Several points should be particularly noticed in this generalized, yet most vivid, transcript from experience. In the first place, St. Paul does not, here or elsewhere, regard the 'flesh' (o-dpf) as essentially evil, but as essentially weak. It is therefore accessible to the forces of evil, attbrding to them an obvious base of operations in their
siege of the inner or 'spiritual' man. If it be urged that sin is not committed until the inner nnm yields to the attack of sin, we must remember that the Hebrew psychology (which sup|ilies the real content of St. Paul's (jrcek terms) regarded the ' flesh' {ba.'iar) as a genuine element in liuman per.sonality, alive psyc^hically as well as physically. The man did sin Avhen the weakest part of his personality, viz. the flesh, yielded to sin. The often alleged dualism of St. Paul thus becomes the conflict between the stronger and the weaker elements in the unity of personality. Secondly, the whole of Christian character and conduct is related to the dominating conceiitiou of the Lord the Spirit. Through this conc('|ilioM St. Paul was able to unite two lines of OT development, viz. the experience of continuous fellowship with God which sprang from the realization of ethical ideals, and the doctrine of the intermittent and ' occa- sional ' Spirit of God. One of St. Paul's greatest services to Christian thought has been to unite these two lines, and to unite them in Christ. The Spirit of God, acting through Christ, becomes the normal principle of Christian morality, and, con- sequently, of permanent fellowship with God. Thirdly, St. Paul gives no indication that actual sin is anything but what the OT religion made it — the rebellion of the human will against the IJivine. In Ko 7 he recognizes no ' original sin,' no hereditary inlluence even, as active in producing the captivity from which the Spirit of Christ de- livers. That captivity is traced to the deceitful attack made on each successive individual by sin, the external enemy.
(c) From this point of view, we may best approach what St. Paul has to say of the racial history. For this the cardinal passage is Ro 5'-"-' — a passage difficult to interpret, not only because of its abrupt transitions, but even more because, in conventional theology, the later system of Augustinian anthro- pology has been welded into it. St. Paul is in these verses contrasting Adam and Christ as, in some sense, both unique in their influence on human history ; the debatable point is, in what sense ? The entrance of death into the world is clearly ascribed to Adam's sin, just as the entrance of new- life is ascribed to Christ's obedience (v."). But when we read that ' through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners' (v."), we must not assume with Augustine that this refers to the peccatum orirjinnU handed down by the inherent concapiscentia of the sexual act ; nor must we be influenced unconsciously by the popular science of to-day, so as to imagine that there is a reference to heredity. Here, as in the well-known .saying quoted by both Jeremiah (Sl^") and Ezekiel (IS-)— ' The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge'— it is not the biological succession of individuals that is in view, but the far-reaching conception of ' corporate re- sponsibility,' as the protest of those two proiihets makes evident enough. In their assertion of moral individualism St. Paul would have joined heartily ; but his recognition of the individual relation of men to God does not prevent him from accepting the fact that the Ishmaelites were cast out in Hagar's son (Gal 4™), and that the Edomites were ' hated ' in Esau (Ro 9'^). Just as Achan's sin brought death on his wliole family, since it brought them as a group under the ban (Jos 7-*' ^), so Adam's sin brought death on the whole h\iman race, since it constituted them ' sinners ' as a group. As a matter of fact, St. Paul adds that all men have actually sinned, though, prior to the giving of explicit law, their sin was ditterent in kind from Adam's wilful disobedience (Ro 5'^-"). But St. Paul does not connect this universality of actual sin in the race, which has justified the Divine
sentence of death upon it, with the initial sin of Aiiiini, in such a way as to make them ellcct ami cause. Such a connexion may socm obvious to a mind prepossessed by Aujiustiuiaii anthro- pology on the one hand, or by iiopuhir biological science on the other ; but tlicre is no proof tliat it was obvious to St. I'aul. In fact, as we have seen, the evidence of Ko 7 is the other way. Adam's sin was, indeed, fatal to man, since it brought the Divine penalty of death upon the race ; but St. Paul recognizes to the full the indi- vidual freedom and responsibility of its individual members, who followed in the footsteps of Adam. It sliould be noted that contemporary Jewish theology gives no sutlicient warrant for ascribing a doctrine of 'original sin' to St. Paul's teachers, but only for ascribing to them the doctrine of the ;/czcr hara, tlie evil impulse present in Adam and in successive individuals of his r.ace, though not due to his sin (cf. K. C. Porter's essay on this subject in Biblical and Semitic Studies [Yale Bicentennial Publications], 1901, pp. 93-156). Men acted like Adam because they themselves had the evil heart {4 Ezr. iii. 26). In this way, 'every one of us has been the Adam of his own soul ' {Apoc. Bar. liv. 19). We may reasonably conjecture, in the light of Ho 7, that this substantially represents St. Paul's posi- tion. B\it he has not definitely said this ; in Ko 5 his interest lies in the relation not of Adam to the race, but of Adam to Christ, i.e., in the antithesis of death and life, of the psychic and pneumatic orders of humanity. His point in Ko 5 is fairly summed up in 1 Co 15--: 'As in Adam aU die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.' The Church, as the body of Christ (1 Co 12"- =') is a new organism of life within the present general environment of death. The final redemption of the Christian will consist in the quickening of this mortal body of flesh — 'the body of this death'— into a spiritual body (Ro 8", 1 Co lo"), a body like that of the Risen Lord (Pli 3='). Tims St. Paul looks forward to escape from the fleshly weakness of the body, not, as a Greek might have done, along the line of the soul's inherent im- mortality, but, as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, in the hope of receiving a body more adequate to the needs of the soul. The resurrection of the (spiritually transformed) body will create anew the unity of personality, which physical death destroys. In view of the assertion that 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of CJod' (1 Co 15^°), we may perhaps suppose that St. Paul would postulate the original mort.ality of human nature, with a potential immortality lost through sin (Ro 5'-).