Die Macht der Sünde im Römerbrief

What was the Apostle's aim when he wrote to the Christians in Rome about sin? Against the backdrop of Graeco-Roman argumentation theory and Jewish-Hellenistic argumentation practice, Patrick Bahl's exegetical and history of theology study investigates the argumentative purpose of the concept of sin in Romans 1-8. By analyzing step-by-step how the attention of readers is drawn, how the reasoning is structured, and how the logic of the arguments is set out in these chapters, Paul is brought to light as a disputatious writer of letters, whose arguments were targeted, structured and thoroughly reasonable by ancient standards. This reveals that the Apostle does not deal with sin in a pedantically doctrinaire way but uses its sematic potential strategically to bring home to the Roman Gentile Christians his fundamental concern that because Christ freed Jew and Gentile alike from sin, the law no longer has any meaning for them.