party.
(7) The later Epistles hardly enable us to add anything of importance. In Eph the law as a national institute—the law of commandments con- tained in ordinances, cf. Col 24—is regarded as a dividing wall between Jew and Gentile; it has been broken down and annulled by the death of Christ, and with it the enmity which severed the tivo great branches of the human family ; they are now one new man. In Col what St. Paul has to deal with is a movement which in its requirements resembles the ritualistic legalism with which he had been confronted in Galatia; the difference is that in Galatia the legalism attached itself directly to the law of Moses, in Colosse it seemed to be connected with some philosophical or theo- sophical system, possibly of Essene affinities, and therefore more exacting in its demands than the letter of Moses’ law. Cf. Col 2. St. Paul was
equally irreconcilable to it in both cases, and for VOL. 1Π1.--ττὸ
thesame reason. As dead with Christ, the Christian was dead to that whole mode of being, that whole conception of life, which allowed order to be pre- scribed from without. It was worse, of course, when the multiplied prohibitions, ‘Touch not, taste not, handle not,’ had no divine sanction (ay) the Mosaic law had) or even the pretence of it, but were merely a tradition of men. The conscience which has received the Spirit of Christ is shirking its own responsibilities when it allows others to lay down the law for it. To be perfectly free, and to take the whole responsibility of freedom, is the only way to wholesome morality and to Christian sanctification. ‘Therefore let no one judge you in eating or drinking, or in respect of a festival or new moon or Sabbath.’ All laws and customs as such tend to extinguish the feeling of personal responsibility, tu blunt the keenness of individual conscience ; hence to bind them on the conscience, in their character as legal and customary, is anti- christian. In Ph 3!" there is a sudden fierce flash, provoked we cannot tell how, of the ideas and tem- per that belong to the great controversial Epistles. In the Pastoral Epp., which represent a considerabl later date, we can see that questions connected with law still engaged attention, though there is nothing indicative either of the passion or the interest in principle which characterize the earlier years of the apostle. Titus (3°) is warned to decline μάχας νομικάς, as though the whole subject were prac- tically settled; and we catch the same half-con- temptuous tone in 1 Ti 1’, where persons are referred to, Judaizing no doubt, who wish to be vouo- διδάσκαλοι though they have no idea of the functions of law. It may be questioned whether the two verses following come up to the insight of Ro 7, but they have their own truth, and probably served the writer’s purpose. When the battle was prac- tically over, and the victory won, even St. Paul may have expressed himself in this almost indifferent commonplace; perhaps he despaired of gaining access to the general mind for any profounder statement of the truth. The legalism of the persons who forbade to marry and commanded to abstain from meats (1 Ti 43) cannot have been Mosaic, but must have been of some philosophical type, akin to that found in Colossve.
III, THE LAW IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. —The Pauline aflinities of the Ep. to the Hebrews cannot be denied, but the conception of law in it is very different. Law here is sometimes expressly the law of Moses (7% 9! 10%), but it is regarded not so much as a set of statutes to be punctually obeyed, as a religious constitution under which the nation had to worship. Cf. the use of the verb νομο- θετεῖν in 7 88. The fundamental idea of the book is that there is one people of God through all ages, though it has stood at different times in different relations to Him. Its relation to God, its nearness or distance, depends on the kind of priesthood it has; and when the priesthood is changed there is necessarily also a change of law: that is, the re- ligious constitution is altered, 7%. The old law— the religious constitution under which the people of God lived when mediation was that of the Levitical priesthood—‘made nothing perfect’ (7"); there was no absolute or final religion then, ne purgation of conscience, no sure immediate joyful access to God. Christianity, on the other hand— the religious constitution under which the people of God live now, when mediation is that of the Melchizedek priest, the Son of God—is the τελεί- wots of what was promised of old. The new covenant is legally constituted on the basis of better promises (8°). It has, with the definite outline of reality, the good things of wich the law had only a shadow (10°).
There is nothing in St. Paul which exactly
Β2
LAW (IN NEW TESTAMENT)
corresponds to this: not even in Col 917, still less in what he says of the promise in Gal 3 or of the promises in 2Co 1. In fact, we do not find in St. Paul any conception of Leviticalism as pos- sessing a religious significance, as dealing even in a pathetically disappointing way with spiritual necessities in man, which would find their slept satisfaction only in Christ. In the Ep. to the Hebrews Christ is still regarded as making pro- pitiation for sins (2!7), but His death is not put, so pony as in St. Paul, in relation to the Law.