RIGHTEOUSNESS
RIGHTEOUSNESS
385
quality of the soul, but the vicUiins of the whole Mature to God's apiKvil and oiler in the gospel. 'J'liere must he no thout;ht uf credit in this initial surrender, St. Paul insists. Genuine trust clears every trace of .such a mood out of the soul. ' In the work of man's salvation an unconditioned initiative belongs to God, and all that is rec[uired of man is tlie unreserved abandonment of himself to what (iod has done. That is faith in tlie sense of St. Taul.'* But there is a tendency in human nature, not simply in Pharisaism, to evade or modify this unqualilied demand ; it is a tendency whicli'may lie due, in part, to conscientiotis feeling and ethical principle, but none the less it is out of place. St. Paul felt this strongly, and it is from liis sense of the religious principle involved, not simply owing to the exigencies ot theological con- troversy, that he sharply reiterates the antithesis between faith and works. For him there was only one way to be right with God, and the only assurance of being on that way was the sense of having risen above the mists of religious self-satis- faction.
(ii.) One special temptation of the Pharisaic Kaix- »)(ris was particularism, and therefore faith also swept away the system of ideas which gave the Jew or Jewish proselyte an exclusive or pre- eminent claim on God's favour. In this aspect, too, faith was not arbitrary. It was bound up for St. Paul with the universal scope of the gospel. Thus, in Romans for example, immediately after the words on Koiixics which have just been quoted, he adds : ' We hold a man is justihed by faith apart from deeds of the Law altogether. Or, is God only the God of Jews? Is he not the God of Gentiles as well ? Surely he is. Well then, there is one God, a God who will justify the uncircum- cised as they believe and the uncircumcised on the score of faith' (S-*"**). The argument is that God as One is the same for all, and faith is the one, common method of being right with Him. To have faith, you do not need to have the Law or to be a Jew (circumcised). 'I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel,' said Jesus once of a pagan. St. Paul generalizes the same conviction. He had the palpable fact before him, that Gentiles could be and were being saved apart from the Law. If a man can be right with God apart from the Law, then faith is universal ; or, vice versa, as faith is a universal instinct, it implies a universal range for the faith of the gospel. In Romans and Galatians, through the abstruse, winding argu- ments upon righteousness, two thoughts are con- stantly before St. Paul's mind : one is that Christi- anity is a religion of grace which evokes faith, the other is that it is a religion for mankind. These are cognate thoughts, and Gal 3, e.f).,f is a series of curious illustrations and exegetical arguments on both. Thus, after contrasting the Law and faith, he suddenly goes off in 3-' : ' faith has come, and we are wards no longer ; you are all sons of God by your faith in Christ Jesus. . . . There is no room for Jew or Greek, there is no room for slave or freeman, there is no room for male or female : you are all one in Clirist Jesus.' Faith at once suggests to him the catholicity and humanity of the new religious order. It supersedes exelusive- ness. Christianity as the redemptive religion, basing righteousness on faith, transcends the divisions of race and class and sex which contem- porary religions, especially Judaism, recognized. This is what Jowett J meant when he declared that ' the whole doctrine of righteousness by faith may be said to be based in a certain sense on fact,
* Denney, Erp, 6th ser., iv. 90.
t Cf. the present writer's Paut and PauUniam, London, 1910, p. 65 t. t Epistles of St. Paul to the Thess., Gal. and Rom., i. 148. VOL. 11. — 25
on two great facts especially — the conversion of the Apostle himself, anil the conversion of the Gentiles.' Again we see the speciKcally religious interest which underlay the Apostle's antithesis between faith and works. It is not a ])iece of scholasticism, hut the interpretation of God's acts in history and experience, an interpretation which was meant to be as uiuiompromising as the facts on which it rested were decisive.
Ohservc, St. Paul's argument is not 'Have faith like Abraham.' Tliat would leave out Christ. He arijues 'You are all sons of God by your faith in Christ Jesus.' ** It is not by imitating Abrahani's intuition of trust, but by faith in God as revealed in Christ His Son, that you are members of His household. With Christ, faith receives for the first time its proper and full object— the adequate, absolute revelation of the Divine purpose for men. St. Paul does not even call on Christians to have faith like Christ, to believe in God as Jesus believed. ' Faith such as Jesus had ' is not a Pauline conception. It is surely impossible to interpret the phrase ttictti? 'lyjtrov as if it meant 'the faith of Jesus ' ; what it does mean is faith in the gracious will of God manifested in Christ, a faitli which transforms the personality into His Spirit. 'The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and ffave up him- self for me' (Gal 2'-'^). This is almost the nearest approach (yet cf. Ro 3", Gal 2^6) which St. Paul makes to speakinp of Triffrevf tf Xpt<TT(JJ, as he speaks of TrtcTeOeif 9ew. For him, Christ ' Is the object' of faith so far, that in him, especially in his death and resurrection, the favourable will of God, whicli is the real object of religious trust, has been revealed.' t This revelation was not made t)y a legal act ; it was shown in devotion to the point of death, and consequently it can elicit devotion from the heart which seeks and finds in it union with the object of its trust and love.