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  • The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans by Matthew Croasmun
  • Jeffrey S. Siker
matthew croasmun, The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017). Pp. xi + 278. Paper $34.95.

This book is a revision of Croasmun’s dissertation (Yale Divinity School, 2014), written under the direction of Dale Martin. C. is an Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

In recent years the apostle Paul has become a significant conversation partner for modern philosophers. C. continues this trend by reading Paul and his understanding of “S/sin” in Romans 5–8 through the lens of “emergentism” drawn from the philosophy of science. “Emergence” as a philosophical approach is not for the theoretical faint of heart! Such contested technical terms as “the problem of downward causation,” “supervenience,” “irreducibility,” and “overdetermination” permeate the explication of “emergent philosophy.” C. spends much of the book describing emergent philosophy in the abstract, after which he seeks to use it to explain Paul’s understanding of S/sin.

In the first chapter, C. does a good job of describing the problem of understanding Paul’s view of S/sin in Romans 5–8 by looking at three scholarly approaches, as represented by: (1) Rudolf Bultmann’s demythologizing program, which produced the reduction of sin coming into human experience; (2) Ernst Käsemann’s remythologizing of the human dilemma as having to choose between a dualism of lordships, either God or Sin and Death; and (3) liberation theology’s more recent contention that “Sinful Institutions” are the real culprits in the underlying power and nature of sin. There are, thus, three options for understanding the cause of sin: individual/psychological, cosmic/mythological, and social/liberationist. C. argues that all three explanations can coexist and that Romans 5–8 provides a platform for demonstrating that sin results from concrete action, from social structures, and also from the power of a cosmic tyrant.

Enter chap. 2 and “Emergence” as a philosophical approach to wrangle the personal, cosmic, and social dynamics of sin. C. defines emergence as “concerned with the appearance of higher-order properties at coordinating higher levels of complexity. The central claim is that these emergent entities, properties, or processes arise from more fundamental entities, properties, or processes and yet are irreducible to them. As the old adage goes, ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’” (p. 23). C. presents a brief history of “Emergence Theory,” including a discussion of “supervenience” and “downward causation.” Super-venience is the principle that higher-level entities are ontologically dependent on their more basic properties but cannot be reduced to them.

Emergentism also relies on “downward causation,” the notion that larger structures exercise constraint on their component members, for example, social groups on individuals, a beehive on the individual bees. “Downward causation is at once perhaps the most important feature of emergence theory, and at the same time its most controversial claim” (p. 36). C. describes downward causation in chemistry, biology, and sociology, followed by a case study on racism in the United States. C. summarizes: “Race as a category seems to be constituted and maintained through multiple feedback loops of supervenience and downward causation. The consequences of racism, in turn, propagate in all directions: ‘upward’ from racist individuals to social institutions; ‘downward’ from those institutions to racialized actors; and even to the unconscious neurological activity within their brains, whence come psychological impulses not unrelated to racialized ideology racism” (p. 52). [End Page 332]

What does any of this have to do with Paul, S/sin, and Roman 5–8? Good question. Going back to Bultmann, Käsemann, and liberation theology, C. contends that each approach does exegetical justice to at least some aspect of Romans 5–8 that is missed by the others. Or, to put it in emergentist language: “We need a trans-ordinal ontology that facilitates a multilevel account of hamartia” (p. 57). To my mind, C. is simply saying that we need some kind of unified field theory of hamartia in Paul, and that emergentism can help provide such an explanation.

This leads C. to a discussion in chap...

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