In these factors — the correlation of the death of Jesus with the whole redeeming purpose of God, the foreshadowing by prophecy of the vicarious value attaching to the death of the innocent servant of God, and the remembered attitude of Jesus towards His own death — we have the condi- tions for a rapid evolution of a doctrine of recon- ciliation through the Cross. The doctrine itself is not here ; but distinct approximation to it can be traced in the collocation of Jesus as suffering Messiah with an appeal for 'repentance unto re- mission of sins' (S^^- '^). In 2^^ Avhen the people have heard the declaration that God has made Jesus Lord and Christ, and ask. What are we to do ? the answer is ' Hepent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ unto re-
mission of your sins.' There is a superficial similarity to the summons issued by John the Baptist, but a fundamental distinction in that the ground of the apostolic appeal is the fact of Christ, a fact as yet un analyzed ; and the baptism is to be 'in the name of Jesus Christ,' i.e. it involves and symbolizes the confession of Jesus as the Christ, and heart-felt submission to His Personality. In 5^1 ('Him did God exalt to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance and remission of sins '), if, as is probable, ' God' is to be understood as the subject of the infinitive clause (cf. IP and Eo 2'*), the Exaltation and indirectly the death have remission of sins in part for their object and result.
More cannot be said. The nature of the con- nexion between the death of Jesus and the Divine plan remains obscure. To explain it was the work of a longer Christian experience, a deeper compre- hension of sin, and a higher conception of the ethical demands of God. But when the explana- tion came, it was an unfolding of the primitive conviction that there was a profound connexion between the death of Jesus and the removal of sin. On this point, as on others, investigation of the primitive consciousness entirely confirms, as it is confirmed by, St. Paul's statement of the gospel as it had been communicated to him, that ' Christ . . . died for our sins according to the scriptures ' (1 Co 15^).
(S) The summary of the ' gospel ' here given by St. Paul, while it is notably lacking in certain elements which are commonly supposed to be essential to Paulinism, corresponds very closely with the impression concerning the missionary preaching which is made by the later chapters of Acts. It is of course maintained by many scholars, and by some regarded as axiomatic, that the simi- larity between the speeches of St. Peter and those of St. Paul is due to the fact that they were all the work of one man, neither St. Peter nor St. Paul, but either an unknown writer in the second cent, or St. Luke working up old material at the end of the first. The alleged similarity calls for care- ful examination. The result will probably be the recognition that it arises from an inward harmony between the two apostles as to the essentials of their message, and especially as to their concep- tion of Christ, combined with a diversity of tone and emphasis which is specially marked when the speeches of St. Paul are compared with one another, and extends to his speeches as a whole when com- pared with St. Peter's. And whatever explanation be given of the composition of the speeches of St. Paul, the primitive character of the Christology they present remains a fact, and one which is more easily accounted for if thej' reproduce the essentials of the Apostle's mission preaching, than if we have to suppose St. Luke, with the knowledge of St. Paul's later preaching which he must have pos- sessed, deliberately excluding what was character- istically Pauline. The discrepancy between the Christology reflected in St. Paul's speeches in Acts and that of his Epistles may actually be reflective of the true facts of the case.
In regard to their Christology the speeches of St. Paul Avitness to practically the same elements as those of St. Peter, and to no other, or at most to one. Just as in the speech of Stephen, and (less conspicuously but not less really) in the speeches of St. Peter, so in the speech of St. Paul at Pisi- dian Antioch, Jesus of Nazareth is set forth as the goal of Israel's history and the crowning fulfilment of Jewish prophecy. The good news of the gospel which its messengers proclaim is the promise to the fathers now fulfilled (Ac 13^2; cf. 268, Ro \5% From Thessalonica we have a specimen of St. Paul's missionary preaching, according to which
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for three Sabbath days or ' weeks ' (RVm) he reasoned ■with the Jews ' from the scriptures,' to the etiect that the Christ ' was bound to suffer,' and the same appeal to Scripture is repeated iu Ac 2622 2823 ; cf. 13-"^. The object of the appeal is to show both that this is the Messiah, and that His death is part of the redemptive process. He refers to Clirist in the same striking way as 6 8iKaios (22^'* ; cf. 7*^), and describes Him as the One appointed by God to judge the world (17^^). St. Paul further presents Christ as an object of faith (22'^ ; cf. 9^ 11", and possibly 3'^), and claims that the consist- ent burden of his preaching has been ' repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ ' (20=1 ; cf . 26-"). In IS^s he declares ' through this man is proclaimed unto you remission of sins.' If in tlie following verse (' and from all the things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses, by him is justified every one that believeth ') St. Paul seems to cross the line into ' Paulinism,' he does not go very far. ' Justified ' has the same significance here as it has in the Parable of the Pharisee and Publican (Lk 18") ; and iv toijtcj} diKacovrai involves the same conception as the words of St. Peter in 15'^ did. rijs x'^P"'''' toO Kupt'oi; 'I'jjtrou TTiarevo/jLev crcodTJvai, or in 4'- ouk ^cttiv iv dWui oudevl 7] ffurrrjpla. There is one phrase, however, in which St. Paul, as reported in the Acts, states in dogmatic form a conviction to which we find no verbal paral- lel in the speeches of St. Peter. In 20''^ he refers to Tr]v iKK\7)criav rod Oeov fjv irepLeiroi-qcaTo did. toO alfiaTos rod idlov. (The probability is strong that vlov has been accidentally omitted from the text at a very early stage ; otherwise idlov must be con- strued as a substantive = d7a7r77Toi;.) Here we have undoubtedly a seed-thought of much that we recog- nize as specifically Pauline. But it is still in the form of a seed. Ps 74^ in the LXX runs ixv-qadrp-i r^s cvvaywyrjs aov fjs iKTrjffti) dw apxv^ | 4XvTpdi(TW pd^dov TTjs KXripovo/Mias aov. St. Paul, echoing the thought rather than quoting the woi-ds, takes the two words iKTTjacj and iXvTpicaii}, combines tliem, then breaks up the compound into two new elements — purchase and price ; and, guided further by such phrases as * I have given Egypt for thy \&rpou ' (Is 43^), ' He smote all the first-born of Egypt ' (Ps 78^'), he sets the fact that ' Christ died for our sins ' in this pregnant form : that the new holy community like the old one has been redeemed at the cost of blood, the blood of God's own beloved Son.