KESUERECTION
RESURRECTION
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ness as Son of God, possessing that clianuter. There was soinetliing in His life wliich made this special act of power possible in His case. In addi- tion to this, another element in the experience is introduced, viz. faith. Not St. Paul only, as in 2 Co 4"", but the early Church in general, seems to have regarded the Kesurrection as a resiilt of Christ's faith, and also as an act of necessary justice on Cod's part, ' by the glory of the Father.'
These factors in the interpretation of the Kesur- rection need to be considered in order to understand the extension of the princii)le to believers. Now, the passage In Galatians already cited suggests that St. Paul, in considering the death and resur- rection of Christ from this point of view, had come to the conclusion that faith was the governing principle in Christ's life, and that he himself as a believer lived by virtue of the faith which Christ had exercised and which had brought Him through resurrection into a spiritual state in which He could realize and make good the purpose of God in His death by dwelling in those who believed on Him.
Tliis is the central idea in St. Paul's view of the Resurrection — his belief in the present spiritual existence of the same Christ whose faith during His earthly life had brought about the whole pos- sibility of resurrection, a spiritual life, and the communication of it to believers. It is a mistake to think that St. Paul separated the earthly from the heavenly Christ ; the heavenly Christ was the earthly Christ in a new state of existence, but the same in experience and personal identity. Hence, by His indwelling, the principles that had been proved in His own experience could be reproduced in those who believed on Him.
(c.) This brings us to the third set of passages, viz. those in which St. Paul develops the consequences of the indwelling of Christ for the future state of believers. The most important are Ro 8''^° especially vv."- ^", I Co 15, 2 Co 3-5, Ph S'"- »-"'. The clearest exposition of this view-point is found in 2 Co 3-5, where St. Paul develops the ministry of the Spirit in its various consequences, identi- fying Christ with the Spirit, and reaching the climax in the passage 4'^-5"'. The dying of Jesus is at work in him, and by the same spirit of faith he is certain that God will raise him with Jesus and present him along with the other believers, clothed in a new and glorious habitation prepared by God and already existing in heaven.
In the same way, in Ro 8 the consequences of the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ, again identi- fied with Christ, extend to the quickening of the mortal bodies of those who are thus dwelt in. In Ph 3 the Apostle desires to be completely identi- fied with the experiences of Christ, His death and His sufferings, in order to reach the goal of resur- rection and attain to the resurrection from among the dead.
In I Co 15 the general line of argument is: (1) the proof of the possibility of a resurrection from the resurrection of Christ accepted as a historical event ; (2) the argument from analogy, based on the Rabbinical conception of ' body,' to prove the possibility of the existence of such a thing as a spiritual body ; (3) the contrast between Christ and Adam as the respective sources of the incor- ruptible and the corruptible, the heavenly and the earthly. The Second Man, the Last Adam, is a quickening spirit ; by this title St. Paul implies all that is developed at length in Ro 8 and 2 Co 3-5. Lastly, he describes the manner in which the change from the earthly to the heavenly body is effected. Hence the general line of St. Paul's development of the doctrine is clear. As a Pharisee he held the continued existence of the soul after death ; as part of his Palestinian eschatology he held the
necessity of a resurrection to judgment of both righteous and wicked, and probably a first resur- reiaion of righteous to participation in the Mes- sianic kingdom.
Into this original stock of eschatological belief there broke the new conception of a Messiah who had died and risen. It is so clear from the Pauline correspondence that this new conception was V)ased upon what St. Paul believed to be a trustworthy historical event, sujmorted by eon- temporary evidence and confirmed for himself by his Damascus experience, that it is unnecessary to discuss the question of whether he owed this con- ception to one of the mystery-religions.
The effect of this new element was two-fold. On the one hand, it shifted the eschatological centre of interest, almost unconsciously, to the resur- rection of Christ, as 1 Co 15 shows. The resur- rection of Christ assumes a catastrophic colouring, so to sjieak : it becomes the first act of Divine intervention in the introduction of the Kingdom, the first step of a process whose culmination also has a catastrophic character derived from the original scheme of eschatology. On the other hand, it introduced into the eschatological scheme the doc- trine of the Spirit of Christ with its new ethical implications and a special theory of the way in which the presence of the Spirit operated to trans- form the whole personality of the oeliever into the likeness of the Glorified Christ.