5. The true, but sinless humanity of Christ. He appeared "in the likeness of the flesh of sin" (Rom. 8:3); he is a son of David "according to the flesh" (1:3), which includes the whole human nature, body, soul, and spirit (as in John 1:14); he is called a man (anthropos) in the full sense of the term (1 Cor. 15:21; Rom. 5:15; Acts 17:31). He was "born of a woman, born under the law"(Gal. 4:4); he was "found in fashion as a man" and became "obedient even unto death" (Phil. 2:8), and he truly suffered and died, like other men. But he "knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21). He could, of course, not be the Saviour of sinners if he himself were a sinner and in need of salvation.
Of the events of Christ's life, Paul mentions especially and frequently his death and resurrection, on which our salvation depends. He also reports the institution of the Lord's Supper, which perpetuates the memory and the blessing of the atoning sacrifice on the cross (1 Cor. 11:23-30). He presupposes, of course, a general knowledge of the historical Christ, as his Epistles are all addressed to believing converts; but he incidentally preserves a gem of Christ's sayings not reported by the Evangelists, which shines like a lone star on the firmament of uncertain traditions:, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35).
III. Paul's Doctrine of Predestination.--Eternal foreknowledge of all persons and things is necessarily included in God's omniscience, and is uniformly taught in the Bible; eternal foreordination or predestination is included in his almighty power and sovereignty, but must be so conceived as to leave room for free agency and responsibility, and to exclude God from the authorship of sin. Self-limitation is a part of freedom even in man, and may be exercised by the sovereign God for holy purposes and from love to his creatures; in fact it is necessary, if salvation is to be a moral process, and not a physical or mechanical necessity. Religion is worth nothing except as the expression of free conviction and voluntary devotion. Paul represents sometimes the divine sovereignty, sometimes the human responsibility, sometimes, as in Phil. 2:12, 13, he combines both sides, without an attempt to solve the insolvable problem which really lies beyond the present capacity of the human mind. "He does not deal with speculative extremes; and in whatever way the question be speculatively adjusted, absolute dependence and moral self-determination are both involved in the immediate Christian self-consciousness," Baur, Paul, II. 249. "Practical teaching," says Reuss (II. 532) to the same effect, "will always be constrained to insist upon the fact that man's salvation is a free gift of God, and that his condemnation is only the just punishment of sin." Comp. also Farrar, St. Paul, II. 243, 590; Weiss, p. 356 sqq.; Beyschlag, Die paulinische Theodicee (Berlin, 1868). Weiss thus sums up Paul's doctrine of predestination: "An sich hat Gott das absolute Becht, die Menschen von vornherein zum Heil oder zum Verderben zu erschaffen und durch freie Machtwirkung diesem Ziele zuzuführen; aber er hat sich in Betreff des christlichen Heils dieses Rechtes nur insofern bedient, als er unabhängig von allem menschlichen Thun und Verdienen nach seinem unbeschränkten Willen bestimmt, an welche Bedingung er seine Gnade knüpfen will. Die Bedingung, an welche er seine Erwählung gebunden hat, ist nun nichts anders als die Liebe zu ihm, welche er an den empfänglichen Seelen vorhererkennt. Die Erwählten aber werden berufen, indem Gott durch das Evangelium in ihnen den Glauben wirkt."
There can be no doubt that Paul teaches an eternal election to eternal salvation by free grace, an election which is to be actualized by faith in Christ and a holy life of obedience. But he does not teach a decree of reprobation or a predestination to sin and perdition (which would indeed be a "decretum horribile," if verum). This is a logical invention of supralapsarian theologians who deem it to be the necessary counterpart of the decree of election. But man's logic is not God's logic. A decree of reprobation is nowhere mentioned. The term adokimos,disapproved, worthless, reprobate, is used five times only as a description of character (twice of things). Romans 9 is the Gibraltar of supralapsarianism, but it must be explained in connection with Rom. 10-11, which present the other aspects. The strongest passage is Rom. 9:22, where Paul speaks of skeue orges katertismena eis apoleian. But he significantly uses here the passive: "fitted unto destruction," or rather (as many of the best commentators from Chrysostom to Weiss take it) the middle: "who fitted themselves for destruction," and so deserved it; while of the vessels of mercy he says that God "before prepared" them unto glory (skeue eleous ha proetoimasen, 9:23). He studiously avoids to say of the vessels of wrath: ha katertisen, which would have corresponded to ha proetoimasen, and thus he exempts God from a direct and efficient agency in sin and destruction. When in 9:17, he says of Pharaoh, that God raised him up for the very purpose (eis auto touto exegeira se) that he might show in him His power, he does not mean that God created him or called him into existence (which would require a different verb), but, according to the Hebrew (Ex. 9:16, the hiphil of ?md), that "he caused him to stand forth" as actor in the scene; and when he says with reference to the same history that God "hardens whom he will" (Rom. 9:18. hon de thelei sklerunei), it must be remembered that Pharaoh had already repeatedly hardened his own heart (Ex. 8:15, 32; 9:34, 35), so that God punished him for his sin and abandoned him to its consequences. God does not cause evil, but he bends, guides, and overrules it and often punishes sin with sin. "Das ist der Fluch der bösen That, dass sie, fortzeugend, immer Böses muss gebären." (Schiller.)
In this mysterious problem of predestination Paul likewise faithfully carries out the teaching of his Master. For in the sublime description of the final judgment, Christ says to the "blessed of my Father:" "Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matt. 25:34), but to those on the left hand he says, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels" (25:41). The omission of the words "of my Father," after "ye cursed," and of the words, for you, "and, from the foundation of the world," is very significant, and implies that while the inheritance of the kingdom is traced to the eternal favor of God, the damnation is due to the guilt of man.
IV. The doctrine of Justification. This occupies a prominent space in Paul's system, though by no means to the disparagement of his doctrine of sanctification, which is treated with the same fulness even in Romans (comp. Rom. 6-8 and 12-15). Luther, in conflict with Judaizing Rome, overstated the importance of justification by faith when he called it the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae. This can only be said of Christ (comp. Matt. 16:16; 1 Cor. 3:11; 1 John 4:2, 3). It is not even the theme of the Epistle to the Romans, as often stated (e.g., by Farrar, St. Paul, II. 181); for it is there subordinated by garto the broader idea of salvation (soteria), which is the theme (Rom 1:16, 17). Justification by faith is the way by which salvation can be obtained.
The doctrine of justification may be thus illustrated:
Dikaiosune
( qdts ,hqdts)
Dikaiosune tou nomou Dikaiosune tou theou
ex ergon ek theou
idia. te s pisteos
ek te s pisteos
dia pisteos Christou.
The cognate words are dikaiosis, dikaioma, dikaios, dikaioo. The Pauline idea of righteousness is derived from the Old Testament, and is inseparable from the conception of the holy will of God and his revealed law. But the classical usage is quite consistent with it, and illustrates the biblical usage from a lower plane. The Greek words are derived from jus, right, and further back from. dicha, or div", two-fold, in two parts (according to Aristotle, Eth. Nic., v. 2); hence they indicate a well-proportioned relation between parts or persons where each has his due. It may then apply to the relation between God and man, or to the relation between man and man, or to both at once. To the Greeks a righteous man was one who fulfils his obligations to God and man. It was a Greek proverb: "In righteousness all virtue is contained."
Dikaiosune(qdts hqdts) is an attribute of God, and a corresponding moral condition of man, i.e., man's conformity to the will of God as expressed in his holy law. It is therefore identical with true religion, with piety and virtue, as required by God, and insures his favor and blessing. The word occurs (according to Bruder's Concord.) sixty times in all the Pauline Epistles, namely: thirty-six times in Romans, four times in Galatians, seven times in 2 Corinthians, once in 1 Corinthians, four times in Philippians, three times in Ephesians, three times in 2 Timothy, once in 1 Timothy, and once in Titus.
Dikaios(qydts) righteous (rechtbeschaffen), is one who fulfils his duties to God and men, and is therefore well pleasing to God. It is used seventeen times by Paul (seven times in Romans), and often elsewhere in the New Testament.
Dikaiosisoccurs only twice in the New Test. (Rom. 4:25; 5:18). It signifies justification, or the act of God by which he puts the sinner into the possession of righteousness.
Dikaioma, which is found Rom. 1:32; 2:26; 5:16, 18; 8:4 means a righteous decree, or judgment. Aristotle (Eth. Nicom., v. 10) defines it as to epanorthoma tou adikematos,the amendment of an evil deed, or a legal adjustment; and this would suit the passage in Rom. 5:16, 18.
The verb dikaioo(qdts , qydtsh)occurs twenty-seven times in Paul, mostly in Romans, several times in the Synoptical Gospels, once in Acts, and three times in James 2:21, 24, 25. It may mean, etymologically, to make just, justificare (for the verbs in oo, derived from adjectives of the second declension, indicate the making of what the adjective denotes, e.g., deloo, to make clear, phaneroo, to reveal,tuphloo, to blind); but in the Septuagint and the Greek Testament it hardly, ever has this meaning ("haec significatio," says Grimm, "admodum rara, nisi prorsus dubia est"), and is used in a forensic or judicial sense: to declare one righteous (aliquem justum declarare, judicare). This justification of the sinner is, of course, not a legal fiction, but perfectly true, for it is based on the real righteousness of Christ which the sinner makes his own by faith, and must prove his own by a life of holy obedience, or good works. For further expositions see my annotations to Lange on Romans, pp. 74, 130, 136, 138; and my Com on Gal. 2:16, 17. On the imputation controversies see my essay in Lange on Romans 5:12, pp. 190-195. On the relation of Paul's doctrine of justification to that of James, see § 69 of this vol.
V. Paul's doctrine of the Church has been stated in § 65 of this vol. But it requires more than one book to do anything like justice to the wonderful theology of this wonderful
[774] Dr. Baur, who was formerly disposed to make Paul the founder of Christian universalism, admits in his last elaboration of the Pauline system (N. T. liche Theol., p. 128), that "Paul only expressed to the consciousness what in itself, in principle and actually, or by implication, was contained already in the doctrine of Jesus (was an sich principiell und thatsächlich, oder implicite schon in der Lehre Jesu enthalten war)."Pressensé misstates here Baur's position, but himself correctly calls Paul's doctrine "as a whole and in all its parts, the logical deduction and development of the teaching of the Master" (Apost. Era, p. 255).
[775] 1 Cor. 1:30; 2:2.
[776] 1 Cor. 15:13.
[777] Rom. 4: 23. The first dia is retrospective, the second prospective: for the destruction of sin and for the procurement of righteousness.