(e) Survey. — When we survey the Pauline doctrine of the Law as a whole, we see that it is quite Avrong to attribute to the Apostle any form of antinomianism. Of the operation and ])urpose of the Law he doubtless uses language which could not but have a decidedly antinomian sound to the ears of a Jewish Christian. When he sjjeaks of the Law as a power that stimulates sin and brings about death, and of the ministration mediated by
* Cf. on this point senerally, A. Harnack, Neue Untersuch. tmgcn zur Apostelgeschichte, Leipzig-, 1911, p. 21 ff.
LAW
LAW
691
Moses as a ministration of condemnation (2 Co S*"'"), one involuntarily asks how such utterances can be reconciled with the praise of, and the delight in, the Law which we hnd, e.g., in the Psahns (cf. Ps 198^- 40^ 119 pa-'**'"). And how does his description of the period between Moses and Christ as a time during which there was no faith and the people groaned under the yoke of the Law (Gal 31"--^) harmonize with the OT ?
As regards the latter question, the Apostle does not of course mean to deny that faith was a power among God's people after Moses as well as before him. He is quite assured that, besides the Mosaic legislation, Israel had also the adoption, the cove- nants, the Temple service, and the promises (Ro 9*), that it was the people of liope (Eph 2^^*), and that in a sense Christ was with it (1 Co 10^-^), just as in the wilderness wanderings the people received prototypes of the Christian sacraments (vv.^"^), and in their sacrificial worship prototypes of the sacri- fice of Christ (5^ ; cf. Eph 5'-). As a matter of fact, St. Paul saw in the OT dispensation in general, as recorded in the Scriptures, a typical prefiguration of the NT dispensation (cf. 1 Co 10«-", Ro 15^ Col 2"). And, although he speaks of the NT salvation in its universal application as having been a Divine mystery until its manifestation in Jesus Christ (Ro 162"-, Eph 19 35- », Col l-«), yet he regards it as liaving been foreshown in the prophetic writings (Ro 1'-' 3^1 16-®). Hence the people of the Law can- not have been wholly without faith, and thus what St. Paul means in Gal 3-^ is simply that Christian faith as the one exclusive principle of righteousness was not revealed until Christ came.
In the OT, doubtless, the supreme principle was the Law. Yet the Law did not operate in a vacuum ; devout Israelites always saw it against the background of grace. Every expression of delight in the Law presupposes faith in the gracious and merciful God who ' passes over trans- gression.' Moreover, the Law was not as yet recognized in all its depth and rigour ; in reality, the people lived in a spiritual environment of mingled Law and grace. Such a state of matters, however, could not be permanently borne. The two elements necessarily tended to disengage and separate themselves from each other. In Pharisaic Judaism the principle of the Law moved ever further apart from the principle of grace, and the Law itself came to be regarded more and more as a legal contract by which performance and recom- pense were rigidly adjusted to each other. The religious untenability of such a position could remain unrecognized only so long as the Law was understood in a purely external sense. But as soon as it came to be interpreted in that profound inner sense which Jesus indicated, it necessarily became obvious that legalism could only lead to despair, and that there could be no other principle of salvation than grace. The Judaizers, the op- ponents of St. Paul who started from Pharisaism, were legalists in their way of thought, conceiving of grace — and faith — as in a proper sense merely supplementary to an imperfect fulfilment of the Law ; in other words, they regarded Christianity as only a perfected Judaism. St. Paul, on the other hand, although his starting-point too was Pharisaic legalism, combined therewith that inward inter- pretation of the Law which Jesus had instituted, and saw that the question at issue was not that of a synthesis of Law and faith, but simply that of a choice between the two, i.e. between Judaism as a religion of Law and Christianity as the religion of grace. If we are to estimate aright his utter- ances regarding the function of the Law, we must always bear in mind that they have a polemical setting, and that he is speaking of the Mosaic legislation and the Old Covenant not in their
historical conditions, but in their character as principles. This explains the apparent bias of his statements regarding the Law.
Taken as a whole, however, St. Paul's doctrine of the Law does not issue from a belief that the miserable state of mankind is due to the Law in itself, and that accordingly God had abolished the Law, and set grace in its stead. The Apostle's view is rather that human wretchedness arises from the sinful flesh, and from the Law only in so far as it is made impotent by the flesh (Ro 8*), and so intensifies the misery of sin. Thus the work of Christ was to dissolve the immemorial connexion between these two powers — law and sin — on the one side, and man on the other. But what the work of Christ is in the last resort de- signed to secure is that the ideal demand of the Law shall be fulfilled (Ro %*). The essential purport of the Pauline doctrine has been aptly expressed by Augustine in the words : ' The Law is given that Grace may be sought ; Grace is given that the Law may be fulfilled.'