draw, when he adds, ' so as to get justified by faith in Christ and not by doing what the Law com- maiuis, for by doing what the Law commands no piTson shrill he jii.^ti/irtl.' This is St. Paul's infer- ence. It was he, not they, who made an antithesis between Christ and the Law. Instead of holding to righteousness by the Law »/«.v * Christ, the Apostle laid down the thesis : either Christ or the Law. Justification from, not by, the Law. As he put it to them bluntly, 'You are for justifica- tion by the Law ? Then you are done with Christ, you have deserted grace' (tlal o*).
The further development of this thought belongs to the discussion of the Law. All that we require to note at this point, for our immediate purpose, is that St. Paul treats the Law as a whole, instead of distinguishing, as we might expect him to do for the sake of lucidity and logic, between the ethical and the ceremonial sections. In Romans it is pos.sible to feel that the ethical is uppermost in his mind, in Galatians the ceremonial. Yet even in the disparaging references of the latter Epistle, he has room for the great saying, that the entire Law is summed up in the single command to ' love your neighbour as yourself (5'''). The fact is, he invari- ably regards the Law as the suiii)Osed waj' to life, from the Jewish 'standpoint, and argues that life comes by another way, by faith in Christ. Justi- fication means life, and justification is based on the death and resurrection of Christ, which superseded the Law as a levelation of God's mind and will for sinful men. Besides, he actually adds, in pre- Christian Judaism the Law did not lead to life ; it stirred vip evil in a man, and reduced the earnest to despair. Above all, it never elicited faith. Doing, not trust, was its watchword.
This criticism of the works of the Law has been itself subjected to criticism. Was the antithesis fair to Jewish piety? it has been asked. Did not St. Paul, in the stress of controxcrsy, exaggerate the position of his opponents? When he criticized them for the place they assigned to ' works of the Law,' what place did he leave for works, or, as we should say, for ethics, in his own system ? Does not his own appeal, in non-controversial moments and for practical needs, to the Divine judgment on works indicate that he was not really so far from the Jewish Christian position as his controversial passages would seem to claim? If it is true that the Pharisees almost deified the Law, is it not the case that Paul as nearly caricatured it ?
So far as these criticisms are relevant to the special topic of righteousness in the Pauline system, they must be considered from the historica'l point of view, that what St. Paul encountered was not the OT type of devotion to the Law and righteous- ness such as is presented in the 119th Psalm, but a Pharisaic type of piety in which he had himself been trained. We can see now that he was really reviving the prophetic spirit of protest against an undue emphasis on the external, which had the unhealthy ettect of fostering self-righteousness, and reviving it on a higher level. He insists, with uncompromising rigour, e.g., on the paramount significance of faith, not as one means of pleasing God but as the means, the source and centre of true righteousness. In this, he opposes Jewish legalism, as Jesus did. ' With Paul as with Jesus, faith is
* In Ac 13^9 St. Luke appears to attribute this idea to St. Paul. ' Remission of sins i.s proclaimed to you throujrh liitn, and by him everj'one who believes is absolved from ail tliat the Law of Moses never could absolve you from (fiiitaiwfijrai).' livit the languaj^'e does not make it quite clear that St. Luke tliouf^ht justification by faith came in to remedy the defective pardon of the Law. At any rate it is not so clear as the narrower identi- fication of justification with aii>€tTi% a/xapridji'. St. Paul, on occasion, could speak of a man beinff 'absolved from sin' (Ro fi", SeSiKOl'wTai an'o ttJ? a/iaprias), hut he is speaking of a dead man in a coiileniporary mode of thinking, and using this rather as an illustration.
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RIGHTEOUSNESS
the decisive tiling. St. Paul has found the same God as Jesus : he has learnt that tiod is far greater and His demands far more aearihing and lofty than the Jew believed." The controversy between Jesus and the legalism of the I'liarisces is practically reproduced in the criticisms passed by St. I'aul, the quondam Pharisee, upon tlie doctrine of right- eousness by works. The religious interest is the same. Faith is conditioned by the character of the God who is revealed to the soul ; and our tJod, saj^s St. Paul after Jesus, though he says it in his own way, is One who gives Himself freely to man in his utter need. The primary thought of right- eousness is for him not task but gift. St. Paul's technical phraseologj- must not be allowed to obscure the relation of his teaching at this point to the teaching of Jesus upon the Father who freely gives to His children, and gives them life with Himself. The Apostle's phrase, ' righteous- ness by faith,' aims at the same idea of life im- parted freely by God, for justilication is not a formal verdict or declaration — that would not alter a man's nature or create a new personality. Justi- fication is to treat as right or just, no doubt. But this is for St. Paul the action not of a judge but of a Father, and everything depends on the character and purpose of Him who determines to treat thus the erring |)enitent. How is it right ? When is it wisi- ? To Jesus, the character of the Father is a .sufficient answer by itself. So it is to St. Paul ; only, he looks through the Cross to God's char- acter, and also interprets the Cross through God's character, since the Cross is the supreme revealing action of God. The Cross proves that God is a God of love, a God who will have mercy even on the ungodly ; it also proves that He does not condone sin. The sinner can trust the love of it, and yet be sure this mercy is not dealing lightly with his sin. Hence faith arises, the faith that justifies. The words differ, but the spirit is akin to the interest which tinderlay the teaching of Jesus about the conditions which evoked trust in God.