Gathercole on Sin in Romans

Simon Gathercole had some interesting points in his paper on “Jewish and Gentile sin in Paul.” He wanted to show that the “history of sin” was revelatory of God’s character, and had an integral role in the work of redemption. He defended this thesis by examining parallels between Romans 1:18-32 and 7:7-25. Each of these passages includes a reference to revelation, which produces knowledge that is suppressed or that deceives. Sinful action then leads to death. Romans 1 according to Gathercole was an indictment of Gentile sin, and Romans 7 a similarly structured indictment of Jewish sin. It was not clear to me, however, what role this played in Gathercole’s understanding of Romans. Romans 1, after all, includes references to Israel’s history of idolatry (thanks to Kevin Bywater for pointing that out to me), and it was not clear how Gathercole’s argument would change if he took that into consideration. Still, the parallels of Romans 1 and 7 are there, and are worth contemplating.

Gathercole also noted the recurring “lex talionis” structure in Romans 1. God’s “deliverances” of sinners match their sins, in an ironic eye for eye sort of way. The original “exchange” occurs when men exchange the glory of God for the glory of created things; they turn from desire for the “other” (God) to desire for the same (created things as idols). In response, God gives them over so that in other spheres their desire for the other becomes a desire for the same. Women turn from men to desire women, and men turn from women to desire other men. Gathercole invoked Luther’s “incurvatus in se” to describe what’s happening in Romans 1, and that hardly seems an anachronism. In this way, God discloses His hatred of idolatry by re-enacting the original “curvature” from God to idols in the deliverance to “the same.”