i. On the other hand, the universalist corollary itself seems strangely absent. For Christ conceives His calling upon earth as confined to Israel (Mt 15-^11). His intercourse with Gentiles (S^"'-), or even with the half-heathen Samaritans (Jn 4^, Lk 9^^ 171^), was but casual. He bids His disciples, at their first going out, confine themselves to Jews (Mt 10^). All this, as we can see, was involved in His recognition that God called Him to be Messiah — Lsrael's king. If 'anointed' to ' preach ' (Is 61 ', Lk 41^), He must direct His prophetic message to Israel. The shaping out of His royalty depends, under God, on the attitude of Israel in response to His appeal. These things are plain to us ; still, there was room for doubt under the historic con- ditions of the early disciples. It Avas plausible for Jewish Christians to hold that the Master's example sanctioned particularism rather than universalism. Very possibly Mt 10 — as borrowed by the author of our Gospel from an older document (the Logia ? one version of the Logia 1, see LoGiA) — was origin- ally a gathering together in a single context of sayings that might throw light on the permanent duties of an evangelist ; if so, the original draft of the chapter confines the itinerant preacher to an audience of Jews. (We must not expect that Evangelists should write like critical historians, with exact notes of time and circumstance). On the other hand, our Gospel of Mt., as a whole, cer- tainly presents a different outlook. Yet it is only after the Resurrection — and, in all the Synoptics, with a very definite contrast to the past — that we have the record of a positive command to preach to all men. Not that the mind of our Master is really uncertain on this point. OT prophecy had extended hope to Gentiles (Is 2^, e.g.); and Jesus stands higher, not lower, than His prophetic forerunners. Could He — speaking in the light of such promises ; or could He at all — preach a gospel universalist from its centre outwards, and not know what He was doing? He knew it well. And so the prin- ciples of His teaching come to their rights through the witness of St. Paul, wlio — in forms of his own, or, at any rate, in forms which owed to liim their full and sharp development — vindicates the uni- versal religion which has succeeded to the Old Covenant through the atoning death for sin. See also artt. Co.SMOPOLITANISM, EXCLUSIVENESS,
Gentiles, Missions.
Literature. — The present writer's Christ and the Jewish Law, 1886, quotes older literacure. Interesting recent state- ments, from a position of some theological latitude, in Hamack's What is Christianity^; Wernle's Beginnings of Christianity, and Weinel's Jesus Christus im 19te,n Jahrhundert [the last not yet translated].
II. Universal purpose of Christ's death. — 1. Granted that Christ is the Saviour of all races, did He die for all men in all races, or only for such
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as actually reap the benefits of His sacrifice ? The question may seem somewhat academic. It is admitted on both sides of the controversy that the merits of Christ suffice to redeem all men ; and it is [or was ; but see III. below] admitted on both sides that only a certain number of souls are advantaged by the Christian salvation. Still, it seemed — e.g. to Wesley — a new and ugly particularism to affirm that, by Divine decree, the salvation, professedly offered to all, was confined to some, chosen arbi- trarily or upon unkno'\\Ti grounds.
2. In our Lord's Synoptic teaching, or in the ^'ery simple theology of the first three Evangelists, the point now before us is hardly touched on. Christ is to give His life a ransom for 'many' (Mt 20''^^||) ; and so, too. His covenant blood is shed for 'many' (26^^11). The contrast in view is between the One suffering and the many saved. In Jn. the phenomena are more various. The shepherd gives His life for the sheep (Jn 10"). Christ loves His own (13^. He prays for them and not for the world (17^). On the other hand, the ulterior aim is ' that the world may believe' (17^^ <^^*)- Lifted up. He is to draw ' all men ' (12^^). And, when we turn from the .Johannine teaching of Christ to other parts of the Fourth Gospel, we find strong emphasis laid on the fact that Christ is the Saviour of the whole world (p9 3" 4-»2). A Gospel so penetrated with the thought of universalism (I.) was not likely to lend itself to a new particularism as against universal- ism (II.).
3. It is to St. Paul that the Augustinians and Calvinists look back as their explicit master. All that happens, happens by God's will. All that fails to happen, fails just because it was no part of God's purpose. Salvation, especially, is efficacious ; grace is 'irresistible.' Predestinated — called — justified — glorified — the stately sequence moves on without pause or uncertainty (Ro 8^"). (We omit the initial term ' foreknown ' as somewhat difficult — difficult perhaps to both schools of theology). What God plans. He accomplishes. The necessary obverse of this doctrine — unless transformed by universalism (III.) ; so Hastie, Theology of the Re- formed Church, 1894 — is that neither God nor Christ meant any blessing for those who are in the issue unsaved. Christ died for some, not for all. But the NT writes differently. Even St. Paul joins in the common confession- — ^ ' He died for all ' (2 Co 5'^). Language which in later theo- logy is found characteristic only of transition Calvinism — i.e. of Calvinism in a state of decay, like Amyraldism— is the natural expression of the faith of St. Paul and of all the NT writers. True, A. Ritschl (Justification, vol. iii., tr. H. R. Mack- intosh and A. B. Macaulay, ch. ii. § 22) contends that this form of expression is of inferior scientific value to the other set of expressions — noted by us in the .Johannine teaching, and in Ro 8 — accordfing to which grace is destined to the Church. Ritschl's peculiar doctrine — the Elect = the Church and not = a body of indi\aduals — has found few supporters, and probably will find fewer in the future. His preference for Calvinism is noteworthy, though he was no genuine Calvinist.* Yet we feel bound to hold that it is deeper spiritual vision and not simply lowered logical acumen that makes the NT writers — conceivably, sometimes, at the cost of systematic coherence— hail Christ as Saviour of all men. Otherwise, Universalism (I.) seems emptied of moral meaning. In point of fact, the Calvinistic limitation is little heard of now in Great Britain, except among some of the Evangelicals in the Church of England and some of the Baptists. And few would now rank it as a burning question.