THE MEANING OF THE PHRASE "IN CHRIST"

APPENDIX B

Note concerning the intrepretation of Romans 5:12

"Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world,
and death through sin, and so death spread to all men,
because of which all sinned, -- " [ERS]

Concerning the interpretation of Romans 5:12, controversy has raged almost continuously from the days of Origen (c.185-254 A.D.) onward. The controversy has centered on the meaning of the last clause of this verse: eph ho pantes hamarton which is usually translated "because all sinned."

The interpretation of this clause hangs on the meaning of the Greek prepositional phrase at its beginning, eph ho. This phrase is made up of a preposition epi and a relative pronoun ho. The preposition epi has several different meanings depending upon the immediate context and the case of the noun or pronoun with which it occurs. Its primary meaning is superposition, on, upon. Since the relative pronoun ho is in the dative case, the metaphorical meaning of ground, or reason, seems best here for the preposition epi. Thus it should be translated on the ground of, by reason of, on the condition of, because of. [1] The meaning of the relative pronoun depends upon its antecedent. In the Greek language the relative pronoun agrees with the antecedent in number and gender. [2] Here the relative pronoun is singular in number but it may be either masculine or neuter in gender. Accordingly the following interpretations have been given to the phrase.

  1. Some interpreters take the relative pronoun ho as masculine with the words henos anthropou [one man] in the first clause as its antecedent. Augustine, following the Latin Vulgate translation of the whole clause, in quo omnes peccaverunt [in whom all sinned], took the relative pronoun ho as masculine and at the same time gave the preposition the meaning of "in." Thus he gave the prepositional phrase eph ho the meaning in lumbis Adami [in the loins of Adam]. [3]

    However this interpretation must be rejected. For
    (a) the Greek preposition epi does not have the meaning of "in" and
    (b) while the Greek relative pronoun ho may be taken as masculine, it is too far remove from its supposed antecedent, anthropou [man], being separated from it by so many intervening clauses. [4]
    Most modern interpreters agree in rejecting Augustine's grammatical analysis of the phrase. [5]

  2. Some other interpreters [6] take the relative pronoun ho as neuter with the words that follow pantes hamarton [all sinned] as the antecedent. Thus the prepositional phrase eph ho would be equivalent to epi touto oti [because of this, that]. Accordingly, the translators of our English versions have rendered it either "for that" (KJV) or "because" (RSV, NAS, NIV). And the clause would be interpreted to mean that death passed unto all men because all men sinned, that is, men die because of their own sins. But if this meaning is given to this last clause, Paul would appear to be retracting what he had just been affirming in the first three clauses of this verse, that all men die because of Adam's sin. Paul would seem to be teaching that all men die not only because of Adam's sin but also because of their own personal sins. This obscures the meaning of the verse and appears to contradict what Paul teaches clearly in the following verses and elsewhere that all men die because of Adam's sin and not their own.
    "13 For until the law sin was in the world;
    but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
    14 But death reigned from Adam to Moses,
    even over those who had not sinned
    after the likeness of the transgression of Adam,
    who is a type of him who was to come."
    (Rom. 5:13-14 ERS)

    "...For if by the offense of one the many died,
    much more did the grace of God and
    the gift by grace of the one man, Jesus Christ,
    abound unto the many." (Rom. 5:15 ERS)

    "For if by the offense of the one,
    death reigned through the one,
    much more shall those who receive the abundance of grace
    and the gift of righteousness
    reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ."
    (Rom. 5:17 ERS)

    "For as by a man came death,
    by a man has come the resurrection of the dead.
    For as in Adam all die,
    so also in Christ shall all be made alive."
    (I Cor. 15:21-22)

    Thus by giving the prepositional phrase eph ho the meaning "because," the meaning of the verse is obscured and Paul is made to appear to contradict himself. This interpretation of the clause has lead one famous German New Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultman, to conclude that Paul is obscure in this passage. He says,
    "For the context, it would have been sufficient
    to mention only Adam's sin; there was no need to
    speak of the sin of the rest of man, for whether
    they were sinners or not, through Adam they had
    simply been doomed to death -- an idea that was
    expressed not only in Judaism but also by Paul
    himself (v. 14). However, Paul gets into
    obscurity here because he also wants to have the
    death of men after Adam regarded as the punishment
    or consequence of their own sin: 'and so death
    spread to all men -- because all men sinned' (v.12)!" [7]
    It is not Paul who is obscure here but his interpreters and their interpretation of this phrase has caused the obscurity and makes Paul appear to contradict himself. Thus interpretation must be rejected.

    Furthermore, this interpretation of the clause destroys the parallel which Paul draws between Adam and Christ in this passage, Romans 5:12, and in I Cor. 15. If Paul had meant that all men became subject to death because of the sins that they themselves committed, then it would have to follow, if there is a parallelism between Adam and Christ, that all men enter into life because of the righteousness that they themselves have achieved. This is certainly the opposite of what Paul says. Life is a gift which each man may receive by faith (Rom. 5:17, 15; etc.) and not something they earn by their righteousness. There are differences between Adam and Christ (Rom. 5:15-17) but this is certainly not one of them. This interpretation of the clause, then, destroys the parallelism between Adam and Christ and thus must also be rejected.

  3. Some interpreters have attempted to escape these objections, while retaining the meaning of "because" for the prepositional phrase, by interpreting the whole clause to have the following meaning: "Because all sinned in Adam." They do this by taking the aorist tense of the verb hamarton [sinned] as a constative aorist; that is, the action is regarded as a whole, in its entirety. Bengel has given this interpretation classic expression: omnes peccaverunt, Adamo peccante [all sinned when Adam sinned]. All sinned implicitly in the sin of Adam; that is, his sin was their sin. But if this what Paul intended to say, why did he leave the all important words "in Adam" to be understood? Sanday and Headlam asks,
    "If St. Paul had meant this, why did he not say so?
    The insertion of en Adam [in Adam] would have removed all ambiguity." [8]
    This interpretation has all the appearances of being read into the passage (eisegesis) rather than out of it (exegesis). Furthermore, the phrase pantes hamarton [all sinned] normally refers to the personal sins of all men as it does in Romans 3:23. The aorist tense of the verb hamarton [sinned] signifies nothing as to the completeness of the action. A constative aorist may refer "to a momentary action (Acts 5:5), a fact or action extended over a period of time (Eph. 2:4), or a succession of acts or events (II Cor. 11:25)." [9] Nowhere in the Scriptures does it teach that all men sinned in Adam. On the contrary, this interpretation appears to contradict what Paul says in verse 14:
    "13 sin indeed was in the world before the law was given,
    but sin is not counted where there was no law.
    14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses,
    even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam,
    who was a type of the one who was to come." (Rom. 5:13-14 RSV).
    If all men sin when Adam sinned, then they all would have sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression. But those from Adam to Moses did not sin after the likeness of Adam's transgression because there was no law from Adam to Moses. Thus it appears that this interpretation of the clause must also be rejected.
  4. One other interpretation of the clause is possible if the relative pronoun ho is taken as masculine and the word ho thanatos [the death] in the preceding clause, which is singular and masculine, is taken as its antecedent. [10] Then the prepositional phrase eph ho would be equivalent to epi thanato [because of death]. [11] In that case the phrase should be translated "because of which" or "upon which condition." With this meaning given to the prepositional phrase, the whole clause may be translated "because of which all sinned" and interpreted to mean that all men sinned because of death that has been transmitted to them from Adam. In other words, the transmitted death from Adam provides the grounds or condition upon which all men sin.

    Note: This is the view of Theodor Zahn (1838-1933).
    Lenski says concerning Zahn's interpretation of this phrase:

    "Another turn is given the phrase so as to have it
    means: 'under which condition.' letting Paul say
    that in Adam's case it was first sin then death
    but in the case of all men it was death first and
    then life of sinning (Zahn's view)." [12]
    Also Berkouwer says concerning Zahn's view:
    "Along with the two explanations referred to here
    there is still a third, namely that of Zahn.
    This holds that the issue at stake is not
    an 'inclusiveness' in Adam, since this thought is
    untenable ('unvollziehbar') for anyone who
    does not believe in the pre-existence of souls
    in Adam (Zahn, Komm., p. 265); moreover,
    the concept of 'all men in Adam' imperils the
    image of 'through one man.' Therefore Zahn
    translates: 'and on the basis of this (or, under
    these circumstances) all have sinned' (267).
    Through the sin of the one man death come upon
    all, and in such circumstances, all have now
    sinned. Death was the foundation 'on which the
    sinning of all the children of Adam has sprung forth.'" [13]
    The only reasons that are given for rejecting this interpretation are not grammatical but theological. Godet's objections to this interpretation are clearly theological as are those of Sanday and Headlam. [14] This interpretation clearly does not fit into the legalistic theological framework of Roman Catholic and Protestant scholasticism which sees death only as the penalty of sin. Death is usually taken to mean physical death or the penalty of sin, and thus it is impossible to sin because of death.

    How is it possible for all men to sin because of death? This may be explained in the following way. Since man is born into this world spiritually dead, not knowing the true God personally, and since man by the structure of his freedom must choose a god, then he will obviously choose a false god because he does not personally know the true God. Since the true God is not a living reality to him, and since he must have a god, man will choose some part or aspect of reality as his god, deifying it.

    "...they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and
    worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator..."
    (Rom. 1:25).
    Paul, writing to the Galatians, described this relationship of sin because of death when he reminded them of their condition before they became Christians.
    "Formerly, when you did not know God,
    you were in bondage to beings
    that by nature are no gods"
    (Gal. 4:8).
    Not to "know God" personally as a living reality is to be spiritually dead. And a man is in "in bondage to beings that are no gods" when he chooses them as his gods. He is then in bondage to them because he does not know personally the only true God, that is, because he is spiritually dead. Thus man sins (chooses a false god) because he is spiritually dead. This relationship between death and sin is what Paul is describing in the last clause of Romans 5:12, "because of which [death] all men sinned." Spiritual death in the case of Adam's descendants leads to sin; not the other way around.
The relationship of death to sin now after the fall is different from the relationship between them at the fall. At the fall, death was the result of sin ("through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin." Rom. 5:12ab ERS). This was established by the divine decree implicit in the command God gave to Adam ("for in the day that you eat of it, dying you shall die." Gen. 2:17 ERS). Adam's sin was unique since it was the act of the head of the race; Adam's position in the human race is unique, as Paul teaches clearly in Romans 5:12-21 and I Cor. 15:21-22, 44-49. His sin affected the human race in a way that the sin of no other man after him has; it involved the whole race in death, spiritual and physical. Adam's descendants do not have to sin to die, spiritually and physically. They are born into the world over which death reigns and are involved from birth in spiritual and physical death As Jesus said, "Let the dead bury their dead" (Matt. 8:22 KJV; Luke 9:60), that is, "Let the spiritually dead bury their physically dead." Now since the fall, sin is the result of death (Rom. 5:12cd ERS). Since the fall, man does not have to sin to die but sins because he is already dead spiritually. Since the fall, this is the basic relationship between death and sin. Later, "the law came in besides" (Rom. 5:20 ERS) and superimposed upon this basic relationship of sin because of death (spiritual) the relationship of death (primarily, physical death) because of sin. "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezek. 18:4, 20: see also Deut. 24:16; Isa. 59:2). The law clarifies not only the nature of sin (Rom. 3:20) as basically idolatry (Ex. 20:3) but also man's responsibility for his sins (see the whole of chapter 18 of Ezekiel). But the coming of the law did not change the basic relationship: man sins because he is already spiritually dead.

Paul expresses this basic relationship between death and sin in other words elsewhere in his letters. For example, in Romans 5:21, he expresses it in the following way: "...sin reigned in death." Sin reigns as a king in the sphere of death. That is, death is the sphere in which sin reigns as a king over all men. Death reigns as king over his kingdom of death; "...by the offense of one, death reigned through one..." (Rom. 5:17; see also Rom. 5:14). Death reigns over all men and sin reigns as a king within the sphere and kingdom of death. Sin reigns in the sphere of death because death is the ground or condition upon which all men sin.

Another example is I Cor. 15:55-56:

"O Death, where is thy victory?
O Death, where is thy sting?
The sting of death is sin,
and the power of sin is the law."
Paul expresses the relationship of death to sin by calling sin the sting of death and not death the sting of sin. Augustine tries to overturn this relationship by trying to make the genitive "of death" into an objective genitive rather than a possessive genitive. Augustine says:
"For all die in the sin;
they do not sin in the death;
for when sin precedes, death follows --
not when death precedes, sin follows.
Because sin is the sting of death --
that is, the sting by whose stroke death occurs,
not the sting with which death strikes.
Just as poison, if it is drunk,
is called the cup of death,
because by that cup death is caused,
not because the cup is caused by the death." [15]
Augustine's argument is beside the point. The distinction between objective and subjective genitive is irrelevant; the genitive here is a possessive genitive. The cup of death is not a parallel case. Whose sting is it? Is it the sting of sin or the sting of death? "O Death, where is thy sting?" It is death's sting by which death hurts all men. And since death causes sin, death can hurt man. For if death could not cause sin, then there would be no fear of death; death would have lost its sting. Sin gives death its sting. Some have argued that the death Paul is talking about in I Cor. 15 is physical death since he is discussing there the resurrection of the dead. It is true that physical death is in the foreground in this passage of Scripture, but, as was pointed out elsewhere, from the Biblical point of view physical and spiritual death are inseparable and the Biblical concept of death always includes both. Thus spiritual death is not totally absent from Paul's thoughts as are not other concepts which seem to be irrelevant in the context -- "the power of sin is the law" (I Cor. 15:56). And as a careful study of Romans 7 will show, the concepts of spiritual death, sin and the law form an interlocking complex in Paul's thinking.

Man is not responsible for this condition of spiritual death inherited from Adam. The descendants of Adam are neither held accountable for the sin of Adam nor for the spiritual or physical death resulting from it.

"13 For until the law sin was in the world;
but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
14 But death reigned from Adam to Moses,
even over those who had not sinned
after the likeness of the transgression of Adam,
who is a type of him who was to come."
(Rom. 5:13-14 ERS)
Both the natural and federal headship theories are incorrect here. Adam's descendants are not guilty of Adam's sin neither has his sin been inputed to their accounts. The doctrine of the imputation of Adam's sin is nowhere taught in Scripture. In fact it is contrary to the explicit teaching of Scripture.
"The person who sins will die.
The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity,
nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity;
the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself,
and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself."
(Ezekiel 18:20 NAS; see also Deut. 24:16; Jer. 31:30)
Adam's descendants are only responsible for their own personal rejection of the true God and their ultimate commitment to a false god. Even though man is born into the world spiritually dead, alienated from God, not knowing God, he is not thereby exempt from responsibility for the choice of the wrong god. As Paul says in Rom. 1:19-20 [ERS],
"19 Because that which is known of God is manifest in them;
for God manifested it to them.
20 For the invisible things of him
from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead;
so that they are without excuse."
In verse 19, Paul refers to a knowledge of God which all men have and in verse 20 he says two things about this knowledge:
(a) This knowledge is a knowledge of the "invisible things of him," of God,
namely, "his eternal power and Godhead" or divine nature.
(b) These two "invisible things of him...are clearly seen (verse 20),
that is, manifested, laid open to public view (verse 19).
This paradoxical way of stating the source of this knowledge raises the question: how are these unseen things clearly seen? The answer is given in the phrase "being understood by the things that are made (verse 20). They are seen by a rational act, the act of the mind, "by the things that are made". For the things that are made are analogous in their being to the unseen things of Him. That which God created reflects the invisible things of Him, the Creator, like a work of art reflects the artist. (Of course, this analogy of the artist and his work cannot be applied to the Creator and His creation without reservations.) All examples of power in the physical world, the earthquakes, storms, even nuclear energy, are like God's eternal power. The creation reflects the Creator in His power. If this be so, then what in all creation is like His Godhead or divine nature? Only man himself is analoguous to God's divine nature because man alone has been created in the image of God (compare verse 19: "that which is known of God is manifest in them). Man's person is similar to God's person. Paul uses this same analogy between God's being and man's being in his address on Mars Hill, the Areopagus, in Athens recorded in Acts 17:22-31, to argue against idolatry. After he had quoted one of the Greek's own poets as saying "For we are also his offspring," Paul argues,
"Being then the offspring of God,
we ought not to think that
the Divine nature is like gold or silver or stone,
an image formed by the art and thought of man."
(Acts 17:29 NAS;
Compare to theion translated "divine nature" in this verse
with theiotes translated "divine nature" in Rom. 1:20.)
Being created by God in His image, the nature of God must be at least as personal as our nature. Therefore, the true God cannot be a non-person, a thing made of gold or silver or stone, an image made by man. God's being must be as personal as our being, if we are the offspring of God, that is, created in His image.

But not only is it true that in man alone is there found that which is like God's being, but it is also true that in man alone is there found that which is the best analogy of God's eternal power. The human will in its limited power and freedom is the best analogy in all creation of the divine will with its unlimited power and freedom. (Note that power, dunamis, means "to be able", dunamai.) What greater created power is there than the power to bless or destroy? In this sense the human power to choose to use the nuclear bomb is greater than the power of the bomb itself. The power of human freedom of decision is greater than the power of physical energy. In man therefore we find that which is the analogy in creation of God's eternal power and His divine personal nature. The mind of man employing these analogies of being perceives the invisible things of Him through the things that are made or created by God. Thus "God manifest it [the truth] unto them" (verse 19). The unseen things of God are clearly seen because that which is known of God is manifested in them. So man is without excuse for his idolatry, exchanging the truth about God for a lie and worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25). Man has no excuse for choosing a false god. He knows that it is not the true God because a false god is impersonal and/or powerless; it is less of a person than he is and has as little or less power or freedom than he has.

This knowledge of the true God leaves man without excuse for his idolatry. But it does not save him because it is knowledge about the true God and not a personal knowledge of the true God. But even though a man is not responsible for being spiritually dead, he is responsible for remaining in the state of spiritual death when deliverance is offered to him in the person of Jesus Christ. If he refuses the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus, he must reap the harvest and receive the results of his decision, eternal death.

"For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord"
(Rom. 6:23).
If a man refuses the gift of spiritual and eternal life in Christ Jesus and continues to put his trust in a false god, remaining in spiritual death, then after he dies physically, at the last judgment he will receive the results of his decision, eternal death, separation from God for eternity ("the second death", Rev. 20:14; 21:6-8; Matt. 7:21-23). Thus there are three kinds of death: physical, spiritual and eternal death. Man is condemned to eternal death not because of Adam's sin but because of his own personal sin, his choice of a false god.

Even though man is born into the world spiritually dead, alienated from God, not knowing God personally, he has not lost his freedom of choice. He does not have a sinful nature which causes him to sin. Spiritual death has not done anything to man's ability to choose. He neither lacks the alternatives to choose between nor the ability to choose. Then why does man sin, that is, why does he choose a false god? He chooses a false god because the true God is not a living reality to him. He knows about the true God (Rom. 1:19-20) but he does not know him personally as a living reality. And lacking this personal knowledge, man does not have an adequate reason for choosing the true God. The true God Himself is the only adequate reason for choosing Him. He cannot be chosen for any other reason than Himself. For then He would not be God to that person but that reason for which he is chosen would be God. Only a living encounter with living and true God can produce the situation in which God Himself may be chosen. God Himself is the only adequate condition for the choice of Himself. Thus apart from the personal revelation of God Himself man will usually choose as his god that which seems like god to him from the creation around him or from among the creations of his own hands and mind. Man does not necessarily have to sin, but he usually does. And spiritual death (in the absence of this personal revelation of the true God) is not the necessary cause but the ground or condition of his choice of a false god. The Greek preposition epi translated "because" in the last clause of Rom. 5:12 means "on the basis of" or "on the condition of." It does not imply any necessary causal connection between death and sin. Man sins by choice, not by necessity. Therefore, since all men are under the reign of death, all have sinned. "For all have sinned and are in want of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23 ERS). The glory of God is the manifest presence of God, and all men do not have this; they are all in want of or in need of it (husterountai). [16] In other words, they are all spiritually dead, separated from God's presence. Therefore, all have sinned.

This view of death and sin affects our understanding of the need for salvation. As we have seen spiritual death like physical death is not the result of a man's own personal sins. On the contrary, a man sins as a result of spiritual death. This is why a man needs to be saved. He is dead spiritually and dying physically. Man needs life -- he needs to be made alive -- to be raised from the dead. And if he receives life, if he is made alive to God, death which leads to sin is removed. And if death which leads to sin is removed, then man can be saved from sin. Thus man needs to be saved primarily from death so he can be saved from sin. Accordingly salvation must be understood to be primarily from death to life and then secondarily from sin to righteousness.


In conclusion, salvation is basically from death to life, and hence from sin to righteousness, since man sins because he is spiritually dead (Rom. 5:12cd ERS). This spiritual death is not just another name for the sinful nature. Spiritual death is the opposite of spiritual and eternal life. In His great intercessor prayer, Jesus says,

"And this is eternal life, that they may know thee,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
(John 17:3 NAS).
This knowledge is not just a knowledge about God, but a personal knowledge of God. Spiritual death is the absence of this personal knowledge of the true God, so that when a man in spiritual death chooses his ultimate criterion of choice, the true God is not a real alternative to the false gods, and he therefore makes his choice of his ultimate criterion from between false gods. Thus all men sin because of spiritual death, since death, both spiritual and physical, spread unto all men, to all of Adam's descendants. This death is not a punishment for their sins (Rom. 5:13-14), but is the result of Adam's sin (Rom. 5:12bc). Neither is this death a punishment for their participation in Adam's sin; nowhere in the Scriptures does it teach that all men sinned in Adam and that all men participate in Adam's sin. This is a legalistic theological explanation (called the the Federal Headship Theory) of why all men in Adam die (I Cor. 15:22).

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END NOTES FOR APPENDIX B

[1] Abbott-Smith, Manual Greek Lexicon, pp. 166-167 and
William F. Arnt and F. Wilbur Gingrich,
A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1957), pp. 286-287.

[2] J. Gresham Machen, New Testament Greek for Beginners
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957), p. 47.
H. E. Dana and Julius R. Mantey,
A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), p. 125.
A. T. Robertson and W. Hersey Davis,
A New Short Grammar of the Greek Testament
(New York: Harper & Bros. Publishers, 1933), p. 269.

[3] Augustine, "Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,"
bk. 4, chap. 7, in Philip Schaff,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Vol. 5
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), p. 419.

[4] William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam,
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans in
The International Critical Commentary
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915), p. 133.

[5] John Murray, The Imputation of Adam's Sin
(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1959), p. 9.
F. L. Godet, Commentary On Romans
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregal Publications, 1997.
This commentary was originally published in 1883 under the title
Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans and
is a reprint of the 1956 edition published by Zondervan Pub. House,
Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the series: Classic Commentary Library.), 209.

[6] F. L. Godet, Commentary On Romans, p. 207 and
Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p. 133.

[7] Rudolf Bultman, Theology of the New Testament
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951), p.252.

[8] Sanday and Headlam, Romans p. 134.

[9] Dana and Mantey, Manual Grammar, p. 196.

[10] Godet, Commentary on Romans, p. 208.
Sanday and Headlam say,
"Some Greeks quoted by Photius also took the rel. as masc. with antecedent thanatos: 'in which,' i.e. 'in death,' which is even more impossible." p. 133.
I have not been able to ascertain who are these Greeks that were quoted by Photius since Sanday and Headlam do not give any references. I have found that Theodore of Mopsuestia in his treatise "Against the Defenders of Original Sin" held to such an interpretation. Another contemporary of Augustine, Mark the Hermit, also held to a similar view. See the section titled, "Misunderstanding of the Origin of Sin" in chapter three of my book From Death to Life.

[11] "epi with its relative pronoun refers back to the preceding thanatos (eph ho = epi thanatos)..."
Ethelbert Stauffer, New Testament Theology, trans. John Marsh
(New York: The Macmillan Co., 1955), p. 270, note 176.
However, he goes on to give a different meaning to the preposition.
"[epi] does not mean as translations mostly suppose 'on the basis of' but 'in the direction of' (cf. Phil. 4:10; II Tim. 2:14)...Here epi is the reciprocal preposition to the dia of the first phrase. So we must accordingly paraphrase: 'death to which they fell man by man through their sin.'", p. 270.
This turns out to be the same interpretation as "because all sinned."

[12] R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans
(Columbus, Ohio: Wartburg Press, 1960), p. 361.

[13] Berkouwer, Sin, p. 494, footnote 37.

[14] F. L. Godet, Commentary On Romans, p. 208, who takes death here as physical death,
"...for Paul, as we have seen,
is not treating here the origin of sin,
but of the origin of death,
and of death taken in the physical sense.
Death appears here as the visible proof of the invisible judgment
which hangs over mankind."
Also Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p. 133.

[15] Augustine, "Against Two Letters of the Pelagians" in Philip Schaff,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), p. 419.
See also Augustine,
"On the Merits and Remission of Sins and On the Baptism of Infants",
bk. 3. chap. 20. Schaff, pp. 76-77.

[16] Abbot-Smith, Manual Greek Lexicon, p. 464.
C. K. Barrett, The Epistle to the Romans
(New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1957), p. 74.