The Apostle's allusions to the Judgment are neither few nor ambiguous, yet Ave have to take account of the perplexing fact that, in those pass- ages where he gives a detailed programme of the End, not only is all reference to the great event omitted, but no place seems to be left for it. In 1 Th 4^^-^^ we read of a resurrection of believers
G64 JUDGMEIS"!, DAMXATION
JUDGME^sT-SEAT
who have died and of a gathering of these and of living believers to meet the Lord in the air and be for ever with Him, but there is no mention of a resurrection of the wicked and a Final Judgment. These events seem to be excluded. So is it also in 1 Co 15-^'-^. Though the picture here is more detailed, the resurrection of the wicked and the Judgment find no place in it. And in 2 Co 5^'^ and Ph 1-^ the Apostle speaks as if death at once ushered the believer into the presence of Clirist. To dei^art is to be with Christ. Here not only the Judgment, but the wiiole drama of the End, in- cluding the Parousia, falls away. How are we to account for this perplexing fact ? That St. Paul ever consciously broke with the apocalyptic tradi- tion in any of its main features is incredible. In Philippians, one of tiie later Epistles, he still bids his readers expect tlie Parousia (4^). ]\Iore can be said for the hypothesis that his ardent longing for union with Christ leads him to overleap inter- vening events and hasten to the goal. This, how- ever, is not the whole explanation. The truth is that there are elements in the Apostle's tliought which, though he is hardly conscious of the fact, are carrjdng him away from the apocalyptic scheme. In Judaism the Judgment has its main significance as the instrument for effecting a separation be- tween the rigliteous and the wicked. But for St. Paul this separation has already been virtually effected. B^^ the fact of their unbelief the wicked are already condemned ; by the fact of their faith the righteous are already justified. It is true that the Apostle does not think of the believer's present state of salvation as absolute. But against this we have to set the emphasis which he places on the element of assurance. ' Who is he that shall condemn ? It is Christ Jesus that died ! ' Had the Judgment been to St. Paul all that it was to a pious Jew, he could hardly, in his account of the End and in his contemplation of death, have left it unnoticed. In the Fourth Gospel, to which we now turn, this drift from apocalyptic is much more pronounced.
5. In the Fourth Gospel. — No more than St. Paul does the writer of the Fourth Gospel con- template a formal breach with the traditional apocalyptic ideas. 'The hour cometh,' Christ is represented as saying, 'in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his (the Son of man's) voice, and shall come fortii ; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done ill unto the resurrection of judgment' (S-**- -^ ; of. 12«, 1 Jn 4"). But, if the Evangelist yields this recognition to ti-aditional views, his own peculiar thought moves on other lines. The judg- ment on whicii the stress falls is that which Christ accomplished in the course of His earthly ministry and is always accomplishing. While He lived on earth. He was already invested with the sovereign power to judge. ' P'or judgment I am come into the world, tliat they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind ' (9^^ 5-^ gi5. 16 12*'). If passages appear in wliicli He is made to disclaim the office of Judge — ' I came not to judge the world but to save the world' — tiiey are added in order, by seeming contradiction, to drive thought deeper (12^^ 5^^ 3'^). His real pur- pose is, indeed, to save, but none the less His ap- pearance in tlie world has the inevitable result that a separation is etlected between tiie children of light and the children of darkness. The former are attracted to Christ, to find in Him their salva- tion ; the latter are repelled and driven into iios- tility. In the attitude wliicii a man takes up towards Christ he is already jutlged. ' This is the condemnation tliat light is come into tlie world, but men loved the darkness rather tiian the light' (3'*). In the matter of doom we iind a similar
shifting of the centre of gravity from the future to the present. Sin's real punishment is not physical death or even suffering, but exclusion from the higher life that comes into being through the birth from above. ' He that heareth my word . . . hath eternallife, and cometh not in to judgement, but hath passed out of death into life ' (o-"*). The popular notion of hell disappears as completely as in St. Paul.
But notwithstanding this .spiritualizing train of thought, the traditional ai^ocalyptic notions — the Parousia, a resurrection of the just and unjust, linal judgment by Christ and eternal punishment for the lost — succeeded in maintaining themselves in the Church's faith. Not till the introduction of the idea of purgatory do we meet with any import- ant modification of this scheme. And it was not till the beginning of the 3rd cent., with Origen, Cyprian, and the Gregorys, that the idea of purgatory began to emerge.