Yet we must be careful not to drive the figure too far ; or rather, we must bt prepared to go far enough. The change has not simply been wrought for him, but in him. It is not merely a change from a master to a father ; but from the spirit of a slave to that of a son, by the spirit of sonship. Cowed and overpowered before, acquiescing, M'ith a true slave's mind, in the very things he hated, now he is confident, self-controlled as a son ; not an emancipated slave, apt to mistake a broken cliain for a charter of licence ; his freedom from sin is
freedom for righteousness. He can thus speak of the old Law as replaced by a new one. He is actuallj- a slave once more ; but a slave to Christ. He has gained his freedom, only to surrender it ; or rather, he has surrendered it, only to find it in a form which is entirely stable and absolutely satisfying (2 Co 3'^, no more ' veils, reservations, inconsistencies ' now [A. Menzies, Second Ep. to Cor., 1912, ad ^oc], 5", Ko 7®, Gal 5* ; Christians are even slaves to one another, because slaves to Him whose law is love . Pto S- 6i« ; cf. 1 P 2*«, Jn S^^ff-).
This experience St. Paul regarded as normal for all Christians. But in the Galatian church he was confronted with a return to the Jewish Law by those who ought to have learnt that circumcision could profit nothing. This raised once more the question of freedom. To go back to the Law was to go back to bondage ; not,however,to the exact type of bondage from which St. Paul himself had been delivered at his conversion. Tliere, the real tyrant had been sin, and the Law, coming in upon it, had made it appear in its true character (Ro 5"" 7'^). But at the same time its hold upon its prisoner was tightened. Here the Law is regarded in its other aspect, as a 7rat5a7W7o's, a boy's slave-attendant ; and thus as an integral part of the Divine plan (Gal 3'-^). Man is intended to live as a son in his father's house, with a son's freedom ; but before this is possible, he must obej' ; he has to submit himself to at- tendants (who, in a Hellenic or Roman household, would themselves generally be slaves). Only as he grows up and ' puts away childish things ' does he leave behind him this regime, and become a son in actuality. But, having once left this state of things behind, to return to it is preposterous. It is like preferring the state of the handmaid to that of the wife, Hagar to Sarah ; or leaving Jenisalem, our mother, for the barren heights of Sinai (4-'*"^*'). It is not simply refusing to live as a son ; it is reject- ing the spirit of sonship, bestowed on him, which made such a life possible.
This is what the Galatians were doing in listen- ing to their Judaizing teachers. It was more than a relapse from freedom to bondage ; it was a relapse from Spirit to flesh. Instead of the free impulse of the Spirit within them, or of Christ's living in them, they were being guided by rules which de- manded a merely external obedience and appealed to merely selfish desires, aptly symbolized by an operation on the external surface of the body. The case might not be so serious if entire obedience to these rules could ever be given. But even if this were possible, the spirit of a life so lived would still be hopelesslj' wrong. Freedom is life ; and its absence is nothing less than death.
This is not the place to discuss St. Paul's whole view of the relation of the Law and the works of the Law to grace. But the bearing of the question on freedom will be best seen by comparing the position of St. Paul with that of Kant. At first sight, the two might seem to be absolutely opposed. Kant finds freedom just where St. Paul denies its presence — in strict obedience to the Moral Law. But laAv has a very different meaning for Kant and for St. Paul. Law to Kant is essentially that which does not speak from without but from within. It apjieals to no interested motives, either of hope or fear ; it promises no rewards, threatens no jjunish- ments. It speaks with the sole authority of reason ; its voice is the voice of the man himself. It is the experience of histrue and proper rational self. 'The will is not subject simply to the law, but so subject that it must be regarded as itself giving the law, and on this ground only subject to the law ' (Kant, ' iNIetaph. of Morals,' in Theory of Ethics, ed. Abbott, 1879, p. 70f.). Hence, onlj- by obedience to it is free- dom possible ; for freedom is not determination b\ oneself; it is obedience to oneself. To be influenced bj
422 FEEEDOM OF THE WILL
FREEDOM OF THE WILL
anything else is to recognize the right of an external authority, to relate oneself, as a Stoic would say, to things outside one's power. But this recognition of external authority is just what St. Paul means by the Law ; whether he thinks of it as the assessor of a tyrant, as in Romans, or the slave-attendant in the father's house, as in Galatians. And what Kant calls law, St. Paul calls sonship. The difference — for of course there is a difference — is that Kant is barely a theist, St. Paul is wholly a Christian. Where Kant is conscious only of an imperative within his emancipated breast, St. Paul is conscious of a Divine Power who has sent forth the spirit of sonship into him, and a Saviour who has lifted him clean out of the sweep of every influence of heter- onomy. Freedom, for Kant, is obedience to self ; for St. Paul, obedience to a Person in whose will he acquiesces with enthusiasm. Both systems, how- ever, are definitely opposed to Butler's expedient of placing ' reasonable self-love ' on a level with conscience. In so far as Butler's conception of conscience corresponds with Kant's categorical im- perative, reasonable self-love leads to sheer heter- onomy ; and if we may compare obedience to con- science with the new life of freedom which, in St. Paul's view, is enjoyed by the Christian, self-love is nothing more than obedience to the flesh which the Christian has crucified with the passions and lusts thereof (Gal 5-'*).