These senses in NT are common and undisputed, as is also the closely related sense of majesty or magnificence of king or ruler, e.g. of God, in dox- cloizies, 1 P 4" ; of Christ, Ja 2', 2 Th V (' the gloiy of his might'), cf. He P ; and of man as ruling for God, 1 Co 11' (the woman making conspicuous the authority of the man). But there are still difi'er- ences of opinion as to the sense of brightness and the extensions of it. When used of Goii, of Christ, of regenerated and glorified humanity, how far is it literal, symbolical, ethical ? That it is ethically used of God is obvious from such passages as Ro 3^ •All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,' i.e. the manifested perfection of His char-
acter, or, according to the context (w."-*"). Hit righteousness. That it is ethically used of Christ is obvious from Jn !'■' 'We beheld his glory . . . full (as He was) of grace and truth.' That it is ethically used of human nature in the process of glorification, i.e. of ethical and spiritual trans- figuration, is obvious from 2 Co 3'" ' We all, with unveiled face, mirroring in ourselves the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glorj', even as from the Lard the Spirit.'
A ti'^tTfti element also presents itself. The con- ception and description in NT of the divine mani- festation in heaven and on earth, of the form of heavenly beings, and of the future appearance (according to St. Paul) of the glorified children of God in the heavenly body, are in the line of the OT thcophanies and angelophanies with their light and brightness. This fact is clear from the ' glory of the Lord ' round the shepherds (Lk 2'-'), from the transfiguration of Christ (Lk 9'-), from the appear- ance of Moses and Elias 'in glorj-' (Lk 9^'), from St. Paul's vision of the Lord in the way (Ac 9^ and parallel passages in Ac 22 and 2G), and from the ' body of glory ' (Ph 3"'), perhaps suggested by this vision. By this apparent literalism m the concep- tions of the divine and the coming 'glory,' PHeiderer is induced to define the specially Pauline 56to as ' the brilliant light which is everywhere the mani- festation of the ■^■vev^la, and forms a special attri- bute of the majesty of God' (Faulinism, Eng. tr. i. 135), the irfeufia being ' heavenly, supersensuous matter,' 'originally belonging to God and then to Christ the Son of God, in such wise that it con- stitutes their divine essence, and is presented in a concrete form in them ' (i. 200). And Weiss, whUe denying that the ' essence of the Spirit is (in St. Paul) conceived as a luminous substance ' {Bio Theol. of NT, Eng. tr. i. 397), attirms that ' it is characteristic of the Pauluie theology that the apostle has transformed the (earlier and vaguer) idea of the divine Si^a into an altogether concrete notion, — that of a heavenly radiant light proceed- ing from a supermundane substance of light' (i. 396), ' a luminous light-substance in which God reveals Himself (ii. 1S7, n. 7). ' Out of it are formed the bodies of the heavenly beings, and . . . this same 56|a will believers yet bear when they are conformed to His image, to whom, as the Lord of the Spirit, this di^a belongs.' Weiss, indeed, disclaims materialism in this interpretation ; but it is hard, with this disclaimer, to see what is meant by 'supermundane substance.' Dr. Sanday also (Romans, p. 85), quoting from Weber {Altsyn. Theol. p. 214) the rabbinical view that 'the glory' (the first among the six things lost by Adam at the fall) was a reflection from the divine glory which, before the fall, brightened Adam's face, goes on to say : ' Clearly, St. Paul conceives of this glory as in process of being recovered : the physical sense is also enriched by its extension to attributes that are moral and spiritual.'
It is proverbially difficult, of course, to distin- guish sometimes, in St. Paul's expressions, the literal from the freely symbolical : the discriminat- ing critic will find this difticulty not only with Sija but also with irctpf , (rw/ut, and irycOiui ; and it is a difficulty that must be expected to arise when, in an old vocabulary, verbal expression has to be found for new thought. In this exigency words are often selected which, bein" in themselves sub- jective as well as objective, admit of being wlioUy subjectivized. One of these plastic words ajjpeara to be S&^a in the moulding hands of St. Paul : a word elastic and not rigid, a word ' thro\NTi out at an idea' (like the words just mentioned), and not intended mechanically to define it. It seems un- justifiable, therefore, to chain St. Paul to the
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rigid, concrete conception of a literal light sub- stance (even though it be elevated into the cloud- land of the supersen.suous or sujiermuudane), whether for the irveviia (in God and C'lirist), or for the heavenly body of Christ and of the believer to be i;lnritieil through Uini. In 2 Co 3'», above ijuoted, the ethical sense of the glory is so pre- eminent as to suggest not merely an 'extension of the physical ' but even a supplantation of it ; and this ethical conception comes out again plainly enough in Ro 5- and ;>', where righteousness is the burden of the thought. A non-l'auline, but not an anti-Pauline, illustration is furnished by Jn 1", also above quoted : there the bright cloud (5(5^a, Ro 9') in the tabernacle (cf. iaK-fivuiatv) serves St. John for the historical and allegorical foundation of the idea of the Logos in the tabernacle of the flesh, and the incarnate (iod in the world of men or among the Jewish peoi)le.