Abstract: The celebration of the reformation has left historically
minded New Testament scholars in a state of embarrassment.
Since Krister Stendahl’s seminal article from 1963, “The Apostle
Paul and the Introspective Consciousness of the West”, the prevailing
understanding among scholars subscribing to The New Perspective
on Paul has been that Luther (1483 – 1546) misunderstood
the apostle: He read Paul’s letters through a fine-mashed Augustinian
filter. Especially Luther’s use of the concept ‘original sin’ in
his exegesis of Pauls’ letters has been condemned as an illegitimate
eis-egesis. However, as a pragmatic missionary, so goes Stendahl’s
argument against Luther’s reading, Paul was not interested in developing
a universal anthropology, but in solving the social problems
that the acceptance of the Gospel among Gentiles created.
Nevertheless, this article challenges the strong focus on ethnicity
in contemporary Pauline scholarship. The argument proceeds in
two steps. First, it demonstrates that although solus Christus, sola
fides etc. to the young Luther constituted the answer, a close reading
of his lecture on Rom 7 reveals that the question with which
he struggled concerned the desire inherent in the flesh. Second,
attention is drawn to the fact that in the Jewish philosopher and
exegete Philo’s allegorical exposition of the fall narrative in Gen
1-3, we find a well-developed and philosophically reflected concept
of ‘original sin’. Thus, the idea of a sexually transmitted sinful
desire goes back to the intellectual milieu in the context through
which we often read Paul’s correspondence. Together, these two
steps make possible a reevaluation of Luther’s exegesis of the Paul’s
letters.