sincere in this 1 l^. 'Alt! -h lli- \\r-i:rr is pl.-iinly a Jew of
Jews, hi-- Drrhl ^."n-i'.'l -iM, M- ' r-. '■ !■'. r-it'iri- nnrl Hebrew
knoun 111 the lle^ll, M.lein Mdu vMiii i^iml' (0. A. .SijijiL, TkeBook of the Rcvdatiun, p. 27). "
The NT books are not efforts of solitary thinkers evolving schemes out of their inner consciousness. The Christian EcclcMa, llir fellowship of Christ, the communion of ^.•lillt< IimiI liy such thoughts and spiritual activitii v ,1, tin -r. It's members knew nothing of the subtli-lics of ],iist->Jicene Christo- logy ; but they kneAv Jesus, the Lamb of God, who died for them, the Living Lord in whose right hand were seven stars, who walked amid the candlesticks.
iii. The Cheistology of St. Paul.—
Paul's Christology in the outcome of his experience.
i-HCARNATION
INCARNATION
80?
iiinplcst, most obvious, he truest. Attempts to assimilate St. Paul's sight of Ciirist on the road to Damascus with ecstatic experiences, which he also records, betray, by their very ingenuitv, the a priori, assumption that a fully objec- tive revelation of 'the kind alleged is impossible. St. Pauls sight of Christ was of the same nature as that by which the faith of the Eleven was first established. If the ' vision hypoth- esis' does not do justice to the facts in their case, neither wil it account for the sudden and complete revolution which took place in the life of St. Paul. That he had seen the Risen Christ, in the same sense, with the same convincrag 'objectivity, Peter had seen Hiin, is the Apostl
Believers in Christ enter upon the status of sons of God, and St. Paul even calls them ulc, while St. John uses only the term Tf«v«. But among such sons of God Christ is not one. He stands alone. They become sons. He is the Son (Ro &■ 3-, Gal 4-*). This Sonship is the very essence of Christ's being. '^
St. Paul I
Divinity
of Paul's authority J his Christian faith. It warrants the utmost and'the greatest which Paul can ever say regarding the wonderful being of his Lord. From that date, the hour when he heard the word-s ' I am Jesus,' he had been in Christ.' Christ had been a present reality to him, and out ot his fellowship with Christ had come every grace of his character, every privilege of his soul, everv activity of his career. 'That 1 may know him' (Ph S'O) is the passion of his life, and his so-called 'Christology' is not a philosophy of the 'logos, or 'avatar," or any otlier type. It is the testimony he bears, incidentally, as the needs of his converts demand, to the Christ whom he knows.
(6) St. Paul's conception ot Christ does not stand wholly apart from the views entertained by the primitive Church. His experience, remarkable as it was, did not differ in kind from that of other believers. The Church was from the beginning a feUowship with Christ. Every member of it is united to Christ by faith. There were others who had been ' in Christ ' before St. Paul had gained that blessed privUege (Ro 16''). The know- ledge which he possessed of Christ was common to the fellow- ship of believers, and had been theirs while Paul was raging against the Church in persecuting fury. In fact, it was precisely the lofty claims advanced by the disciples of the Nazarene on behalf of their Master, which called the young zealot to destroy a movement which he saw clearly was an invasion of the supre- macy, not of Cffisar, but of Jehovah. When, in later days, he himself is glorying in the lofty attributes and Divine dignity of Christ, he is well aware that he is setting forth no novelties, but is speaking out of the fulness of a personal knowledge possessed by his readers as well as by himself. Dr. Sanday's words, com- menting on 1 Th 11, are most memorable : 'An elaborate process of reflexion, almost a system ot theology, lies behind those familiar terms.' Dr. Knowling's weighty and balanced state- ment ought to be borne in mind by every student ot St. Paul's thought : 'The evidence to be gathered from the Apostle's own writings is not to be judged as if it was only ot a reflective char- acter upon the events of the life of Jesus seen through a long retrospect ot years : in some particulars it carries us up to the earliest period of the existence of the Christian Church ; in other particulars it is plainly incidental, it is used as occasion demands, and it justifies the inference that it has behind it a large reserve ot early teaching and tradition' (Testimony, etc., r- 211)- , , J ■ .,■
(c) To say that St. Paul's Christology is more developed in his later Epistles than in his eariier, is only to note the fact that his personal acquaintance with Christ grew richer as the years ot his inner life and of his missionary activity passed over him. But this advance was not determined by accretions from without. He had not to wait till theosophical speculation suggested it to him before he ascribed the loftiest, most com- prehensive position and dignity to Christ. Such ascription be- longs to his eariier as well as to his later writings. Prof Bacon has strongly emphasized the presence ot Paul's later thoughts •in a partly developed form in the eariier Epistles ' (Story of St Pmd, p. 208) ; and Dr. Knowling's great work, already referred to, is largely devoted to an illustration of this fact {e.g. pp. 48, 90f., 206, 2nf., 502).