Thence we pass to another metaphor — that of swallowing up (the Greek Karavivu is also used metaphorically by Aristophanes). This passage is a further instance of St. Paul's method of develop- ing one metaphor out of another.
1 Co 7' : 'it is better to marry than to burn ' — the metaphor is obvious.
Tit 1'-: 'Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle gluttons' (lit. 'bellies') — a quotation from Epimenides. For the comparison of men to beasts see also 2 P 2==. The metaphor of the sow is based on an apophthegm of Heraclitus (Wendland, quoted by Clemen in Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish Sources, Eng. tr. , p. 50).
So far the Pauline metaphors we have been con- sidering have been simple and of fairly obvious interpretation. We must now pass to some less clear aspects of his figurative language, and this will take us rather deeper into his theology. ' The reader who passes from the early traditions of the life of Jesus to the letters of the apostle Paul feels himself at once in another atmosphere. A be- wildering variety of ideas is suggested to him. Speculations of theology and philosophy, glimpses of Deity and hints of various modes of causation, large conceptions of Providence and Creation, strange and indistinct forms of Law and Sin and Death half persons and half powers, quasi-magical notions attached to particular material media, are all blended with the impassioned emotion with which the writer contemplates the love which prompted the Father to send forth his Son, and the love which moved the Son to forsake his high estate and give himself for men ' (J. E. Carpenter in HJ, Suppl., 1909 : 'Jesus or Christ,' p. 238 f.). This view of the Apostle's theology, though not always expressed so well or so clearly, is at the back of the minds of many modern critics of St. Paul. But is it not safer to say that St. Paul merely drew on contemporary philosophy and speculation when searching for metaphorical ex- pressions wherein to convey the spiritual truths he so earnestly desired to emphasize?
A crucial passage is Ro 8'' : ' For I am per- suaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us . . .' 'St. Paul held that there was a world of spirits brought into being like the rest of crea- tion by Christ.' 'It is quite in the manner of St. Paul to personify abstractions' (Sanday-Headlam, Romans^, ad loc). Now, if St. Paul really believed the creatures which he enumerates to have a spiritual existence in the heavenly spheres, we are brought at once into the region of mystical theology ; if he is merely personifying for the sake of rhetorical eti'ect, we are simply dealing with metaphors. St. Paul certainly believed in the existence of angels, but how did he regard sin and death ? Sin is to him something more than an act
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or acts of transgiession, move even than a state ; it is a power, at least half personilied in the mind of the Apostle. Thus his lan<,'iiai;e in Ko 5'-, 'as throng]] one man sin entered into the world and deatli tlironf,'h sin,' and v.''', ' death reifjiied from Adam until Moses,' is something more than meta- phor. Sin and Death even if not persons are at least powers with objective existence. (The close connexion between Sin and Death liad appeared before St. Paul — first perhaps in Sir 25-' — and was frequent in Jewish Apocalyptic.) But St. Paul passes quickly from what is metaphorical to what is not : thus in 1 Co 15" (quoting Is 25") : 'Death is swallowed up in victory'; in the mind of the Apostle. Death may be half personiMod, hut victory hardly. Frequently it has to be left open what exactly St. Paul does mean. He does not dehne his terms : and his theology, here as else- wliere, is generally implicit rather than explicit. ' In ancient literature it is hard to distinguish between a person and a personilication. Animistic ideas lie deep in the naive, popular consciousness' (H. A. A. Kenned J', St. Paulas Conceptions of the Last Things, 1904, p. lOSn.).
With these facts in view, we must now consider a few specially difficult and obscure passages.
1 Co 10^: 'And the rock was Christ.' St. Paul has just been referring to the passing of the Israelites through the sea. He says the Israelites ' ate the same spiritual meat ' and ' drank the same spiritual drink.' It is more usual to conceive of the Jewish sacraments as types of the Christian. St. Paul refers to the Rabbinic legend that the rock followed the Israelites during their march. ' Wherever the Tabernacle was pitched, the princes came and sang to the rock, "Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it," whereupon the waters gushed forth afresh ' (HDB, art. 'Rock,' iv. 290). It has been remarked : ' We must not disgrace Paul by making him say that the pre-incarnate Christ followed the march of Israel in the shape of a lump of rock !' (quoted by Findlay in EGT, ad loe.). But (1) it seems clear from elsewhere that St. Paul believed in the pre-existence of Christ (Ro 8', 2 Co 8') ; (2) St. Paul seems to follow his custom of personilication. Sometimes water is personified in that it is made to speak ; cf. Is 55'"'', Wis 1 1*, Sir 24>3-=', Rev 22". Philo also {Quod deterius potiori, p. 31 [Mangey, i. 213]) calls the Divine Wisdom a rock, and makes it the same as the manna. E. A. Abbott (Son of Man, p. 649) has taken these passages in support of the conception of speaking waters. Meanwhile the other aspect of the metaphor is shown in the idea of God as a Rock (because He remains faithful and abides). ' As in Ro 9^ St. Paul affirms of Christ that He " is over all, God blessed for ever," so here he identilies Him with the "Rock of Ages" (Is '26* RVm) ' (Otton, loc. cit. infra). It seems as if St. Paul, taking the Rabbinic legend, without necessarily accepting it as literal truth, blended with it the ideas of the ' speaking waters,' the manna, and the everlasting rock of Isaiah. All this is again linked up with baptism and the eucharist — the only place in the NT where the two great Christian sacraments are mentioned together. Again we see St. Paul's intellectual subtlety used as a vehicle of spiritual truth.