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A Spiritual Portrait of a Believer: A Comparison Between the Emphatic “I” of Romans 7, Wesley and the Mystics
Author: Chet Cataldo
Date Of Publication: May 2010
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1969-5
Isbn: 1-4438-1969-7
The focus of this study is to discover the identity of the emphatic ‘I’ of Rom 7 with the added purpose of attempting to ‘draw’ a spiritual portrait of a mature Christian believer. To accomplish this purpose, the process is as follows: An examination of Rom 7, within its context, is conducted. This examination is followed by an attempt at determining the experience of the emphatic ‘I’ found within Rom 7. The next step in the process is to compare the experience of the emphatic ‘I’ of Rom 7, as found within its context of Rom 1–8 with what Paul wrote elsewhere on the experience of new life in Christ for Christian believers. The purpose of this comparison is to discover if Paul had a ‘consistent’ portrait of spirituality and Christian maturity. The final step is to compare the experience described by Paul, both in Rom 7 and in the wider Pauline Corpus, with the experience which John Wesley called ‘perfection,’ and with the Mystical experience called the ‘spiritual marriage.’

The study of Romans, Wesley, and the Mystics, coupled with the wider study of the secondary literature showed that there is a remarkable consistency in the teaching and understanding that the closer a Christian believer gets to God, the more this Christian believer is aware of his or her own sinfulness. Paul, in describing the experience of the emphatic ‘I,’ is describing a person who is becoming more and more aware of his or her own sinfulness.

The conclusion to be drawn from this study is that the identity of the empathic ‘I’ is of a regenerate Christian believer, one who is growing ever closer and closer to God and at the same time is in ‘pain’ over the remaining effects of sin.

Chet Cataldo is presently serving a local congregation in New Jersey. He has taught cross-culturally on a college level in the Philippines and in Lithuania. He is the author of several published articles. A Spiritual Portrait of A Believer is his first published book.

“New Testament scholarship struggles with the identity of the emphatic ‘I’ of Romans 7. The author investigates this matter within the context of Romans 1–8 in order to establish if Paul had a ‘consistent’ portrait of spirituality and Christian maturity, whilst trying to get behind the experience of the emphatic ‘I.’ The study then compares the identity of the emphatic ‘I’ with John Wesley and with the Mystics, Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich. By comparing Romans with examples from the Church’s tradition and documented experience, the author succeeds in drawing a spiritual portrait of a Christian believer and shows that the experiences of Wesley on ‘perfection’ and the Mystics on ‘spiritual marriage’ are similar experiences to that of the emphatic ‘I’ of Romans 7. This investigation is well in line with a post-modern approach in scholarship which steers away from disciplinary fragmentism, but rather moves along interdisciplinary and holistic lines. The work is highly recommended to all those particularly interested in the fields of New Testament Hermeneutics, Spirituality, Church History and Systematic Theology.”

—Prof Gert J. Steyn (DD, DLitt), Chair of New Testament Studies, University of Pretoria; Chair of the New Testament Society of South Africa

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