The advance in Christological ideas which had taken place by the time of the Pauline Ejiistles must be ascribed to an innate necessity of thought. The concept of pre-existence lay implicit in the Church's most primitive consciousness of the Crucified and Exalted Christ as Saviour. The form in which this first found expression was Messianic. Jesus was the Lord Christ, the Person by whom the people of God were to be turned from their iniquities, and the Divine Kingdom brought to men. Without intellectual perception that this implied His proper Divinity, the Exalted Lord was felt as God ; the instincliive attitude towards Him was that of faith and worship. But in a community which entirely retained the funda- mental theocentric postulate of OT religion, such an attitude could not long remain merely instinct- ive. Granted the premise that Jesus is Saviour and that only the Eternal God can save, we pass, logically, at a single step from the Acts of the Apostles into Colossians. The inevitaVile con- clusion, slowly as it may come to formulation, is that in Him the fullness of the Godhead dwells ; otherwise it is a man, not God, who takes the central place in faith's universe. And to connect the Historical Christ with the being of Eternal God, the category of pre-existence was indis- pensable ; for to Jewish monotheism the idea of BeoTToirjais — that any one should become God — was unthinkable. He who was Divine unto everlasting must have been Divine from everlasting ; in what- ever sense God is preternatural, in the same sense must Christ also be.
Further, there are two lines along which this necessity of thought is seen to be especially urgent.
{a) Ethical. — It cannot be said that the great ethical appeal of the gospel to self-sacrificing love is explicit in its first proclamation. It is implicit there in its central truth of the suffering Messiah ; but the presentation is shaped by the polemical necessities of the hour, and the chief aim is to establish that the Crucified Jesus is Lord rather than to emphasize that His sovereignty is won by sacrifice. In St. Paul's Epistles the ethical ap- peal is dominant throughout. His experience of salvation was an exjjerience of forgiveness and eternal life bestowed with an unspeakable fervour of Divine love — love that by infinite sacrifice reconciled the sinner unto God. And in his con- ception of this love, the pre-existence of Christ had a two- fold function, (i.) It raised the earthly manifestation to infinitude. The redeeming sacri fice of Christ was not a love that was commensur- able with any human self-sacrifice. It is voluntary poverty seen again.st a background of Divine wealth. The most amazing in the series of His self-emptyings is the first — the choosing to re- nounce the Divine form of existence for another in which He was destined to reach the absolute
•266 PRE-EXISTENCE OF CHRIST
PRESENCE
point of liuniiliation and safl'ering. This was tlie love beyond compare, passing Ivnowledge. (ii.) In the same way, we may suppose, the con(:e))tion of pre-existence lielped St. I'aul to relate the love of Christ to the love of God. It is not inconceiv- able, indeed, that St. Paul should have found in the historical life and death of Je.sus ample reason for such ex|)ressions as, 'Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable ^'ift,' ' He that withheld not his own Son ' ; but liow much more amazing and sub- duing is tlie thought, if the Son thus ' delivered up for us all' was God's 'own image,' llis ' lirst- begotten before every creature.' It scarcely per- mits of doubt that this was the thought in the Apostle's mind.
(b) Soteriulugical. — Salvation in the full sense includes not merely a subjective change in man, but a corresponding change in man's environment. No more than humanity itself does nature em- body the perfect linal will of God. In its present constitution it is the correlative of human sin ; it lies under the dominion of ' principalities and powers ' that are unfriendly to man ; and for man to be spiritually renewed and reconciled to God, and yet left in the midst of a hostile universe, would be no complete redemption. Thus, even in St. Paul's earlier Epistles it is seen that Christ's redeeming work must extend its influence over all created things (1 Co 15=-'-=«, Ro 8'»--" s'-s") ; and in Colossians the cosmic Kedemption, the vision of a ' Christianized universe,' becomes one of the Apostle's central themes. The Church's Lord and Redeemer must be Lord and Reconciler of all things (Col li5-=»2"- '* ; cf. Pli 2'»- "). But this is possible only to One in whom the undivided full- ness of the Godhead dwells (Col 1"- ^c 2»- '" ; cf. Ph 2"- '), who is the one Mediator between God and the created universe. And this, again, involves His pre-existence (ttputStoko^ Trdcrijs ktI<t€ois, Col V^). Only He who is the origin.al and eternal principle of unity in all things (1"), who stands in such a relation to God {eiKLdv toQ dopdrov Beov, V^) that this must be His relation to the universe, can bring the universe into hnal unity with the Divine character and purpose. Only He who is the mediatorial beginning can be the mediatorial end ; only the First can be the Last.