THE APOSTLE PAUL’S CREATIVE USE OF A COMMON PHILOSOPHICAL TOPOS

THE AKRATES OF LAW (ROM 7,14-21)

Abstract

This paper will examine the figure of the akrates2 of Rom 7,14-21 in light of brief passages taken from two ancient philosophical texts: Plato’s early dialogue, the Protagoras and Aristotle’s magnum opus, the Nicomachean Ethics. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle all studied the problem of akrasia, namely the divided will in the moral subject. In chapter seven of his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul also addresses this ethical problem and proposes his own creative use of what had become a common philosophical topos in both the classical and Hellenistic world. He summarizes the moral conundrum of the “I” in this way in Rom 7,19: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” How then is such a major split between the cognitive and the ethical possible? How is it possible for good people to recognize the good yet do evil instead? Even in our own day scholars of ancient ethics continue to examine this fascinating and still relevant moral dilemma.