The Weakness of Flesh

The Weakness of Flesh November 7, 2014

Paul’s use of the notion of “flesh” has long been puzzling. He is no gnostic, but he seems to have a hostility to “flesh.” His condemnation is so strong that some translations have sidestepped the problem by glossing sarx (flesh) as “sinful nature.” It’s a bad translation, and bad theology.

In his exegesis of Romans 7, Theodore Jennings (Outlaw Justice, 118-9) gives this superb analysis of Paul’s analysis of flesh.

For starters, he notes what’s obvious in Paul: The law isn’t effective in restraining flesh, whatever flesh is. Rather, the law “becomes the fuel for the acceleration of sin.” It’s like a “state that promises to restrain violence” but does so “through giving itself a monopoly on violence,” which “institutionalizes violence, thereby making violence not an individual act but the very foundation and articulation of the social order.” No, it’s not like that; that is precisely the sort of thing Paul is talking about.

But how does flesh contribute to this noxious mix? “Flesh is the weakness of the human . . . . It is the way we are vulnerable, exposed. Our life is subject to touch, that is, to what gives pleasure and pain, gives joy, and makes wounding possible.” This very vulnerability explains “how sin is able to overcome Adamic humanity, especially that Adamic humanity that is under law.”

Fear of our weakness, anxiety at our vulnerability, overtakes us, and we use the instruments of law, power, justice, and violence as protection. The “sense of weakness or vulnerability [seizes] control of that which intends life . . . to accelerate injustice, to hyperbolize violence and violation.” Thus “flesh comes also to name hostility to justice or to God, the very hostility that crucified the messiah as son of David.”


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