3. The Pauline writings. — The central passage for St. Paul's thought on the experience of re- generation is Ko 6-8. It is evidently autobio- graphical in fact as well as in rhetorical form, and is a wonderful piece of self-revelation. It is a classic of religious experience, and yields in a most interesting way to clear psychological interpreta- tion. The passage exhibits what the experience of regeneration really is in the case of such persons as are conscious of what has been called ' the divided self.' It is the case, familiar enough in some form to most of us, where all one's etliical ideals reinforced by education lead in one direction, while the strength of many habits and even of primitive instinct (if iinSvfiia in 7' is to be under- stood as 'lust') impel one in another direction. When attention is concentrated upon duty, a man acts according to his sense of higher values ; when impulse determines his conduct, he is false to his better knowledge. And so, in spite of longings and endeavours after moral victory, defeat is the constant result. To the earnest Pharisee the terrible impasse is reached, that he wants to be righteous but he cannot (7-''-') : he must actually do what he hates (7'°). Some new idea with very high emotional qualit3' is e.ssential to secure the concentration of attention on the nobler course of conduct. This comes to St. Paul in his conversion experience. He feels himself thereupon released from the thrall of the lower self and empowered to live in the higher self. The new idea has the emotive power necessary to make his ethical ideals actually attainable, and so he conies into the ex- perience of the peace of the unified self (7-''- -^ ; cf. 5'). An element of this new idea that has strong emotional value is the belief that there awaits the victor in the conflict an eternity of splendid peace in the full enjoyment of all those experiences for which now he must contend so hardly (8'*-"). This creates a condition distinctly favourable for pursuing lines of conduct conducive to the desired end. The transformation has thus taken place, that ethical ideals are no longer merely intellectu- ally conceived, but have gained an emotional quality that renders the inliibition of contrary tendencies easy and natural (8-). Of course under strong provocation the old impulses to wrong conduct would revive, and sometimes so strongly as to overcome the new inhibitions and pass over into action. But the experience of victory and unity would be so vivid that this re-emergence of the divided self would be painful, the new desir- able lines of conduct would renew their hold upon the attention, the inhibitions would regain tlieir sway, and peace would again ensue. (This involves an interpretation of 7'"-^ as a continuous experience, and not merely a post-conversion memory. )
St. Paul's own interpretation of this regenera- tion experience is based on the antagonism be- tween the ffdpf and the Tri-eu/xo. Whether his psychology involves an actual anthropological
dualism it is perhaps not necessary to decide. He was probably not conscious of attempting a philo- sophical explanation, but was using the currently conceived antagonisiii between llesh and spirit to express the fact of liis own experience and observa- tion. The resolution of the antagonism is to St. Paul a Divine miracle of grace (7'"'). The flesh is gaining the victory, but the Divine Spirit conies to the reinfon^enient of the human spirit and over- comes the flesh. St. Paul conceives the Trfcv/xa. 0eoij as an actual external power coming to the aid of the believer, as a donation to be received (8'° ; cf. 2 Co 1", Eph I'M™). It is diflicult here to follow him exactly because we are not sure of his psychology, but it is not atall dilUcult to arrive at his practical purpose. He is not so much concerned to explain the religious experience of the Christian, except to ascribe it to the power of God, as he is to insist that it must be a moral experience, involving necessarily the active moral endeavour of the believer. The passage is primarily hortatory, only incidentally doctrinal. St. Paul knows that eternal vigilance has been the condition of his own moral victory, God-given though he believes it to be, and he is anxious for his readers not to fail of victory by any easy accejitance of an ex- ternal salvation.
The four rich metaphors of this passage, of which regeneration is not one, are all employed with this hortatorj' aim. (1) Death and resurrection. — Under the symbol of baptism, the believer is pic- tured as dead and risen again, in order to en- force the obligation of living in newness of life (6'-"). (2) Change of masters.— The ligure of the bond.servant is used to press the alternative that we belong either to sin or to righteousness. Our conduct determines which is master (6'^-^). (.3) Re- marriage of a widow. — Just as a widow assumes a new loyalty when she marries a new husband, so are we free from the old sense of moral obligations and under the highest necessity of being true to the new (7''''). (4) Legal adoption of children. — The most significant figure of adoption is employed to indicate a new relationship to God attested by the presence of the Divine Spirit, enabling the believer to call God his Father. But this is all dependent upon actual life in the Spirit (or in the spirit, conceived as the higher human nature) (gi2-i7)_ fijg Apostle is peculiarly careful that these metaphors shall not be pushed to an un- ethical conclusion. He sees the danger in his own day, which was fully realized in the history of the doctrine of regeneration. If any reader assumes that, having been baptized, he is therefore dead to the old life, St. Paul is not afraid to present to him the paradox, that the man who has died to the flesh and is thus released from its bondage (6^- '8'°) is still to go on putting to death the doings of the body (8"). In close juxtaposition he speaks of a definite bestowal of the Spirit (aorist ^Xd/3f7-e, 8"), with a constitution of the status of adoption, and of a relationship to God contingent on an ever- present obedience {Scroi fiYoirai, 8'^). So the new life of the Christian is at the same time an ethical achievement and a supernatural gift. St. Paul does not carefully distinguisli between these. They are merged in any vital religious experience, so that the regenerate man is the one who is in the actual experience of living the new life of moral victory (8°).