{d) Atonement and Newness of Life. — The work of redemption was not whoUy a matter of juridical substitution and imputation. Another fine of thought of great importance is pursued, besides the freeing from the curse and the dehverance from -RTath. The relation of men to the salvation of Christ is not purely passive. * They must enter into intimate union of life with Hun. _ They must die in effect with Christ to sin on His cross, and rise with Him in newness of life. Through their faith they constitute His mystical body; they have corporate identity with Him in 'the fife which is life indeed ' ; they are saved from the power as well as the guilt of sin ; freedom from the law of sin and death completes the release from its condemnation ; the release from past sin in the atonement in Christ's death does not exhaust its aim ; it involves the actual renunciation of the selfish Ufe and the reahzation of the life of holy love.
Although this conception is not wholly out of mind in chs. 3 and 4 of Romans and elsewhere (cf. Gal 2i«f-, Col 220 3^ Ph^B'^f), in which the juridical view of Christ's death is developed, it finds its fuU presentation in reply to an imaginary objection to the juridical view in Ro 6 and the following three chapters. The question. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? starts St. Paul upon an exposition of the essential relation between the righteousness which is by faith in Christ as 'pro- pitiation,' and the righteousness which is personal and real, through vital fellowship with His death and resurrection ; 'crucified with him, buried with him, raised with him,' behevers also walk with Him 'in ne^Tiess of hfe.' There is something in the experience of Christ which they repeat so far as its ethical implications can be reahzed in their own experience ; for the closest of finks exists be- tween the saving deed of Christ and the ethical issues of the salvation it has brought about. Al- though St. Paul does not make any direct use of the spotless holiness and perfect obedience of Christ save in so far as they issue in His death, still these ethical qualities of the Redeemer be- come the ethical demand in the redeemed as their union of life with Him is unfolded. _ The great Pauhne conception 'in Christ' is required to com- plete on its ethical side the salvation which is 'through Christ' on the legal side.
In recent exposition the relation between these two — the 'subjective-mystical' view of salvation and the 'objective-juridical' — has been much dis- cussed. Is the former an addition, a supplement, a correlative, or a transformation of the latter? 'Probably a majority of recent scholars hold that the conception of freedom from sin through a new moral hfe is primary in the thought of the Apostle' ;t others reverse this relation. f Denney strongly maintains that Christ's substitutionary death is primary, and that the ethico-mystical views are directly deduced from it ; the latter
* A. C. McGiffert, Apostolic Age, Edinburgh, 1897, p. 120.
t E.g. Stevens, Christian Doctrine of Salvation, 70 ; W. Beyschlag, NT Theol., Eng. tr., 1895, ii. 198-201; C. v. Weizsacker, Das apostolische ZeitaHer, Freiburg i. B., 1890, p. 139 (Eng. tr., London, 1895, ii. 104 f.).
t E.g. O. Pfleiderer, Das Urchristentum, Berlin, 1887, p. 229 ; E. Menegoz, Le Peche et la Redemption d'apres St. Paul, 1882, ii. 251 ff.
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indicate the inevitable result of a true appropriat- ing faith in the substitutionary death of Christ, the sole object of which was to atone for sin ; gratitude to Christ for this redemptive act of love being sufficient to evoke the whole experience of salvation on its ethical side. St. Paul's thought has only one focus — Christ's 'finished work,' His 'atonement outside of us.'* A. B. Bruce fears that the practical schism between these two ex- periences of faith in the objective work of Christ and personal union in His death and resurrection is too real for such a view ; he thinks that the doctrine of an objective righteousness wrought out by Christ was first elaborated, that this 'met the spiritual need of the conversion crisis,' and that 'the doctrine of subjective righteousness came in due season to solve problems arising out of Christian experience ' ; consequently they are 'two doctrines,' two revelations serving different purposes, but not incompatible with or cancelling one another, t Lipsius regards the two lines of thought as parallel or interpenetrating. t H. J. Holtzmann makes the interesting suggestion that the expiatory doctrine is built up by St. Paul's use of popular Jewish conceptions and sacrificial cate- gories apphed to Christ's death, while the ethico- mystical view is the more direct product of his experience interpreted through Hellenistic ideas, especially the contrast of flesh and spirit. § Whilst the two doctrines lie side by side within the same Epistle, it is difficult to regard them as separate doctrines representing quite distinct epochs of thought or experience in St. Paul. His teaching elsewhere on the_ work of the Holy Spirit should not be ignored in making adjustments between the two sides of his view of the atonement. It is on the interpretation of the place of St. Paul's ethical teaching on this doctrine that most marked differences exist ; his doctrine of expiation is ex- pounded with substantially the same results by scholars of the most divergent theological ten- dencies. 1|