Against Chrisian Dualism

[Drew]

Part 1:

Although widely believed, the Scriptures do not support a “two-part†model of the Christian as constituted by a born-again “inner man†and a fallen “fleshâ€. This model gets used to underwrite seeing Romans 7 as a description of the struggle of these two components in the life of the Christian. However, there are strong, independent reasons to see Romans 7 as being about the Jew under Torah, not the believer. Clearly, if Romans 7 were indeed about the experiences of the Christian, it would be very hard to escape this two-component model. But since it is not, as argued extensively elsewhere, the two-component model needs to be established on other grounds.

One of the central distinctions that Paul draws is the “spirit-flesh†distinction. This distinction is commonly misunderstood to be a physical vs non-physical distinction. However, this particular misunderstanding is not really at issue here – the two component model that I am critiquing does not depend on seeing the “spirit-flesh†distinction as a distinction between the material (physical) and the immaterial (non-physical.

To set the stage, I would like to fill out the view that I am critiquing. On that view, the Christian is really composed of two parts – the “born again†component and the fallen component. These two components exist simultaneously and essentially do battle with each other (as the matter in Romans 7 indeed suggests). So the life of the Christian is seen as this ongoing tussle between these two highly distinct components – a fallen nature that is in slavery to sin and a redeemed “inner man†that has been freed from such slavery.

However, this position cannot survive the scriptures. I believe that the correct position is that, for the Christian, the “fallen†man - the part of the human person that was previously enslaved to sin – is now dead and gone (praise God). I offer the following from Romans 6 as proof-texts:

1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

Paul clearly sees that the Christian’s sinful nature has died. His rhetoric here is clear – since we are in fact “dead to sinâ€, we cannot rationalize sin as simply being the “sin nature†rearing its ugly head.

And this text is even more clear:

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

This text alone makes the whole case – the Christian’s sin nature has died, it has been crucified and we are free from it. Some might counter that Paul is talking about our new self here – the “redeemed†inner man – and it is this part of us that is free. That cannot work since Paul explicitly declares the death of the “old manâ€. So unless one is going to argue that when a person becomes a Christian, the old self dies and is replaced with a new sinful nature, one cannot escape the conclusion that the Christian has no fallen nature.

Consider also this famous text:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

It would seem exceedingly challenging to assert that our old fallen nature is still around after coming to faith. Paul clearly states that the old has gone. How can we still be struggling with something that is ostensibly gone?

 

[Drew]

Part 2

At this point, the obvious rejoinder is: If our sin nature has died, how is that we still sin? Obviously this is a very good question. Note what Paul says later in Romans 6:

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God,…

Clearly Paul thinks it is still possible for us to sin otherwise he would need to warn us. Besides, the evidence of day-to-day life confirms that Christians do indeed sin. I think that Paul must be admonishing us from abandoning our present state of being fully rescued from sin and returning to our prior state. This may seem like a dance on my part – that I am effectively admitting that we still have a sinful nature. I maintain that I am not doing this at all. There is a meaningful conceptual difference between these positions, the first of which I think is wrong and the second of which I think is right:

1. The Christian is a two-component being, with one part in slavery to sin and the other part freed from it;

2. The Christian is entirely liberated from the power of sin and has one redeemed nature. However, the Christian can “go back†– leave that state and go back to a position of being entirely enslaved to sin.

Now clearly, my embrace of position 2 suggests that I do not ascribe to the OSAS doctrine. And, indeed, I do not think the Scriptures support OSAS.

I suspect that the keen-eyed will object that I have already committed to the statement that the old self is dead. So, if that is really so, how I can talk about a person retreating to that state? Fair enough. My preliminary response is that Paul is using death as a metaphor for the leaving of a family – the family of fallen Adamic humanity. And so the possibility of returning to that family is indeed open.

Lest ye think that I am inventing this to rescue my position, I point out that matters of family membership were central in Paul’s thinking in Romans. In chapters 3 and 4, he makes a protracted argument about who the true members of Abraham’s family are. Family membership was a huge deal in that culture – much more than it is in our 21st century western world. I submit that Paul sees the transition from the Adamic state to that of being a Christian as being precisely akin to leaving one family and joining another. Thus we have the olive tree metaphor from Romans 11 where Paul sees the Gentile as being “grafted into†the olive plant that is the true family of God.

Another item of relevant history. In the history of the early church whenever a Jew would convert to Christianity, the members of that person’s family would declared that the person has “diedâ€, and they would even say a “funeral†prayer. So in Paul’s world, we have precedent for the use of death as a metaphor for leaving a family.

So, in summary, I think it is reasonable for us to understand Paul’s statements about the death of old self as countenancing a later return to the old Adamic identity, if that is, sadly, what a person elects to do.

What about Romans 7? Here we have a text where a clear “dualism†is indeed asserted by Paul:

18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am!

As hinted at earlier, I believe that this material is descriptive of the Jew under Torah, not the Christian. Furthermore, it is important to note that the arguments for this do not depend on the arguments mooted in the present argument. I am not creating a circular argument, presuming a certain view about the nature of the Christian and using that assumption to interpret Romans 7 a certain way. The arguments about Romans 7 being about the Jew under Torah are, I claim, almost entirely independent from the arguments I making here.

So indeed, we do have Paul talking about a “dual†or two component nature of a Jew who is not a Christian. Fine. I have no problem with that. Such a view dovetails perfectly well with the argument I am advancing. When the Jew comes to faith, the part of him in slavery to sin indeed dies. He joins a new family.