedthat in Phil. 2:1, for example ("if there is any. . . consola
tion of love"), "consolation of love" refers both to God's love for the
Philippians, and to their love for one another. If so, we may also be
inclined to think that Paul refers to a love which transcends any par
ticular subject or object. But Paul is not speaking of love with no sub
ject or objectan incoherent idea. To refer to two distinct cases in a
single phrase is not to confuse them; it does not mean that Paul treats
one love (say, one's for neighbor) as a simple corollary of another (say,
one's for God). 49
Let us examine some of the difficult cases, noting as we pass some
which are not so difficult. 1 Cor. 13 belongs in this latter category;
although this chapter is sometimes taken as an illustration of love
objectified, that is overly literal. Verses 1, 2, and 3 ("though I speak
with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love . . .") are
plain: to have love means to love, and while the object of this love is
not specified, this entire letter is addressed to how the Corinthians
should behave to each other; certainly love for one another is meant
here. 50 Verses 4 through 7 ("love is patient. . .") now personify love;
but what is said of love refers to the one who loves; it is that person
who is patient, kind, and so forththe details of this account confirming
that it is the behavior of the Corinthians to one another which is at
issue here. The rhetorical figure of personification does not cause words
to take on a mystical level of meaning out of keeping with their con
text; but in this case Paul's figure of speech has encouraged loose
speech in many of his readers. Conzelmann writes of verses 4-7 that
they display "personifying style," or "Wisdom style," and cites Spicq,
who compares love here to "la hypostasie . . . envisage tantt
par rapport Dieu, tantt dans l'me du pieux dont elle inspire les
penses et dirige l'action."51 The parallel with Wisdom is instructive.
Everyone now knows that Wisdom is personified in the wisdom liter-
49
There might be such a relationship But this would have to be shown, it does not
follow by default
50
Or love for one's neighbor Whether this would include non-believers is uncer-
tain, but does not matter for our purposes
51
Hans Conzelmann, / Corinthians (Philadelphia Fortress, 1975) 223, C Spicq, Agape
dans le Nouveau Testament (Pans Lecoffre, 1959) 2 77 1
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 163
52
Likewise Wisdom of Solomon. In 7:22 wisdom is described as a person, in 7:25
as a vapor or breath, in 7:26 as a mirror; she is said to enter holy souls in 7:27 and
everything in 7:28. In Prov. 9:5 (LXX) wisdom invites those who lack understanding
to eat her bread and drink her wine; since the bread and wine are certainly metaphor
ical, what basis have we for taking the invitation literally? (Overall, and notwithstand
ing chapters 8 and 9, wisdom in Proverbs is generally not personified.)
53
Conzelmann's claim (223-24) that Jewish parallels to w . 4-7 show that Paul's
164 M. W I N G E R
that love will not end, which might be ambiguous out of context, refers
to the love identified in the preceding verses: that of believers for one
another. No doubt Paul would also say the same thing about humans'
love for God, and God's for humans. But this does not mean that Paul
says it here in 1 Cor. 13.
I have turned to literary evidence, as seems appropriate when con
struing texts. However, it may be suggested that other kinds of evi
dence show that inhabitants of the early Roman Empire were quite
willing to personify abstractions, or at least certain ones; for we know
cults of abstract divinities in both the Latin and Greek worlds, includ
ing Fortuna and Victoria, and .54 This is true; but its
significance is uncertain. If the worship of suggests that was
a person or object, the failure to worship ' might suggest that it
was not. Moreover, the literary evidence on shows that the
significance of personalizing language is open to question; Walbank
observes of that "how far men really personalized such an abstrac
tion and whether they had any consistent view about it is a problem
almost impossible to answer."55 The ambiguity of cultic evidence emerges
in an anecdote from Suetonius's life of Vitellius. When that emperor,
wishing to show his desire for peace, went to lay his dagger in the
temple of Concordia, the leading citizens called him back, "adcla-
mantibus ipsum esse Concordiam," whereupon he declared that he
would take Concordia for a surname {Vitellius 15). Axtell remarks, "Now,
these sycophants did not consider him the feminine deity Concordia,
but the spirit of Concord. Neither they nor he would have given him
meaning transcends specific loves ("for example . . . love for God or love for man" [224
n. 53]) is fallacious; parallels from other contexts cannot show the reference in this
context. Gordon Fee's suggestion (The First Epistle to the Corinthians; [NICNT; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987] 636-37) that v. 4a ("love is patient and kind") refers to God
is only superficially plausible; Paul has been talking explicitly of human love, and any
way w . 4b-7 ("is not jealous or boastful. . .") cannot refer to God.
34
See, for example, W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambndge, Mass : Harvard University
Press, 1985) 184-87; I. Kajanto, "Fortuna," ANRW 17.1, 503-58 (1981); J.R. Fears,
"The Theology of Victory at Rome," ANRW 17.2, 737-826 (1981); K. Latte, Romische
Rehgionsgeschichte (Mnchen: Beck'sche, 1960) 176-83, 233-42; M.P. Nilsson, Geschichte der
Griechischen Religion (Mnchen: Beck'sche, 1955) 812-15; T.B.L. Webster, "Personification
as a Mode of Greek Thought," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 17 (1954)
10-21; H. Usener, Gotternamen (Frankfurt/Main Schulte-Bulmke, 1948) 364-75; H.L.
Axtell, The Deification of Abstract Ideas in Roman Literature and Inscriptions (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1907)
,5
F.W. Walbank, The Hellenistic World (Cambndge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1981) 220. In this connection it is interesting that, according to Latte (Romische Rehgions-
geschichte, 314), personifications appear principally in official cults rather than private
ones.
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 165
56
the designation Juno or Minerva." The existence of a cult does not
57
prove that what is worshipped is a person rather than a quality.
This is consistent with a point made by recent treatments of Fortuna
and Victory. Fears says that "as a cult figure Victoria was regarded
both as an autonomous divine force and as a gift granted to the state
by the intervention of Jupiter," and "could also be regarded as an
aspect of a divinely favored mortal," as in Victoria Caesaris and the
like.58 But this characteristic of belonging to many different things is
exactly what one expects with a quality rather than a person. Likewise
Fortuna, according to Kajanto, is found in many forms, including bona,
brevis, mala and salutaris, and especially in the "varieties . . . Fortuna
Augusta or Augusti, the guardian spirit of the emperor, an equivalent
of his Genius, and Fortuna Redux, the power that guarded the return
of the emperor from dangerous foreign journeys." 59 In the same way,
in the Greek world might be associated with a specific city.60
To return to Paul: I have noted that "the love of God poured into
our hearts through the holy spirit" (Rom. 5:5) has been taken by some
interpreters to mean God's love for humans, and by others, humans'
love for God. 61 This reflects the classic difficulty, in Greek as in English,
with genitives attached to nouns that have cognate verbs; the genitive
may identify either the subject or the object of the verbal action, and
only the context can tell which is meant. Here, love "in our hearts"
56
Axtell, Deification, 81
57
We may also question whether pagan cults will reveal Paul's thinking But this
objection is inconclusive Granting that Paul would not have participated in such a
cult, he could still have shared the worshipers' perception that there was some thing
they worshippedas in Gal 4 8 Paul refers to "beings which are not in nature gods "
As to deified abstractions, however, this does not advance us from Walbank's gesture
of hopelessness
58
Fears, "Theology of Victory," 744, 745
59
Kajanto, "Fortuna," 510-16, 517 Axtell (Deification, 89) observes that "such modifiers
are not characteristic of, but alien to, the anthropomorphic gods "
60
Burkert, Greek Religion, 186 The diverse sources I have invoked, Latin and Greek,
pagan and Jewish, leave us to wonder why, if no person is really meant, a person still
is spoken of This is a version of the question of why one may speak figuratively, and
our lack of a convincing answer does not mean that there is no figure Webster makes
a fruitful suggestion in his treatment of Greek personification (at 13) "with a few excep
tions personifications of abstracts do not persist with the same kind of permanent
and developing individuality as the Olympian gods, but are deified at moments of great
and compelling emotion " A modern example illustrates the point When Sky Masterson,
the gambler in the musical Guys and Dolls, pauses before a crucial roll of the dice to
sing, "Luck, be a lady tonight," this shows the depth of his feelings, not necessarily his
understanding of what kind of beings inhabit the universe
61
Most commentators (e g , Barrett, Cranfield, Dunn, Kasemann, Fitzmyer) take the
first view, but see Barth and Stuhlmacher
166 M. WINGER
sounds like human love, and the reference to its being poured "through
the holy spirit" fits with Paul's identification of love as a "fruit of the
spirit" in Gal. 5:22. On the other hand, just after this verse Paul refers
to "love of him [God]" (5:8) in a way which makes it clear that God
is the lover, and it is natural to take the earlier phrase in the same
way; this also seems to make the best sense of the relation between
62
v. 5 and the verses which precede and follow it. None of the argu
ments is conclusive. Granting the ambiguity of Paul's expression, it
does not follow that Paul merges God's love and ours, only (at most)
that the two are related. Love is a natural response to love; but Paul
suggests a more particular connection: God's love prompted him to
send Christ (Rom. 5:8); with Christ God sent the spirit (Gal. 4:6); and
with the spirit comes love (Gal. 5:22). Perhaps it would have been
more precise for Paul to have said that the spirit is poured into human
hearts through love,63 but Paul's association of the concepts is more
important than his suggestion of the mechanics of that association. On
the other hand, I think Dodd's apparent equation of love and spirit
invites the kind of confusion which abstract nouns sometimes engender.64
The spirit, though it may be immaterial, is nevertheless concretea
particular, not a universal. This does not mean Paul cannot, by
metonymy, refer to the spirit by a term which elsewhere refers to a
quality, and could be such a term, standing on this occasion for
the spirit because it happens to be one manifestation of the spirit But
love and spirit are not thereby the same, and love is not therefore a
particular.
62
The full statement in 5 is, "Hope does not shame us, because the love of God
has been poured into our hearts through the holy spirit " "Hope" here looks back to
2, "hope of [sharing] the glory of God," and it would seem that God's love for
humans is a better warrant for this hope than is humans' love for God Then w 6-11
(introduced by the particle which usually marks an explanation for what has just
been said) argue that Christ's death for humans as sinners shows God's love for humans,
and "much more" (v 9) shall humans, having now been justified, be saved Still, the
connection between in w 5 and 8 is rough, there is a shift from love felt to
love logically demonstrated In any case, w 6-11 do not explain the love of 5b, but
the hope of 5a, nothing rules out distinct references to both human love (v 5) and
God's (v 8)
65
Kasemann's and Barrett's interpretations imply this (Ernst Kasemann, Commentary
on Romans [Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 1980] 135-36, Barrett, Romans, 105) The prophet
Joel tells us that the Lord promises to "pour out" () his spirit (3 1 [LXX]), and
that his people "will not be ashamed" () (2 26), Paul's association of the
same terms in Rom 5 5 suggests that he has Joel in mind Spint and heart are also
associated m five other Pauline passages (Rom 8 27, 2 Cor 1 22, 3 3, Gal 4 6)
64
"Since the nature of God himself is love, in giving us love He imparts to us some
thing of His own nature, or, in Pauline language, His Spint " C H Dodd, The Epistle
of Paul to the Romans (London Hodder & Stoughton, 1932) 95, cf Fitzmver, Romans, 398
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 167
65
Betz, Galatians, 263; cf. 264 (the Christian "receives the divine power of love which
enabled Christ to do what he did").
66
Many of the key terms here are not clearly distinguished in meaning. Translators
tend to use the same English terms in rendering it, but not always in the same places.
67
Respectively, G. Fee, Paul's Letter to the Philippians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1995) 180; F.W. Beare, The Epistle to the Philippians (HNTC; New York: Harper & Row,
1959) 71, G.F. Hawthorne, Philippians (WBC, Waco: Word, 1983) 65; M.R. Vincent,
A Critical and exegetical Commentary on the Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon ( I C C ;
Edinburgh: Clark, 1897) 52.
168 M. WINGER
could mean: each of you have the same love as each other (which is
the dominant theme of this verse and is what "the same" means in
"thinking the same"); it could also mean love of the same kind: for
instance, as God loved you, so you love each other. The fact is, Paul
does not specify the love of v. 1, perhaps because he takes its identity
for granted, but perhaps because the ambiguity is useful. Whatever
love the Philippians themselves find "consoling" is for that reason the
love that best serves Paul's argument. 68 Still this ambiguity does not
entail any confusion. If v. 1 suggested no particular love at all, but
only love in general, how would it invoke any consolation? It would
be useless to Paul's exhortation. There is no love "in general": only
specific loving; a quality or concept; an action, not an entity.
'
b8
For this reason I think Suva's generally sound assessment goes astra\ at the end
Silva writes (Philippians [Grand Rapids Baker, 1992] 102) that questions such as what
love Paul refers to "cannot be answered with any certainty Nor should they The
clauses are deliberately compressed and vague, since the appeal is pnmanly emotional "
If the last phrase invokes the modern distinction between the emotional and the rational,
then it imposes an opposition that would have puzzled Paul, and, m any event, does
not fit Paul's argument
69
On personification, see C Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Epistle to the Romans (ICC, Edinburgh Clark, 1975) 191, Fitzmyer, Romans, 331,
Meyer, "Romans," m J L Mays, ed., Harper's Bible Commentary (San Francisco Harper
& Row, 1988) 1130-67, 1139, on power, also J D G Dunn, Romans (WBC, Waco
Word, 1988) 143, Kasemann, Romans, 86
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 169
have already charged") sends us back to look for the charge, and we
pull up naturally at the previous reference to sin, in 2:12: "For who
ever sinned (... ) outside the law, will perish outside the
law, and whoever sinned in the law will be judged by the law." Not
that "sin" as such is emphasized in Romans 2; a number of parallel
expressions are employed, either as synonyms ("to do evil," 2:9) or as
antonyms ("doers of the law," 2:13; "to do the things of the law," 2:14;
"to do the law," 2:25; "to keep the commands of the law," 2:26; "to
keep the law," 2:27). With this background, the natural reading of
in 3:9 is as an expression equivalent to and
indeed, what is said in 3:9 with the noun is repeated in 3:23 with the
verb: "All have sinned." The idea of power has not been suggested,
nor can it be found in the scriptural passages which Paul brings for
ward in the succeeding verses (10-18) to substantiate the charge that
all are . There is no power here unless the preposition
is itself sufficient to suggest it, or unless it may be read back into
3:9 from what Paul says later. This last point we necessarily defer, only
noting in passing that the general reader (if not the scholar) is prob
ably more likely to read what follows according to the ideas suggested
by what precedes, than to proceed in the reverse fashion. As for the pre
position, I doubt that much can be made to rest upon it. Prepositions
are notoriously various in their meaning, and their use is often idiom
atic; what is the sense of "in" in the English expression "to live in sin"?
Does the preposition here invoke the idea of a realm characterized
(somehow) by sin, which is inhabited by couples who live together
while unmarried? Not, probably, for most English speakers.
Paul uses "under sin" twice later, in passages which suggest that sin
has some power: "sold under sin" in Rom. 7:14 and "confined under
sin" in Gal. 3:22. But in both of these places it is the verb, not the
preposition, which suggests a constraint, and there is no such verb in
Rom. 3:9. Moreover, when next appears, in 3:20, it is not
concrete at all: "for through law comes knowledge of sin." What humans
know through the law is, as most commentators say, what is sinful, or
the corollary (according to Paul) that everyone sins.70
Paul's next two references to , in 4:7-8, are borrowed from
Ps. 31:1-2 (LXX), and employ the sense, rare in Paul, of individual
70
Barrett, Romans, 71; Cranfield, Romans, 199; Kasemann, Romans, 89; Meyer,
"Romans," 1139. Dunn (Romans, 160) and Fitzmyer (Romans, 339) add that one learns
of sin's power, but that idea is not drawn from this verse.
170 M WINGER
71
sinful acts The case for as concreteand even personal
rests principally on chapters 5, 6 and 7, where some of Paul's lan
guage makes that suggestion "sin came into the world" (5 12), "sin
reigned" (5 21, cf 6 12) or "rules" (6 14), "slaves of sin" (6 16, 17, 20),
freed from sin (6 18-22), "sin dwelling in me" (7 17, 20) But, as with
love and wisdom, to say that sin is personified begs the question What
does it mean to present sin as a person? What sort of person is this,
and what relation has it to sin, as that is ordinarily conceived?
The answers to these questions lie in the passage we are examining
In 5 12 Paul writes, "Therefore, as sin () came into the world
through one man, and death through sin, so also death entered all
humans because all sinned () " Here, "sin" plainly means "to
sin," and "sin came into the world through one man" means "one
man sinned " Similarly, in 5 19 "sinner" () is used to express
the same thought "through the disobedience of one, many became
sinners"that is, many sinned In 5 20, "sin abounded" means that
there was much sinning
This brings us to 5 21 "as sin reigned in death, so also grace might
reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our
lord " Sin is indeed personified in this verse, or at any rate in its first
clauseas grace is personified in its second Yet grace is not a person,
we have already seen that is used here to refer to Christ, in a
way which calls attention to the human condition thanks to Christ 2
"Sin" is used differently, no figure is mentioned to whom "sin" might
refer, unless we construe Sin as such a figure As with lo\e, however,
this confuses rather than explains what Paul wrote I take 5 21a to
recall what Paul said in similar language m 5 12 that all sinned, and
because all sinned, all died While Paul wntes as though sin were a
person, this form of expression is not intended to efface the essential
reference of "sin" to the act of sinning If that connection is broken
then Rom 5 21 has no sense
From 5 21 we proceed to 6 1, "shall we continue in sin?" and 6 2,
"How shall we who died to sin live m it?" In both of these verses sin
is abstract, not concrete, m 1 "continue in sin" means "continue to
71
This sense is clear m 4 7, where the plural is used ("blessed is the one whose
sins are covered"), which naturally determines the reference in 8 as well Similarly,
in 5 13 "sin is not counted if there is no law," the verb () is cognate to the verb
of 4 8 (), and probably the reference in 5 13 is also to sinful acts
72
See above, at n 29 and following
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 171
sin," and in v. 2 "death to sin" and "life in it" mean first of all (what
ever else the metaphor suggests) sinning and not sinning. No cosmic
73
power is implied here.
In "the body of sin" (6:6), "of sin" ( ) is equivalent to
"sinful" (); so also with "passions of sin" in 7:5 and "flesh
of sin" in 8:3. At the same time Rom. 6:6 introduces us to further
terms which objectify sin: "enslaved to sin" in 6:6, followed by "slaves
of sin" in 6:16, 17 and 20, and contrasted with freedom from sin in
6:18 and 22; along the way Paul also speaks again of sin "reigning"
or "ruling" (6:12, 14). Even within this passage, however, is
not consistently concrete. According to 6:7, a person who has died is
"justified" or "acquitted" () from sin, which must therefore
mean sinfulness, or guilt.74 In 6:10 and 11 Paul writes of death "to
sin" ( ), in which "death" is certainly metaphorical, but a
very awkward metaphor if "sin" means a living master: in that case
"death to sin" would imply that the master has conquered "once for
all" (6:10). Although a concrete sense for sin is possible in these verses,
nothing in particular suggests it (five of the six immediately preceding
uses of the term are abstract).75
Sin is personified within Romans 6, but we still must decide how
literally to take this personification. Throughout, the conception of sin
as sinning underlies what Paul wrote, while the figure of personification
is never pressed to the limit. We can see this in some of the parallels
and substitutes Paul employs for personified sin. While in 6:11, 22 and
23 is parallel to , in 6:16 ... is parallel
to ... ; in 6:17 is parallel to
... , and in 6:18 and 20 ...
and ... are parallel to
and ... ; yet it seems doubtful
that Paul means the abstract terms , and to
73
In these verses death, which like sin "reigns" or "rules" in 5:14, 17; 6:9, is treated
as metaphorically as sin.
74
See T. Sim. 6.1 : "See, I have foretold everything to you, so that I will be absolved
() from the sins of your souls." The NRSV rendering of Rom. 6:7, "freed from
sin," is slightly misleading, for it suggests that the sense is equivalent to
in 6:18 and 22. But 6:7, unlike 6:18 and 22, does not suggest that
sin is a master.
75
A related metaphor appears in 6:23, "the wages of sin is death.. . . " Here too sin
could be abstract ("the wages paid for sin") or concrete ("the wages paid by sin"); but
because sin has been treated concretely in 6:12 through 22, that is the natural under
standing here.
172 M. WINGER
Again, let us put this aside for the moment, and move on to Romans
7 and 8. continues to be prominent in these chapters, and it
is often used concretelyten times in the nominative case, although
two of these are predicate nominatives that may have the abstract sense
77
"sinful." But the vocabulary has changed from chapter 6; while lan
guage of obedience and freedom continues, these terms no longer attach
to sin, but to law (7:3, 6, 23, 25; 8:2). A different vocabulary is now
employed with sin: sin is "in me" (7:8, 17, 20), or "in our/my mem
bers" (7:5, 23), or "in the flesh" (7:5); "under sin" I am "fleshly" (7:14),
and "with flesh" I "serve the law of sin" (7:25). Also prominent now
are accounts of sin "working" (7:8, 13, 17, 20), and this is the lan
guage which in chapter 7 most strongly suggests that refers
to something concrete. But this only returns us to the question of what
this concrete thing may be. Parallel to Paul's references to sin "work
ing" is 7:5: "the sinful passions ( ) worked in
our members through the law to bear fruit to death." 7 8 The suggestion
of 6:12 and 16, that obedience to sin means obedience to desire, here
is translated into new language, that the work of sin means the work
of the passionsa connection underscored by Chapter 7's repeated
descriptions of sin as "within" the one who sins. The fundamental con
nection of sin to sinful acts always remains. This is the presumption
of 7:7-12, where sin means violation of the commandments found in
the law. Likewise the emphasis in 7:13-25 on what one does preserves
the link between sin and action. 79
Thus "sin" refers to what is sinful; it is a concept or quality, some
times expressed by the terms "evil" (), or "transgression" (),
or "disobedience" ().80 It would seem that "sin" has a contrary,
77
The predicate nominatives are in 7:7 ("Is the law sin [ful]?") and 13 ("sin, in order
that it might be seen as sin [ful]").
78
With this connection of passions to death, compare that of sin to death in 6:16;
7:13; 8:2, 10.
79
This applies as well to Gal. 2:17, where Paul asks whether, if Jewish Christians
have become sinners by their violation of Jewish food laws, this means that Christ is
a "servant of sin." Although this could be interpreted as a personification of sin, Paul
makes no use of this figure. His ground for denying that Christ serves sin, as devel
oped in the difficult argument of 2:18-21, appears to be that violating the food laws
is not in fact sinful (the term "sinner," which 2:15 applies to Gentiles as a matter of
definition, is likely meant ironically). The issue, therefore, is simply whether Christ
causes one to sin. (As the answer to this question is no, this passage would in any case
be indifferent evidence for the existence of sin as a power.)
80
For , see Rom. 2:9, 3:8; 7:19; for , see Rom. 5:15, 16, 17, 20;
for , see Rom. 5:19. In each of these passages the term is used in proximity
to or (Rom. 2) .
174 M. W I N G E R
Summary
Our limited survey has mostly shown us that Paul uses abstract nouns
to refer to the action of cognate verbs. These nouns typically stand for
universals, not particulars, qualities not substances, concepts not objects.
When this usage implies an object, especially when that is a concrete
object, it is generally figurative. One measure of this is the intimate
81
Similar expressions also occur elsewhere, but in all of these passages contrasting
references to sin or sinning are close at hand "Righteousness" () is also con
trasted with "sin," for example in Rom 3 20-21 ("through the law comes knowledge
of sin But now the righteousness of God has been manifested ") and 6 20 ("when
you were slaves of sin you were free in regard to righteousness"), but it is not clear
that sin and righteousness are simple opposites
NAMES AND ABSTRACTIONS IN PAUL'S LETTERS 175
link between the apparent object and the quality or concept to which
the term ordinarily refers. A second measure is the absence of any cri-
terion of identity, such as ordinarily characterizes an object. We find
thus that grace, faith, love and sin (like wisdom) are not names, because
what they name is simply the act (or state) of giving, believing, loving
and sinning (or being wise).
^ s
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