ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN Know you not, brethren {for I speak to them that know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?
For the woman that has a husband, while her husband lives, is bound to the law. But if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. Therefore, while her husband lives, she shall be called an adulteress if she be with another man; but if her husband be dead, she is delivered from the law of her husband, so that she is not an adulteress if she be with another man. (Rom.
It is clear that the apostle speaks of the law, not from the metaphysical or moral point of view, but in a spiritual and theological sense, in accordance with the full discussion of this in the fourth chapter of the letter before us; in other words: he deals with the law with respect to the inner man and the will and not with respect to the outer man and his actions. Once one has seen what his characteristic basic propositions and principles are, one can easily understand everything else.
Here is the first of these propositions: The law brings about sin and the wrath of God. None, therefore, dies to the law unless he dies to sin, and whoever dies to sin, dies also to the law. Moreover, as soon as he is free from sin, he is also free from the law. And in so far as he is a slave of sin, he is also a slave of the law and thus the law will have dominion over him and rule over him as long as sin has dominion over him and reigns in him.
The apostle's manner of argument is contrary to the metaphysical or moral method of reasoning. For the apostle makes it a point to say that it is man rather than sin that is taken away, so that sin continues as something that remains and man is cleansed from sin
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS rather than that the opposite is the case. In contrast to this, human self-understanding asserts that it is sin that is taken away and that it is man who remains and is cleansed. But the apostle's understanding is characteristic of him in the best sense and is perfectly in accord with God. For also the Scripture says in Ps. 81:6: "He removed his back from the burden." It does not say: He removed the burden from his back. (Similarly, it says in ch. 6:17 of this letter: "Whereunto you were delivered.") The exodus of Israel from Egypt is a parable of this: God did not take the Egyptians away from the Children of Israel, but he led Israel out of Egypt which remained behind. And in Ps. 21:1s1 it says: "In your remnants you shall prepare their face, for you shall make them turn their back." The Bible uses this way of speaking, because grace with its spiritual righteousness takes man and changes him and turns him away from sin even though it lets sin remain, so that while it makes the spirit righteous, it lets concupiscence remain in the flesh and in the midst of the sins of the world. (This way of speaking is a most effective device for use against the moralists.)2
Human righteousness, however, seeks first of all to remove and to change the sins and to keep man intact; this is why it is not righteousness but hypocrisy. Hence, as long as there is life in man and as long as he is not taken by renewing grace to be changed, no efforts of his can prevent him from being subject to sin and the law.
The first proposition, therefore, is this: "Sin comes through the law," as the apostle concludes farther on (Rom. 7:7). And thus the law is the law of sin, i.e., of the husband, and only he can die unto it who dies unto sin. But if a man has become dead to sin and is removed from it, then certainly sin is most effectively taken away from him and is dead to him. But when a man has not become dead to sin by being taken away from it, all efforts to get rid of sin and to become dead to it will fail.
It is then plain that, as the apostle understands it, sin is removed spiritually, i.e., the will to sin is mortified, but these others want this to be understood metaphysically when they say that the works of sin and sinful desires are removed as white paint is taken from a wall and heat from water.3 This is why Samuel says in I Sam.
10:6: "And you shall be turned into another man." He does not say: Your sins shall be turned into something else, but: you shall first be changed and when you have turned into another man, also your actions will be entirely changed.
1 Luther says Ps. 16 (Vg.).
3 CL Gabriel Biel, II Sent., d. 35, q. un., a. 1; n. iB.
ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN Hence, we can only marvel at the foolishness of the hypocrites who weaken themselves by their many efforts to change their works instead of humbling themselves enough to pray that their persons might be changed by grace. Ephesians 2:10: 'Tor we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works." He does not say that good works are created in us. And James 1:18: "that we might be some beginning of his creature/'
So therefore, if we do not first die to sin, it will remain in us, so that it has dominion over us, and thereby also the law through which sin exercises its dominion over us. For a man who is not quickened in his will by the Spirit cannot but be a slave to sin, even though he does many good works; what, in Prov. 11:15, is said of people of his kind will befall him too: "The foolish shall be afflicted with pains."
People, therefore, who want to imitate the works of the saints and glory in their fathers and forefathers, as the monks do today, are extremely foolish because all they accomplish is to ape them.4
Fools that they are, they do not look first for their spirit in order to become like them, but, unconcerned for the spirit, they do the same works they did.
The Thomists, Scotists, and other schools display the same kind of rash imprudence when they uphold the writings and sayings of their founders not only by disdaining to inquire for the spirit behind them but also by extinguishing it in their excessive zeal to venerate them. They believe it to be sufficient to keep only their words, regardless of the spirit. Just so also the Jews and all who are proud think that all they need to do is to understand the Holy
Scriptures literally, but they care nothing about the spirit from which this understanding must proceed and about the method by which the spirit wants to be understood. Therefore, Isaiah says rightly in the eleventh chapter, not that "wisdom" but that "the spirit of wisdom shall rest upon him," etc. (Isa. 11:2). For only the Spirit understands the Scriptures rightly and in accordance with God. But in every other case, men do not understand them even though they think they understand them, "seeing, they see not and hearing, they hear not" (Isa. 6:9; Matt. 13:13). So it is also with these hypocrites: being saints, they are not saints; being righteous, they are not righteous; they do good but accomplish nothing good.
Man must therefore first of all pray for grace that, changed in spirit, he will want to and will do everything from a cheerful and ready heart, not from slavish fear or puerile cupidity, but from a 4 "Simianam fabulam agere" probably a translation of the German phrase ein Affenspiel treiben, which Luther liked to use.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS free and manly attitude of mind. But only the Spirit can bring this about.
Therefore, my brethren, you also are become dead to the law, by the body of Christ; that you may belong to another, who is risen again from the dead, that we may bring forth fruit unto
Blessed Augustine says about this passage: "Three are here spoken of: the soul as if it were the woman, the passions of sins as if they were the husband, and the law as if it were the law of the husband." And "it is to be noted that the resemblance ceases where he says that the soul is not set free when the sins are dead just as it would be when the husband dies, but that the soul itself must die to sin and be set free from the law and married to another."6 We have already stated why this must be done.
For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were through the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are loosed from the law of death, wherein we were detained; so that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. (Rom. 7:5-6.)
The apostle means by "letter" not merely those parts of Scripture that have a symbolical significance7 and the teaching of the 5 Luther writes in the marginal gloss (WA 56, 65, 14 ff.): "The apostle expresses in this chapter a wonderful and profound judgment. Lyra and others have interpreted it not only superficially but wrongly, with the one exception, as far as I can see, of Augustine. In the last resort, the apostle wants to show that there are two men in the believer, the old and the new; on the one hand, Adam, and, on the other hand, Christ. But we cannot know the old man in us, before the law is made known and proclaimed, for he is born, so to speak, when the law is proclaimed. And thus it is through the law that we are subject to the old man in us and to sin (i.e., we know by the law that we are subject to them) and thus sin had dominion over us through the law just as the husband over the woman. Without the law, it would have no dominion over us, i.e., we should not know that it had dominion over us. If, therefore, the old man in us is dead, we are dead also to the law, for it no longer makes us subject to sin but it has lost its power over us."
6 Augustine, Propos. ex ep. ad Rom., 36.
7Cf. Luther's marginal gloss (WA 56, 67, 18 ff.): "The term 'letter' must here not be taken to mean only the symbolic parts of Scripture, as Augustine shows in an extensive discussion in chapters 4 and 6 of On the Spirit and the Letter. Lyra is therefore mistaken in saying that Christ made the law of no effect in so far as it deals with judicial and ceremonial matters but not in so far as it deals with moral issues. As a matter of fact, the apostle speaks here obviously of the law in so far as it deals with moral issues, and as such it is the law of death and of the letter."
ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN ig7 law, but, rather, every teaching that prescribes what constitutes the good life whether it is to be found in the Gospel or in Moses.
For when one learns it and keeps it in one's memory and the Spirit of grace is not present, it is merely an empty letter and the soul's death. This is why Blessed Augustine writes in the fourth book of On the Spirit and the Letter:* "That teaching by which we receive the commandment that we live continently and rightly is the letter that kills, unless the Spirit is present that gives life.
For the term letter* is not to be understood to mean that any figurative expression, whose natural meaning is absurd, is to be taken literally, but also and. indeed, chiefly, in the way which the apostle very clearly indicates when he says: 'I should have known that coveting is sin, except the law had said: You shall not covet/
Here nothing figurative is said." And farther down in the fourteenth chapter he says more extensively:9 "When the apostle speaks of the law by which none can be made righteous, he wants to have it understood that by law' he means not merely those ordinances which were given to them as figures of the promise but also those works which enable everyone who does them to live righteously."
"But he makes the point still more clearly when he says to the Corinthians: 'The letter kills, but the spirit gives life' (II Cor.
3:6), for he wants 'the letter' understood as the Decalogue itself as it is written on the Two Tables." And so forth.
The so-called moral or, more correctly, spiritual interpretation of Scripture deals only with love and the disposition of the heart, with the love of righteousness and the hatred of unrighteousness, in other words: with whatever the Scripture teaches we must do or not do. We must understand that this doing or not doing must be freely accomplished by the love of God with all one's heart and not from a slavish fear of punishment or from a childish desire for advantage, and that this is impossible without the love that is shed abroad by the Holy Spirit.
This is what the Scholastic teachers10 mean when they say in their highly obscure and entirely unintelligible way that there is no valid observance of the divine commandment unless it is formed by love. This word "formed" is a cursed word, for it compels one to think of the soul as if it remained the same after and before the outpouring of love and as if the form were added
8 Augustine, De spir. et lit., 4, 6.
10 Duns Scotus, IV Sent., d. 14, q. 2, n. 13; Ockham, I Sent., d. 17, q. 3B; Biel, IV Sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 1, n. 3.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS to it at the moment of action, while, as a matter of fact, it must be wholly mortified and made new before it becomes capable of deeds of love. (The same judgment applies to the distinction between a work that is good according to the substance of the deed and a work that is good according to the intention of the lawgiver).11
Also, the apostle agrees with this judgment when he says in I Cor. 13:2: "If I should know all mysteries and have all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, etc., and have not love, I am nothing.'* The plain conclusion, then, is that the mysteries and the whole gospel and every "spiritual" interpretation of the Scripture are "letter." For when they who teach this are dead, they also lack the Spirit, for "the Spirit gives life and the letter kills." Now they are killed and therefore they belong to the letter.
Blessed Augustine writes in the same book farther on in the twenty-first chapter:12 "What else are the laws of God that are divinely written in our hearts than the very presence of the Holy
Spirit who is the finger of God? By his presence, love is shed abroad in our hearts and this is the fulfillment of the law and the end of the commandment."
Great scholars who read much and abound in many books are not the best Christians. For all their books and their learning are
"letter" and the soul's death. But people who do from a free and ready heart what the scholars read in books and teach others to do
—they are the best Christians. But they cannot act from a free and ready heart unless they have love through the Holy Spirit. We must therefore dread it when, in our time, through the making of many books, people become learned scholars who do not know at all what it means to be a Christian.13
When, therefore, the question is raised why the gospel is called the word of the Spirit, a spiritual teaching, the word of grace and the clarification of the sayings of the old law and a knowledge that is hidden in mystery, etc., the answer must be that this is done only because it teaches where and wherefrom we can obtain grace and love, namely, from Jesus Christ whom the law promised and whom the gospel sets forth. The law commands that we should have love and that we should have Jesus Christ, but the gospel offers and presents both to us. Hence, it says in Ps. 45:2: "Grace is poured abroad in thy lips." When, therefore, we do not receive the gospel
11 Cf. the discussion in connection with Rom. 4:7.
12 Augustine, De spir. et lit., 21, 36.
13 WA 56, 338, 11 f.: "Ideo nostro saeculo timendum est, ubi multiplicatis libris doctissimi fiunt homines, sed indoctissimi Christiani"
ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN as gospel, it is nothing but "letter."14 And it is gospel in the full sense of the word, where it preaches Christ; but where it rebukes and reproves and commands, it does nothing else but to shatter the presumptuousness of the self-righteous in order to make room for grace, so that they come to understand that they cannot fulfill the law by their own powers but only through Christ who shed the Spirit abroad in our hearts.
The real difference between the old and the new law is this: The old law says to those who are proud in their own righteousness:
You must have Christ and his spirit; the new law says to those who humbly recognize that they lack all righteousness and who seek
Christ: Behold, here is Christ and his spirit! They, therefore, that interpret the gospel as something else than "good news," do not understand the gospel. Precisely this must be said of those who have turned the gospel into a law rather than interpret it as grace, and who set Christ before us as a Moses.
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. But I do not know sin but by the law; for I had not known concupiscence if the law did not say: Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.
For without the law sin was dead. And I lived some time without the law. But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment that was ordained to life, the same was found to be death to me. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, seduced me and by it killed me. Wherefore the law indeed is holy and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
Was that, then, which is good made death unto me? God forbid.
But sin, that it may appear sin, by that which is good, wrought death in me; that sin, by the commandment, might become sinful above measure. For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I understand not. For I do not that good which I will; but the evil which I hate, that I do. If then I do that which I will not, I consent to the law, that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that there dwells not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good. For to will is present with me; but to accomplish that which is good, I find not. For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do. Now if I do that which I will not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that when I have a will to do good, evil is present with me. For I am delighted with the law of God, accord14 WA 56, 338, 20: "Ideo evangelium, si non recipiatur, ut loquitur, similiter est litera"
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS ing to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and holding me captive in the law of sin that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, by Jesus
Christ, our Lord. Therefore, I myself with the mind serve the law of God but with the flesh the law of sin. (Rom. 7:7-25.)
That, beginning with this passage until the end of the chapter, the apostle speaks in his own name and as a spiritual person and not at all as a carnal person, Blessed Augustine first asserts extensively and persistently in his book against the Pelagians.15
Hence, he says in the twenty-third chapter of the first book of his Retractations,1* where he deals again with his exposition of this passage: "When the apostle says: 'We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal* (Rom. 7:14), I did not want to understand this as in any way spoken by the apostle in his own name, because he was already spiritual, but with reference to a man who is subject to the law because he is not yet under grace. In this way I earlier understood these words, but later, having read several interpreters of the divine sayings whose authority impressed me greatly, I considered them more carefully and came to see that they can also be understood with reference to the apostle himself."
And in the second book against Julian, he writes:17 "Behold, it is not, as you think, some Jew who says: 'I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind/ etc. (Rom. 7:23), but according to Blessed Ambrose, it is the apostle Paul who speaks here in his own name." And, a little farther on, he quotes Blessed
Ambrose from his book On the Sacrament of Regeneration:1* "We must struggle against the flesh. Paul struggled against it. At last he says: 'I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind.' Are you stronger than Paul? Have no confidence in the sedulous flesh and do not entrust yourself to it, since Paul exclaims: Tor I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, no good dwells: for to will is present with me, but to accomplish that which is good is not* (Rom.7:i8)."
Likewise, quoting the same author from the book On Paradise, he says:19 "Again, at another place of the same work, the same teacher writes: Paul, he says, is assailed and sees the law of his
15 Cf. Augustine, Contra duas epistolas Pelagian., 1, 10, 17.
16 Augustine, Retract., I, 23.
17 Augustine, Contra JuL, II, 5, 13 (quoting Ambrosiaster, De paradiso, 12, 18 Augustine, Contra JuL, II, 5, 14 (quoting Ambrose, De sacramento regenerationis vet de philosophia, a work that was lost).
19 Augustine, Contra JuL, II, 5, 13 (quoting Ambrosiaster, De paradiso, 12, ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN 2O1 flesh warring against the law of his mind. Paul says: Tor the good which I will I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do/
(Rom. 7:19.) And still you think that man is helped by knowledge in so far as it increases his displeasure at his transgression?" etc.
And most clearly of all, he makes the same point in the same work from the sixth chapter to the end.20
But let us bring forth this same insight from the very words of the apostle: First, this whole passage clearly reveals disapproval and hatred of the flesh and love for the good and the law. Now such an attitude is not characteristic of a carnal man, for he hates and laughs at the law and follows the inclinations of his flesh.
Yet a spiritual man fights with his flesh and bemoans the fact that he cannot do as he wills. But a carnal man does not fight with it but yields and consents to it. Hence, this well-known judgment of Blessed Augustine: "The will to be righteous is a large part of righteousness/'21
And in Wisd. of Sol. 9:15, the Preacher says: "The corruptible body is a load upon the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind/* i.e., the mind which "muses much" (i.e., which plans and devises many actions)—a Scriptural text that briefly expounds the entire passage that is before us. For the "mind"22 here is the same "mind"23 against whose law the apostle says the law of the members is warring. And where the Preacher says
"muses much," the apostle says here: "With the mind I serve the law of God" (Rom. 7:25), and again: "When I have the will to do good, evil is present with me" (Rom. 7:21). And "For I am delighted with the law of God according to the inward man."
The same thought that is expressed in this passage is to be found also in Gal. 5:17: "For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary to one another";
"that you do not do the things you would." And at another place:
"I chastize my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected."
The first word, then, which proves that a spiritual man is speaking here is this: But I am carnal (Rom. 7:14). Because it is characteristic of a spiritual and wise man that he knows that he is carnal, that he is dissatisfied with himself and hates himself, and that he
21 Cf. Augustine, Ep. 127, 5. Cf. the discussion on Rom. 4:7, also the Corol* lary on Rom. 3:20.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS praises the law of God because it is spiritual. Conversely, it is characteristic of a foolish and carnal man that he thinks he is spiritual or that he is satisfied with himself and that he loves his life here in this world.24
A second word is this: For that which I do, I understand not (Rom. 7:15), which Blessed Augustine interprets25 to mean "I do not approve/' perhaps because a spiritual man who lives by the mind has sense only for what belongs to God; hence, he does not sense or understand the evil he does. Just as, conversely, he has a keen sense and understanding for what he does not do, namely, the good. "The carnal man, however, perceives not these things that are of the Spirit of God and he cannot understand them"
(I Cor. 2:14), but he readily understands what he does, i.e., he approves of it, for, as we read below in Rom. 8:5: 'Tor they that are according to the flesh, mind the things that are of the flesh; but they that are according to the Spirit, mind the things of the Spirit." Therefore, to turn this around, those who are according to the Spirit do not mind the things of the flesh, though they do them, and those who are according to the flesh do not mind the things of the Spirit.
But one can also interpret the phrase simply in this way, as I have done in the Gloss: "I do not understand" means: I am being deceived in so far as I am carnal, and sin seduces me when I do evil. For as a spiritual man I understand only the good, and yet I do what I neither care for nor want to do, namely, evil; in other words: It is not from intention or a considered choice that I do evil; I elect, rather, the good; nevertheless it happens that I do the opposite. A carnal man, however, has a full understanding of all this, for he wants to do evil because he plans, strives, and chooses to do it. And if he ever does anything good, he does so accidentally.
The third word: For I do not that good which I will, but the evil which I hate, that I do. (Rom. 7:15.) Yet the Scripture says of the carnal man: "Evil he has not hated" (Ps. 36:4). For if they had hated it, they would not perpetuate it by their action, but they would exert themselves in fighting against it.
The fourth word: I consent to the law that it is good. (Rom.
7:16.) The law wants the good, and he wants the good, and so they agree with one another. A carnal man, however, does not do this, but he always disagrees with the law and he would rather that there were no law (if this were possible). And so he does not want the good but evil. And even though he may do good (as I have said before), he does not really know it, because he acts from the 25 Cf. Augustine, Propos. ex ep. ad Rom., 43.
ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN slavish compulsion of fear, always with the strong desire to do the opposite if he can get away with it.
From this we must not think that the apostle wants us to understand his statement that he does the evil he hates and that he does not do the good he wants to do, in a moral and metaphysical sense as if he did no good but only evil; to ordinary human understanding, this may seem to be the meaning of his phrase. But he wants to say that he does not do the good as often and to such an extent and as readily as he would like. For he wants to act from utter single-mindedness, freedom, and cheerfulness, unmolested by the resistance of the flesh, and this he cannot do. It is as with a man who seeks to be chaste: he does not want to be assailed by any excitement but he wants to realize chastity without difficulty.
But the flesh does not let him do this; with its inclinations and drives, it makes chastity a most troublesome burden and it stimulates unclean desires however unwilling the spirit may be. He that sets out to watch, to pray, and to help his fellow man will always find that the flesh is rebellious and that it plots and desires something else.
Hence, we must take special note of the fact that the apostle makes a distinction between "to do" and "to accomplish," as Blessed Augustine extensively explains at the end of the third book against Julian.26 "To do" he takes to mean here to try, to plot, to stimulate desires, to will, etc. Without letup, all these set the flesh against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. For if he meant by "to do" "to fulfill by action," he could not possibly say: "The evil that I will not I do, but the good I will I do not," for in these words he describes very obviously the warring of the flesh against the spirit. For to say: he wants to do something else than he does means: he takes pleasure in the good and he has a will that is ready to do the good by the love that is diffused in it by the Spirit; and yet he cannot fulfill and accomplish what he wants to do, because the flesh resists and concupiscence opposes his will. If he could fulfill and accomplish what he wants, he would do the good cheerfully and without resistance, for this is what his will wants to do. But now he does not act in this way, for he does not do what he wants to do, but he does what he does not want to do.
Now a man who does not know what struggling is and who yields to the flesh and obeys its desires without putting up any resistance, does not say: "What I will not I do," for he does not take delight in the opposite of what he does but in what he does in fact. But "to accomplish" means to realize what one wants to 26 Augustine, Contra JuL, III, 26, 62.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS do or desires. So the spirit accomplishes the good it wants to do when it acts without protest according to the law of God. But this cannot be done in this life, for "to accomplish that which is good, I find not."
The flesh, however, accomplishes what it wants to do in so far as it fulfills its desires with joy and without any struggle and hesitation. This is the way of this life, nay, rather, it is a sign of death; it shows that the world is lost: it is so easy to do evil. Hence,
I maintain that this word proves that Paul speaks here not as a carnal man but as a very spiritual man.
The fifth word: It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. (Rom. 7:20.) So it is not he that sins, because his flesh covets without his consent; indeed, strictly speaking, he himself does not covet, because he does not agree with the coveting of his flesh. And yet he says: "The good that I will, I do not." For one and the same person is spirit and flesh; thus what the flesh does the whole man is said to do. And yet what resists is not the whole man but is rightly called a part of him. Both then are true: it is he that acts and yet it is not he.
It is as with a rider: When his horse does not trot exactly as he wishes, it is he and yet not he that causes it to trot as it does. For the horse is not without him nor he without the horse. But a carnal man does always what sin does, because he always agrees with the law of his members. For in this case, mind and flesh are held together not only by one person but also by one will.
The sixth word: For I know that there dwells not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good. (Rom. 7:18.) Observe how he attributes the flesh to himself as a part of himself, as if he himself were flesh. This is why he said before: "I am carnal/' and so he now confesses himself to be not good but evil because he does evil. Because of the flesh, he is carnal and evil, for the good is not in him and he does evil; because of the spirit, he is spiritual and good, for he does the good. We must note, therefore, that the words "I will" and "I hate" refer to the spiritual man or to the spirit, but "I do" and "I work" to the carnal man and to the flesh. Just because one and the same man as a whole consists of flesh and spirit, he attributes to the whole man both of the opposites that come from the opposite parts of him. Thus there comes about a communio idiomatum:27 one and the same man is spiritual and carnal, righteous and sinful, good and evil. Just so the one person of Christ is at the same time both dead and alive,
27 "Communion of proper qualities." Cf. E. Vogelsang, Die Anfdnge von Luthers Christologie (Berlin, 1929), p. i78n.
ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN both suffering and blessed, both active and inactive, etc., because of the communio idiomatum, even though there belongs to neither of his two natures what is characteristic of the other, for, as everyone knows, they differ absolutely from each other.
But this applies in no way to the carnal man; he is nothing but flesh in his whole person because the Spirit of God did not remain in him. The carnal man can therefore not say: "in me, that is to say, in my flesh/* as if he were by his will something else than flesh, but he is identical with his flesh by virtue of his yielding to the desires of the flesh, just as man and wife are figuratively one flesh,28 yet in the manner of harlots and fornicators.
In the light of this, we can better understand what the apostle meant before by his parable about the woman that is free when her husband dies. The application of this parable does not seem to fit, in view of the fact that he says that the soul itself, this is to say, the woman rather than the husband, must die in order to be set free, while the husband, i.e., the passions of sin, remains behind, but is being held captive, etc. However, the apostle who has respect for personal identity, sees in everybody a marital union, the flesh representing the woman and the soul or the mind, the man. When they agree in the same desiring, they are one flesh as Adam and Eve were. But when the mind, like the husband of the flesh, dies a spiritual death, then we become dead to the law in our whole person and thus are set free in our whole person.
With respect to the flesh as well as to the spirit, we are one and the same, the husband who has become dead to the law and the woman who is freed from the law. And it is the law which produced this husband and this marriage, i.e., it stimulated desire and caused it to become stronger, and thus it furnished the occasion for the agreement between the mind and the flesh.
So then, on account of the flesh we are the woman, i.e., carnal, and, on account of the spirit, we are the husband who yields to the flesh, and thus we are at the same time dead and set free. For this double use falls to the whole person, even though the parts that bring it about are different. This is so because the parts communicate their individual qualities to the whole. Hence, the apostle says: "Therefore you also are become dead" (Rom. 7:4), even though it is only according to the inner man that we became dead and were set free from the law. This likewise belongs to the whole man on account of the inner man, and it is communicated also to the flesh or the outer man. For the flesh, too, is no longer enslaved
28 In the moral exegesis of Gen. 2:18 ff., Lyra attributes to Augustine the comparison of the relation between reason and sensuality with that between husband and wife. (Cf., e.g., De opere monachorum, 32,40.)
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS to the law or to sins, but it is freed from them because of the inner man who is set free. Together with him whose wife it is and was, it is one and the same man.
The seventh word: For to will is present with me, but to accomplish that which is good I find not. (Rom. 7:18.) This "to will" is the readiness of the spirit which love brings forth. It is this promptitude which he means in saying: "The good that I will I do not" (Rom. 7:19), and it is meant also in Ps. 1:2:
"He delights in the law of the Lord." But here he says: "To will is present with me," i.e., the good pleasure and delight in the good which the law commands, as he says farther on: "I delight in the law of God after the inward man" (Rom. 7:22), but because of the opposition of the flesh, he finds it impossible "to accomplish" this good of the law. He does not want to covet, and in his judgment it is good not to covet; nevertheless, he covets and thus he does not accomplish what he wills, and he fights with himself. But because spirit and flesh are so closely connected with each other that they are one, although they feel differently, he attributes to himself as a whole person what both are doing, as if he were at one and the same time wholly flesh and wholly spirit.
Yet he is clear in what he says here and he is able to meet the following objection: If you do not do what the law commands, and if, instead, you do what you do not want to do and do not what you want to do, in what way do you then not sin? For his answer is that he does the good but that he does not accomplish it, because he does not extinguish the coveting of the flesh.
How, then, can it be that a thoroughly carnal man, who prefers not to do the good, can have this kind of will, a will which the First Psalm attributes to a blessed man and which only the Holy
Spirit gives through love? Only if one does extreme violence to this passage, can one make it say such a thing, indeed, only if one badly maltreats the words "I will," "I will not," "to will," etc.
The eighth word: I find, then, a law that when I have a will to do good, evil is present with me (Rom. 7:21), i.e., I find a contrary law within me when I am willing and ready to act according to the law of God. But one cannot say of a carnal man that he is willing. That is why it says in Ps. 112:1: "Blessed is the man that fears the Lord: he shall delight exceedingly in his commandments." Indeed, God has arranged it so that when this concupiscence resists a willing person and his good pleasure, it thereby makes this will all the more able to accomplish its end and inflames it to a hatred of all coveting that is greater than if it did not resist. For it causes the will to turn against it, and the more it resists and covets, the more it increases the hatred against itself. It is as ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN with a man who is angry—the more the one who insulted him presses in upon him, the angrier he makes him. But a carnal man does not burn with such indignation, nor has he any resistance, because he lets himself be carried away and he follows along.
Nor does he know "that evil is present within him/' For nobody knows the evil that is in him unless he is established in the good above evil, from where he can judge and discern the evil that is in him, just as we discern darkness only by the light, measure a contrast by the opposite, and judge what is worthless by that which we treasure. So then, if the spirit were not in the light, it would not see or bemoan the evil of the flesh that is present with it. This is made evident by those who are lost in the world and by the proud.
The ninth word: For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. (Rom. 7:22.) Observe that he says expressly that he has an inward man. But this is nothing else than the spiritual man, for without the spirit the whole man is "the old man" and the outward man. But the inward man is a clean mind and conscience and he takes his delight in the law of God. "I delight in the law of God/' he says, i.e., "How sweet are thy words to me" (Ps. 119:103) and "The law of thy mouth is good to me" (Ps. 119:72). To a carnal man, however, they are bitter and harsh and utterly hateful, for a will that is afflicted with sin-fever detests them, even though it may seem to him as well as to others that he loves them from fear of punishment. As we have stated several times, this delight comes from the Holy Spirit through love, without which it is impossible to love the law and its righteousness; indeed, man detests righteousness more violently because he is in the law than he would if he were without the law, for he hates it that he is given to know what he does not desire, or, rather: the opposite of what he desires.
The tenth word: But I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind. (Rom. 7:23.) This shows that he speaks as a fighter who stands in between two opposite laws, but not as a defeated one for whom, as is the case with a carnal man, there is no longer a warring between the law of the members and the law of the mind, because the mind has surrendered. Indeed, he shows that he is dedicated in service to only one law and that he is withstanding another law that wars against him and that he refuses to serve it, or, rather, that he struggles with it. As everyone knows, one never hears of such a conflict or of a complaint about such a conflict in a carnal man.
The eleventh word: Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Rom. 7:24.) LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS
This shows even more clearly than the foregoing that a spiritual man is speaking here. For he sighs and grieves and longs to be delivered. Certainly no one will declare himself wretched except one who is a spiritual man. For perfect self-knowledge is perfect humility, and perfect humility is perfect wisdom, and perfect wisdom is perfect spiritualness. Hence, only a perfectly spiritual man can say:
"Wretched man that I am!" A carnal man, however, does not long to be delivered and broken up, but he greatly abhors the dissolution of death and is unable to recognize his wretchedness.
So then, when Paul says here: "Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" he says exactly what he says elsewhere: "I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ" (Phil. 1:23). For this reason, it is astonishing that it could have entered anyone's mind that the apostle speaks these words in the person of the old and carnal man, words which reflect such remarkable perfection, as if it were necessary for the apostle, like a hypocrite, to think and speak only well of himself, i.e., to praise himself and to deny that he is a sinner and thus not to praise grace but to deny its existence.
Indeed, it is a great consolation to us to learn that such a great apostle was involved in the same grievings and afflictions in which we find ourselves when we wish to be obedient to God!
The twelfth word: Therefore, I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin. (Rom. 7:25.)
This is the most telling passage of all. Notice that one and the same man serves both the law of God and the law of sin, that he is righteous and at the same time he sins. He does not say: "My mind serves the law of God," nor "My flesh serves the law of sin," but he says, "I, this whole man, this person here, stand in this double servitude." He therefore gives thanks that he serves the law of God and he asks for mercy that he serves the law of sin.
Who can say of a carnal man that he serves the law of God? Notice, then, what I stated before: The saints in being righteous are at the same time sinners; they are righteous because they believe in Christ whose righteousness covers them and is imputed to them, but they are sinners because they do not fulfill the law and are not without sinful desires. They are like sick people in the care of a physician: they are really sick, but healthy only in hope and in so far as they begin to be better, or, rather: are being healed, i.e., they will become healthy. Nothing can harm them so much as the presumption that they are in fact healthy, for it will cause a bad relapse.
It is from this certain knowledge that, in the second chapter above,29 the apostle speaks out so boldly against the self-righteous
29 Cf. Rom. «:i, 21 ff.
ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN who set themselves up as judges over the evildoers while they themselves were no different, who preached that one must not steal while they themselves were thieves, etc. Though he did not know anything about their outward works, he was nevertheless very certain that as long as they are outside grace, they act inwardly in their hearts against the law. For if a spiritual man who wants to do what he should does not do what he should, how much more does a carnal man not do what he should, in view of the fact that he does not want but must be forced to do what he should! Thus
"a spiritual man judges things, and he himself is judged of no man." (I Cor. 2:15.) From here we can understand at last what David means when he says: "For this let everyone that is godly pray unto thee at the proper time" (Ps. 32:6), and why Christ repudiated his wife, the synagogue, on account of her ugliness.30 For she does not want to acknowledge her wickedness and confess it to God's mercy, but she imagines herself to be righteous and holy. But we have dealt sufficiently with everything else, above in ch. 4 of the letter before us.
Without the law sin was dead. (Rom. 7:8.) Blessed Augustine explains this passage together with the one that follows it with reference to the time of infancy when reason is not yet used. In the second book against Julian,31 he says: "A little child that does not yet have the use of reason lives by his own will neither in the good nor in evil. But as he grows older and reason awakens, the commandment comes and sin revives, and, when it begins to fight him as he grows, then there will appear what was latent in the infant; it either conquers and will take domination over him, or it will be conquered, and he will be healed." The law comes to life and sin begins to appear when he begins to recognize the law; then concupiscence, which was latent in infancy, breaks forth and becomes manifest. And when it breaks forth in adolescence, then it brings fully to the fore what lay concealed in infancy. Just so, a young plant does not yet show what kind of fruit it will bear; but when it is in foliage and it bears fruit, one knows what kind of tree it is.
We can find a still profounder meaning in this: There are people who, in their mental attitude, are children, even if they are a hundred years old. They are those who let themselves be bewitched by a messenger of Satan that appears to them in the form
30 In medieval art, the church and the synagogue were often represented as two women, one ugly, the other beautiful, etc. si Augustine, Contra Jul, II, 4, 8.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS of a spiritual good. For this good they long more ardently than an adulterer longs for a woman or a miser for money, and so they forsake the law and the obedience of God, like the Jews, heretics, schismatics, individualists, and nonconformists32 who have no sin because, as far as they are concerned, the law is not yet given.
But if they knew the law against which they sin, they would doubtless recognize their sin at once, because they burn with pious zeal for the law. When, therefore, the law comes to them, sin is awakened in them. Then they long even more ardently for the realization of their special concerns and are even more strongly excited to anger against the law, so that they come to hate it because it prohibits to them what in their own imagination they have chosen to regard as law-conformity. So then when the law says: "You shalt not covet," all coveting is so strictly forbidden that whatever one covets besides God, even if it is coveted for the sake of God, is sin.
This is why many invite their own ruin when they love to practice piety and engage in prayers, studies, readings, devotions, meditations, and other such works as if they alone were good and well pleasing to God, but when they are called upon to render some mean service they get angry and provoked. Fools that they are, they do not know that it is not good works of some kind or number that God requires of them but a quiet and meek and obedient spirit. As it says in Ps. 51:16: "For if thou hadst wanted it, I would have given sacrifice; with burnt offerings thou wilt not be delighted'' (i.e., thou dost not care for the good works, whatever they may be, that we have chosen to do). What then? "A sacrifice to God is an afflicted" (i.e., broken) "spirit;** a contrite" (i.e., broken) "and humbled" (i.e., contrite) "heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (Ps. 51:17), i.e., a heart and spirit which are not hardened by an obstinacy of mind but can be guided and broken in to do thy will. People of such a spirit do not choose their work but they expect to be chosen for it whatever it may be. And all this in order that "he may open our lips and that our mouth shall show forth his praise" (Ps. 51:15). For people who choose on their own initiative what work they shall do cannot refrain from praising themselves. Instead of pleasing God and thereby themselves, they please only themselves even when they want to please God.
We should know that the devil disturbs everyone's mind in order to make void his vocation and in order to seduce and per32 Cf. Ps. 80:13 anc* the discussion on monius
(individualist) and singularis (nonconformist) in relation to Rom. 4:7.
33 Luther depends here on Reuchlin's exegesis in Septem psalmi poeniten* tiales, ad loc.
ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN suade him to something to which he is not called, as if God were stupid and did not know whereto he wanted to call anyone. In this way, the devil is always contending against the wisdom of God and is trying to make God appear foolish in our eyes in order to mislead us to the idolatrous notion that God wills what in fact he does not want. These are certainly the gods of the house of Israel for whom altars have everywhere been set up at all street corners throughout Jerusalem (Jer. n:i3).34
It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. (Rom. 7:17.) So then, is it not true that the treacherous metaphysics of Aristotle and traditional philosophy have deceived our theologians?
For did they not believe to know that sin is done away with in baptism or penance, so that they thought it absurd that the apostle says: "but sin that dwells in me"! Thus it was chiefly this word that gave them offense, so that they came to the false and noxious opinion that the apostle was speaking here not in his own name but in the name of a carnal man. And over against his various and very emphatic assertions in many letters, they insist on talking nonsense by saying that he could not possibly have any sin.35
84 Here is Luther's gloss on Rom. 7:9 (WA 56, 68, 5 ff.): "I lived some time without the law. But when the commandment came, sin revived. So it is with the proud heretics and the moralists. Because they do not know that the law goes against them, it is impossible for them to know their sins.
Hence they are also incorrigible. But if they recognized the law, they would immediately recognize their sin and it would revive, the same sin which until now was dead to them."
85 And here is Luther's gloss on Rom. 7:10 (WA 56, 68, 9 ff.): "And the com' mandment that was ordained to life, the same was found to be unto death to me. One must not think, as Lyra and others say, that the apostle speaks here in the name of a man who is in darkness and not in his own name. Neither does he speak of a crass darkening of the mind that does not even superficially know the law. But he speaks in his own name and in the name of all saints about that darkness in the very depth of our heart because of which even the saints and the wisest of men do not have a perfect knowledge of themselves and therefore also not of the law. As David says, 'Who can understand his errors?' [Ps. 19:12]. And who can, therefore, understand the law, inasmuch as it is impossible for anyone to understand the law without discerning also every one of his sins? For the law touches every sin, as Ps. 12:6 says, 'The words of the Lord are refined seven times/ Hence if there is someone who thinks that he understands the law, at least with respect to himself, as it says, 'Thou shalt not covet,' he is foolish and proud.
And this the heretics do! With the exception of Christ, it happens to every man who is righteous, that as he progresses from concupiscence to purity, he also progresses from ignorance of the law to an understanding of it.
Hence every saint must necessarily pray in the words of Ps. 25:7: 'Remember not the sins of my youth and my ignorances.' 'Of my youth/ i.e., the hidden sins which also the spiritual man has who is already renewed. Only
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS This foolish opinion has led to a most harmful deception: people who are baptized or have received absolution think that they are at once without any sin; they become secure in the feeling that they have obtained righteousness and they do nothing because they are not conscious of any sin they should fight against and purge out under groaning and tears and with sorrowful effort.
But we should know that sin is left in the spiritual man for the exercise of grace, for the humiliation of pride, and for the restraint of presumptuousness. For if we do not earnestly endeavor to struggle against sin, we already have it, even though we have ceased to commit any sin for which we could be condemned. For we are not called to a life of ease but to labor against our passions.36
And they would not be without guilt (for they really are sins and damnable, indeed) unless God in his mercy did not impute them to us. But he does not impute them to those only who, invoking his grace, resolutely attack their faults and fight against them. In the light of this we say that when a person goes to confession, he must not think that he can put down his burden and live quietly, but he must know that by putting down his burden he becomes a soldier of God*7 and thereby assumes another burden, namely, to fight for God against the devil and his own faults.
If he does not know this, he will soon relapse. // therefore, he does not intend to fight henceforth against his sins, why does he pray for absolution and for his enrollment in the ranks of the soldiers of Christ?
By the way, because they did not pay any attention to this, the interpreters38 have misunderstood the apostle when he says in Heb. 12:1: "Let us put down every burden and the sin that surrounds us," etc. They took "burden" to mean the devil and "the sin that surrounds us" as evil works, while the apostle says that the works are the burden and the inward blemish of sin and the "tinder" "the sin that surrounds us."
We should note that the apostle does not mean to be underin faith, therefore, one can say, 'For I know my iniquity* [Ps. 51:3], in view of what follows: 'Thou hast made manifest to me the uncertain and hidden parts of thy wisdom' [Ps. 51:6]. These are the most hidden parts of the law: a way of knowing which we can never know entirely and which was revealed in order that we should believe it. He, therefore, that wants to confess only the sins he knows and that which is apparent to him, will confess only a few, and he cannot say: 'I acknowledge my sin unto thee,' etc.
86 WA 56, 350, 8 f.: "Non enim ad ocium vocati sumus, sed ad laborem contra passiones."
57 Lit., "aggreditur militiam Christi" ("He begins service as a soldier of 38 Lyra interprets the "sin that surrounds us" as occasiones peccati, others, e.g., Thomas Aquinas (ad Hebr.), refer to the devil.
ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN stood as saying that the spirit and the flesh are, so to speak, two separate entities. He understands them to be one whole just as a wound and the flesh are one. To be sure, the wound is something by itself and the flesh is something by itself, but because the wound and the flesh are one and because the wound is nothing else than wounded or weakened flesh, we can attribute to the flesh the properties of the wound. In the same way, one and the same man is at the same time spirit and flesh.39 The flesh is his weakness or wound.
In so far as he loves the law of God, he is spirit; but in so far as he covets, he shows the weakness of his spirit and the wound of his sin which must still be healed.40 As Christ says: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak/' (Matt. 26:41.)
And Blessed Augustine says in the second book of Against Julian:*1 "When we speak of our faults we generally mean that which from the law of sin resists the law of the mind. When these faults are separated from us, they will not be somewhere else, but as soon as they are healed in us, they will be nowhere. Why do they not perish in baptism? Will you not admit that their guilt perishes but their weakness remains, not a guilt by which they themselves were guilty, but by which they made us guilty in the evil deeds to which they had drawn us? And their weakness does not remain as if they were something alive that has now become weak, but it is our own weakness." This beautiful authoritative work shows in what way concupiscence is that weakness in us which renders us unable to do the good. To be sure, it is guilty in itself, yet we become guilty by it only if we yield to it and commit a sin. This explains the remarkable fact that we are guilty and not guilty. For this weakness and we ourselves are inseparable;42 hence, it is guilty and we are guilty until it ceases and is healed. Yet we are not guilty as long as we do act in accordance with it, for God in his mercy does not impute the guilt of weakness but the guilt of the will that yields to this weakness.
We can understand this dialectic43 best in the light of the parable in the Gospel concerning the man who was left half-dead
(Luke 10:30 ff.): When the Samaritan poured wine and oil on his wounds, he did not heal him right away but he began to get well.
Just so the sick man of whom we are speaking is one and the same man who is weak and in process of being healed. In so far as he is healthy, he desires the good, but in so far as he is weak, he cannot help yielding to his weakness even though he does not want to.
39 The GL ord. and Lyra.
40 Lit., "quod incipit sanari."
4 1 Augustine, Contra JuL, II, 5, 12.
42 "Quia infirmitas ilia not ipsi sumus."
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS In the light of this we can see that the metaphysical theologians deal with a silly and crazy fiction44 when they dispute about the question whether there can be opposite appetites in one and the same subject, and when they invent the notion that the spirit, i.e., reason, is something absolute or separate by itself and in its own kind an integral whole and that, similarly, opposite to it also sensuality, or the flesh, constitutes equally an integral whole.
These stupid imaginations cause them to lose sight of the fact that the flesh is a basic weakness or wound of the whole man which grace has only begun to heal in his reason or spirit. For who can imagine that there are two such opposite entities in a sick person?—inasmuch as it is the same body that looks for health and yet is forced to conform to weakness; it is the same body that does both of these things. (Against Julian, Book 3, Chapter 20: "Concupiscence is an evil to such an extent that it must be overcome in actual combat, until, like a wound in the body, it will be healed by a perfect cure.")
In order to force these theologians, who love to deal with unrealities, to come to terms with a very concrete example, we ask:
Suppose a house that had fallen to ruin is in process of reconstruction; is then its construction and standing structure one thing and its unfinished state something else? It is one and the same entity: we can rightly say of the same house which is being built that it is a house and that it is in process of becoming a house, but on account of its being unfinished, we can say at the same time that it is not yet a house and that it lacks the characteristics of a house. Thus
"we who have the first fruits of the Spirit" (Rom. 8:23), and according to the apostle James "are become the beginning of God's creature" (James i:i8),45 are "built up as a spiritual house" (I Peter 2:5). "And a building thus framed together grows into a holy temple of God." (Eph. 2:21.)
But that sin dwells within me. (Rom. 7:17.) Blessed Augustine writes in Book 2 of Against Julian:*** "How can sin be dead in view of the fact that it works so many things in us despite our opposition? What are these many things except foolish and harmful desires which 'drown' those who consent to them
'in destruction and perdition'" (I Tim. 6:9), etc. "How, then, 4 4 Ockham is the chief representative of the view that there is an essential difference between the potencies of the soul and that the anima sensitiva is separated from the anima rationalis.
Gregor of Rimini, Gabriel Biel (II Sent., d. 16), and Trutvetter argue for the unity of the soul. Luther is here also dependent upon Lyra.
4 5 Cf. Johann Haar, Initium creaturae Dei. Eine Untersuchung iiber Luthers Begriff der "neuen Kreatur," etc. (Gutersloh, 1939).
45a Augustine, Contra JuL, II, 9, 32.
ROMANS, CHAPTER SEVEN can we say that this sin is put to death in baptism, and how can we confess that it dwells in our members and works many desires except in so far as it is dead with respect to that state of guilt in which it held us and in which it rebels, even though dead, until it is definitely buried and thus healed? However, it is now called sin, not because it makes us guilty, but because it is the result of the condition of guilt of the first man and because by its rebellion it strives to draw us into this state of guilt/'
This sin, then, is that original blemish of the "tinder," concerning which we have stated before that it would be better to say that we die to it rather than that it dies to us and that while it continues in us, it is we who are turned away from it in this life by grace, according to the saying of Ps. 81:7: "He turned his back away from the burden."
(And in the twenty-third chapter of Book I addressed to Valerian,46 Blessed Augustine writes: "Concupiscence is no longer a sin in the regenerate in so far as they do not consent to it, so that even if one does not fulfill the word: 'You shall not covet/ one at least fulfills the word: 'Go not after your lusts' [Ecclus. 18:30]. Yet it is commonly called sin because, on the one hand, it came into being by a sin, and, on the other hand, it makes the sinner guilty when it has vanquished him/' i.e., it is sin with respect to its cause and effect but not with respect to its essence.47
But to accomplish that which is good, I find not. (Rom. 7:18.) There is a difference made here between "to do" and "to accomplish." Blessed Augustine writes at the end of Book 3 of Against Julian:** "Remember what the apostle writes to the Galatians, who were certainly baptized: 'But I say: Walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh' (Gal. 5:16). He does not say:
'Do not have them,' because they were unable to be without them; he says: 'You shall not fulfill them/ i.e., do not carry out their works by consent of the will. For, if a man does not consent to the lusts of the flesh, however real they are in their drives, they are not fulfilled in works. Hence, when the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that we do not do the things we want to do, neither the lusts of the flesh are fulfilled, however much they make themselves felt, nor are our good works fulfilled, regardless of the extent to which they are done.
"For just as the concupiscence of the flesh is fulfilled when the spirit consents to what it aims to do, so that it does not lust against it but with it, so too our good works will be fulfilled when the 46 Augustine, De nupt. et concup., I, 23, 25.
47 "Gausaliter et effectualiter, non formaliter."
48 Augustine, Contra Jul.,UI, 26, 62.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS flesh is ready so to consent to the spirit that it also does not lust against it. This is what we want in desiring to have the perfection of righteousness.
"But because we cannot accomplish this perfection in this corruptible flesh, he said to the Romans: 'To will is present with me, but how to accomplish what is good, I find not/ Or, as the Greek codices have it: 'To will is present with me, but not to accomplish the good/ i.e., it is not present with me to accomplish the good.
He does not say 'to do' but 'to accomplish* the good. For 'to do good* is 'not to go after lusts' (Ecclus. 18:30), but 'to accomplish the good' is 'not to lust at all/
"Therefore, to the word addressed to the Galatians: 'You shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh/ there corresponds by way of contrast this word addressed to the Romans: 'How to accomplish [fulfill], I find not/ For neither are the lusts fulfilled in evil as long as they lack the consent of our will, nor is our willing fulfilled in the good as long as they continue to be active without our consent.
"The spirit therefore does a good work in not consenting to evil lusts, but it does not fulfill it, because it does not destroy the evil desires themselves. And the flesh feels an evil desire but does not fulfill it, because, in so far as the spirit does not consent to it, it does not achieve the realization of it that is subject to being damned."
From this passage we can derive the comforting thought that, even though the modern teachers49 say the same thing about motives, about extinguishing the "tinder," about delight and consent, they speak with little authority, because they are not supported by the testimony of Scripture. But inasmuch as the ancient teachers50 say the same thing much more plainly and in line with the apostles, we feel encouraged by the greater comfort they give us and also the readier help they offer us in the scruples of conscience, quite apart from the fact that, because of their presumption to speak with greater subtlety and clarity on this subject, the Scholastics obscured its meaning by too great a refinement of thought as they tried to translate divine speech into human form.
For this reason, it is nothing but futile and harmful imagination that they teach by way of interpreting Aristotle, and in words and metaphors that are utterly unenlightening, that virtues and vices stick to the soul like whitewash to a wall, like writing to a board, and like form to a subject. For by saying this they utterly failed to understand the difference between the spirit and the flesh.
4 9 Trutvetter, among others, called Duns Scotus and Ockham "recentiores doctores" in contrast to Thomas Aquinas.
5 0 "Doctores antiqui" are chiefly Augustine and Ambrose.