atinc^ the prerogatives of Israel, he says frankly, 'to whom belong the promises' (Ro 9''). In de- scribing the pre-Christian condition of a Gentile Church he says its members had been ' strangers to the covenants of the promise,' ajid therefore without hope. No pagan people had that kind of assurance as to its own future which pious Israel- ites derived from the word of God, and hence the pessimism with which paganism generally contem- plated the issues of human existence. It was the work of St. Paul to show that the promise was not subject to physical or historical limitations, and that no physical or historical accident, such as Jewish birtn or upbringing, could give one a claim as of right against God for its fulfilment. The chief pas- sages in which he deals with the problem are Gal 3 and Bo 9-11. In the former he discusses rather the conditions on which the promise is inherited, to which we shall refer below, and comes to the conclusion that all who are Christ's by faith are Abraham's seed, the Israel of God, and heirs ac- cording to promise. In the latter he is confronted with the fact that the promise — to judge by the results of his own preaching — is not being fultilled • to those to whom it belongs, and is being fultilled (according to him) to those to wliom it does not belong. What strikes one most in this extra- ordinary passage is the extent to which St. Paul's heart is on the side of those against whom he argues. Thus, after proving in ch. 9 that no man can claim unconditionally that God shall fulfil the promise to him, and in ch. 10 that the Jews, by persistent disobedience, have forfeited all title to be counted God's people and the heirs of His promise, he falls back in ch. 11 on the abstract theological principle tliat the gifts and calling of God are \vithout repentance. It is as if he said — After all, there is no denying that Israel is God's people. God has given them the promise, and He cannot deny Himself. In spite of all their unbelief they are beloved for the fathers' sakes ; God will remember His oath to Abraham, and ' so all Israel shall be saved.' Such faith may well seem bewilder- ing to Gentiles who calmly assume that the promise is their own ab initio, and ignore even the historic prerogative of the Jew. But to the last the Jew was to St. Paul the root, the first-fruits ; and the Gentiles were only avti/iiroxa Tijs iiray-^eXlas (Eph 3'), not its original and proper heirs. — In later NT writ- ings the echoes of this conflict die away, and the scope of the promise is universalized as instinctively as Christ is felt to be Lord of all. ' The promise,' in short, is a historically conditioned way of conceiv- ing the grace of God, and once the critical stage had been passed — as it was in St. Paul's lifetime — the discussions as to its range lost interest. Men could question who were the true heirs of the promise, but not under the same forms who were the objects of the redeeming love of God in Christ. (3) The conditions on which the promise are ful- filled are discussed in various connexions. As already remarked, the very idea of irayyfXla is spontaneity on the part of the promiser. Tlie promise is of grace. In Ro 4 and Gal 3 St. Paul labours to show that it is subject to no control on the part of law, or of works of law. In Galatians he gives a historical proof of this. The promise was given to Abraham, and to his faith, 430 years before the law was heard of ; and this late in- trusion of law, whatever it maj' mean, cannot mean that we must earn the fulfilment of the promise ; if this were the case it would be an ira-ryMa — a free spontaneous motion on the part of God — no more. In Ro 4 the proof is rather speculative or experimental than historical. Cer- tain ideas and experiences hang together, and certain others do not. Promise, grace, and faith are parts of one whole; wages, debt, and works
are parts of anotlicr wliolc ; but these two wlioles, and the parts of them, exclude each other. lienca the promise, in all the fulness of its content, ex- plained above, is fulfilled, not to works of law, not to merit, but to faith in Jesus Christ. All that God holds out to us becomes ours as in faith we attach ourselves to Him. Where the blessings of salva- tion are presented as ' promise,' there is always, of course, the suggestion that they are not yet realized, and hence faith (when this conception is prominent, as in the Epistle to the Hebrews) assumes some of the characteristics of hope and of patience. We read of those who ' througli faith and patience ' inherit the promises ; we have ' need of patience' that after ' liaving done the will of God' we may receive the promise (He 6" 10**). It is part of the heroism of faith that having God's promise to go upon it can maintain a strong con- viction as to the things it hopes for, and give reality to things unseen (He 11'). It is the mark of an evil time that scott'ers ask, in regard to the one great promise of the NT, roS iarlv i) iirayytXia rrjt irapowias aiJToO, 2 P 3*. J. DENNEY.