Paul’s theology constitutes the self as a permanent battlefield of spiritual war

Evidence

Paul’s own call to arms resonates twice in Romans, first in 6:13 (“No longer present your members to sin as weapons of wickedness, but present … your members to God as weapons of righteousness”), and second in IJ:I2 (“let us lay aside the works of darkness, but let us put on the weapons of light”). The permanent possibility of war in which body parts can always become weapons and in which they can be put on like armor proclaims that being is being at war: “I see in my members another law at war,” antistrateumenon, repugnantem “with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (7:23). Furthermore, in this war that makes one at once into a “battlefield,” as Theodor Zahn puts it, 26 and into a prisoner of war, activity and agency are anything but granted. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 98