Finiteness and infinity in "The epistle to the Romans"

Bibliogr. s. 43

The Epistele to Romans was written to the addressee who is under the double power of the law and death. St Paul understands the conscience on one hand as the thougts that accuse and acquit, and on another hand as the awareness of the behaviour which is incompatible with itself. By ocusing on the law and death St Paul's man descovers his individuality. Because it is discovered as not sovereign, at once it demands to be rescued from the generality of the law and the nothingness of the death; only love makes the man sovereign over general, but abstract bans and orders and from the very close, but annihilating temporality. What St Paul is trying to say is that only because man is a finite being he can take part in infinity. The hope of St Paul's disciple is not of this world, but it can be told by the speech act of the infinity only in this world.