§ 71. The Gentile Christian Theology. Paul and the Gospel of Faith.
(See the Lit. in § 29, pp. 280 sqq.)
The Gentile Christian type of the gospel is embodied in the writings of Paul and Luke, and in the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews.
The sources of Paul's theology are his discourses in the Acts (especially the speech on the Areopagus) and his thirteen Epistles, namely, the Epistles to the Thessalonians--the earliest, but chiefly practical; the four great Epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans, which are the mature result of his conflict with the Judaizing tendency; the four Epistles of the captivity; and the Pastoral Epistles. These groups present as many phases of development of his system and discuss different questions with appropriate variations of style, but they are animated by the same spirit, and bear the marks of the same profound and comprehensive genius.
Paul is the pioneer of Christian theology. He alone among the apostles had received a learned rabbinical education and was skilled in logical and dialectical argument. But his logic is vitalized and set on fire. His theology springs from his heart as well as from his brain; it is the result of his conversion, and all aglow with the love of Christ; his scholasticism is warmed and deepened by mysticism, and his mysticism is regulated and sobered by scholasticism; the religious and moral elements, dogmatics, and ethics, are blended into a harmonious whole. Out of the depths of his personal experience, and in conflict with the Judaizing contraction and the Gnostic evaporation of the gospel be elaborated the fullest scheme of Christian doctrine which we possess from apostolic pens. It is essentially soteriological, or a system of the way of salvation. It goes far beyond the teaching of James and Peter, and yet is only a consistent development of the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels. [774]
The Central Idea.
Paul's personal experience embraced intense fanaticism for Judaism, and a more intense enthusiasm for Christianity. It was first an unavailing struggle of legalism towards human righteousness by works of the law, and then the apprehension of divine righteousness by faith in Christ. This dualism is reflected in his theology. The idea of righteousness or conformity to God's holy will is the connecting link between the Jewish Saul and the Christian Paul. Law and works, was the motto of the self-righteous pupil of Moses; gospel and faith, the motto of the humble disciple of Jesus. He is the emancipator of the Christian consciousness from the oppressive bondage of legalism and bigotry, and the champion of freedom and catholicity. Paul's gospel is emphatically the gospel of saving faith, the gospel of evangelical freedom, the gospel of universalism, centring in the person and work of Christ and conditioned by union with Christ. He determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified; but this included all--it is the soul of his theology. The Christ who died is the Christ who was raised again and ever lives as Lord and Saviour, and was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. [775] A dead Christ would be the grave of all our hopes, and the gospel of a dead Saviour a wretched delusion. "If Christ has not been raised then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain." [776] His death becomes available only through his resurrection. Paul puts the two facts together in the comprehensive statement: "Christ delivered up for our trespasses, and raised for our justification." [777] He is a conditional universalist; he teaches the universal need of salvation, and the divine intention and provision for a universal salvation, but the actual salvation of each man depends upon his faith or personal acceptance and appropriation of Christ. His doctrinal system, then, turns on the great antithesis of sin and grace. Before Christ and out of Christ is the reign of sin and death; after Christ and in Christ is the reign of righteousness and life.
We now proceed to an outline of the leading features of his theology as set forth in the order of the Epistle to the Romans, the most methodical and complete of his writings. Its central thought is: The Gospel of Christ, a power of God for the salvation of all men, Jew and Gentile. [778]
1. The Universal Need of Salvation.--It arises from the fall of Adam and the whole human race, which was included in him as the tree is included in the seed, so that his one act of disobedience brought sin and death upon the whole posterity. Paul proves the depravity of Gentiles and Jews without exception to the extent that they are absolutely unable to attain to righteousness and to save themselves. "There is none righteous, no, not one." They are all under the dominion of sin and under the sentence of condemnation. [779] He recognizes indeed, even among the heathen, the remaining good elements of reason and conscience, [780] which are the connecting links for the regenerating work of divine grace; but for this very reason they are inexcusable, as they sin against better knowledge. There is a conflict between the higher and the lower nature in man (the nous, which tends to God who gave it, and the sarx, which tends to sin), and this conflict is stimulated and brought to a crisis by the law of God; but this conflict, owing to the weakness of our carnal, fallen, depraved nature, ends in defeat and despair till the renewing grace of Christ emancipates us from the curse and bondage of sin and gives us liberty and victory. In the seventh chapter of the Romans, Paul gives from his personal experience a most remarkable and truthful description of the religious history of man from the natural or heathen state of carnal security (without the law, Rom. 7:7-9) to the Jewish state under the law which calls out sin from its hidden recess, reveals its true character, and awakens the sense of the wretchedness of slavery under sin (7:10-25), but in this very way prepares the way for the Christian state of freedom (7:24 and Rom. 8). [781]
II. The Divine Intention and Provision of Universal Salvation.--God sincerely wills (thelei) that all men, even the greatest of sinners, should be saved, and come to the knowledge of truth through Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all. [782] The extent of Christ's righteousness and life is as universal as the extent of Adam's sin and death, and its intensive power is even greater. The first and the second Adam are perfectly parallel by contrast in their representative character, but Christ is much stronger and remains victor of the field, having slain sin and death, and living for ever as the prince of life. Where sin abounds there grace super-abounds. As through the first Adam sin (as a pervading force) entered into the world, and death through sin, and thus death passed unto all men, inasmuch as they all sinned (in Adam generically and potentially, and by actual transgression individually); so much more through Christ, the second Adam, righteousness entered into the world and life through righteousness, and thus righteousness passed unto all men on condition of faith by which we partake of his righteousness. [783] God shut up all men in disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all that believe. [784]
(1.) The Preparation for this salvation was the promise and the law of the Old dispensation. The promise given to Abraham and the patriarchs is prior to the law, and not set aside by the law; it contained the germ and the pledge of salvation, and Abraham stands out as the father of the faithful, who was justified by faith even before he received circumcision as a sign and seal. The law came in besides, or between the promise and the gospel in order to develop the disease of sin, to reveal its true character as a transgression of the divine will, and thus to excite the sense of the need of salvation. The law is in itself holy and good, but cannot give life; it commands and threatens, but gives no power to fulfil; it cannot renew the flesh, that is, the depraved, sinful nature of man; it can neither justify nor sanctify, but it brings the knowledge of sin, and by its discipline it prepares men for the freedom of Christ, as a schoolmaster prepares children for independent manhood. [785]
(2.) The Salvation itself is comprehended in the person and work of Christ. It was accomplished in the fulness of the time by the sinless life, the atoning death, and the glorious resurrection and exaltation of Christ, the eternal Son of God, who appeared in the likeness of the flesh of sin and as an offering for sin, and thus procured for us pardon, peace, and reconciliation. "God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." This is the greatest gift of the eternal love of the Father for his creatures. The Son of God, prompted by the same infinite love, laid aside his divine glory and mode of existence, emptied himself exchanged the form of God for the form of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient, even unto the death of the cross. Though he was rich, being equal with God, yet for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich. In reward for his active and passive obedience God exalted him and gave him a name above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord. [786]
Formerly the cross of Christ had been to the carnal Messianic expectations and self-righteousness of Paul, as well as of other Jews, the greatest stumbling-block, as it was the height of folly to the worldly wisdom of the heathen mind. [787] But the heavenly vision of the glory of Jesus at Damascus unlocked the key for the understanding of this mystery, and it was confirmed by the primitive apostolic tradition, [788] and by his personal experience of the failure of the law and the power of the gospel to give peace to his troubled conscience. The death of Christ appeared to him now as the divinely appointed means for procuring righteousness. It is the device of infinite wisdom and love to reconcile the conflicting claims of justice and mercy whereby God could justify the sinner and yet remain just himself. [789] Christ, who knew no sin, became sin for us that we might become righteousness of God in him. He died in the place and for the benefit (huper, peri) of sinners and enemies, so that his death has a universal significance. If one died for all, they all died. [790] He offered his spotless and holy life as a ransom (lutron) or price (time) for our sins, and thus effected our redemption (apolutrosis), as prisoners of war are redeemed by the payment of an equivalent. His death, therefore, is a vicarious sacrifice, an atonement, an expiation or propitiation hilasmos, hilasterion, sacrificium expiatorium) for the sins of the whole world, and secured full and final remission (aphesis) and reconciliation between God and man (katallage). This the Mosaic law and sacrifices could not accomplish. They could only keep alive and deepen the sense of the necessity of an atonement. If righteousness came by the law, Christ's death would be needless and fruitless. His death removes not only the guilt of sin, but it destroyed also its power and dominion. Hence the great stress Paul laid on the preaching of the cross (ho logos tou staurou) in which alone he would glory. [791]
This rich doctrine of the atonement which pervades the Pauline Epistles is only a legitimate expansion of the word of Christ that he would give his life as a ransom for sinners and shed his blood for the remission of sins.
(3.) While Christ accomplished the salvation, the Holy Spirit appropriates it to the believer. The Spirit is the religious and moral principle of the new life. Emanating from God, he dwells in the Christian as a renewing, sanctifying, comforting energy, as the higher conscience, as a divine guide and monitor. He mediates between Christ and the church as Christ mediates between God and the world; be is the divine revealer of Christ to the individual consciousness and the source of all graces (charismata) through which the new life manifests itself. "Christ in us" is equivalent to having the "Spirit of Christ." It is only by the inward revelation of the Spirit that we can call Christ our Lord and Saviour, and God our Father; by the Spirit the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts; the Spirit works in us faith and all virtues; it is the Spirit who transforms even the body of the believer into a holy temple; those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God and heirs of salvation; it is by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that we are made free from the law of sin and death and are able to walk in newness of life. Where the Spirit of God is there is true liberty. [792]