(4) Into the contents of the Christian hope, the details of the apostolic eschatology {q.v.), it is beyond the scope of this article to enter ; but one feature, because of its distinction from, or even opposition to, the Greek view, may here be men- tioned. The Greek thinker, if he did hope for a future life, looked for the release of the soul from its imprisonment in the body — for a disembodied immortality ; but the Christian good includes not merely the survival of the soul in death, but resur- rection— the restoration of the entire personality (Ro 82», 2 Co 51-*, Ph 321), This does not involve the absurdity of a material identity of the body buried and the body raised, for St. Paul expressly distin- guishes the one from the other as the natural and the spiritual (1 Co 15^-"**), but only the conviction that the future life will be a completely human one.
(5) As we may surely reckon as an element in the Christian good the fellowship of believers, the membership of the body of Christ (1 Co 12i^"3i, Eph P^), the Koivuivia of the Spirit (2 Co 13^* : the com- mon life of the Church in the Spirit), so the Chris- tian life is not individual but universal ; it is the subjection of all things to Christ, the destruction of all evil, the cessation of all pain and grief, the victory of the saints, and God all and in all. No such wider hope inspired the Greek thinkers. It is true that the expectation of an immediate return of Christ in power and glory precludes our interpret- ing this universal good as a historical evolution of mankind in manners, morals, laws, institutions, and pieties to so glorious and blessed a consumma- tion, and we are left uncertain as to the mode in which the process is to be conceived. But the hope is a fact of apostolic life.
(6) There is one feature in the Christian good peculiar to St. Paul, As a Pharisee he had felt the burden and the bondage of the Law, and groaned under its judgment, but he had discovered its impotence, and so for him the Christian good included the end of the Law (Gal 4^^-51), for Chris- tian morality is not legal — the observance of the letter — but spiritual — the expression of the new life found in Christ (2 Co S^'^^). It may be doubted, however, whether even all believers in the Apos- tolic Age were morally mature enough to be re-
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leased from all outward restraints, and to be left only to inward constraint ; and St. Paul's counsels and commands even in his letters show that this end of the Law was ideal rather than actual. It is certain that the Christian Church in the course of its history generally has been legal rather than spiritual in its morality, and so this part of the Christian good has been unrealized.
(7) In the apostolic view of the Christian good there are two features which may be regarded as of temjjorary and local rather than of permanent and universal significance for Christian faith : (a) the expectation of the speedy Second Advent of Christ in power and glory to usher in the Last Things, which faded out of the Christian conscious- ness, with from time to time futile attempts to re- vive it, as the course of human history contra- dicted it ; and [b) the belief which became more prominent in subsequent centuries than it was in the Apostolic Age, that the evil to be overcome and destroyed was embodied in personal evil prin- ciples and powers, over whom Christ gained the victory, and from whom He efiected deliverance for the believer (Ro S^^-ss, 1 Co IS^S Eph l^i, Col 2'5). For the details on both these subjects the relevant articles must be consulted, as all that is here neces- sary is merely the mention of them for the com- pleteness of the treatment of the present topic.
Such is the Christian good ; is it regarded as destined to be universal ? Does the NT offer us a theodicy? It has been already indicated that the Christian hope does include the victory of Christ over all His foes, and the subjection of all things to Him, and at last of Himself to God (1 Co IS'-""-^) ; but these confident predictions do not clearly or fully answer the question whether all men will at last be saved — that is, become sharers of the good. While there are a few passages point- ing towards universal restoration, there are others indicating eternal punishment, and some even on Avhich has been based a theory of conditional im- mortality. This problem seems insoluble even with the data not only of the Scriptures, but also of human experience ; and accordingly, whatever Christian wishes and hopes may be, we cannot affirm that the Christian good presents the final destiny of the race in cloudless sunshine without any shadow ; and thus the believer must walk not by sight, but by faith, in the belief that what- ever the Heavenly Father does is wisest, kindest, best. As has been shown in the art. Evil, the Christian attitude is neither optimism nor pessi- mism, but meliorism — the belief that the world not only needs redemption, but is being redeemed in Christ.