Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/446

424 PAUL has been treated. (4) It has proved to be ditlieult for most writers to avoid attaching to some of the words which he uses, and which are also used by writers of other parts of the New Testament, ideas which may be true in themselves, and which were probably in the minds of those other writers, but which do not appear to have entered into Paul s own system of thought. (5) It lias proved to be difficult for most writers to keep Paul s own ideas clear from their later accretions. Those ideas form the basis alike of Augustinianism, of Thomism, and of Lutheranism ; and, since one or other of these systems of theology, or some modification of it, forms part of the education of most theological students, and is embodied in the catechism or confession with whose words, if not always with their meaning, every member of a Christian community is more or less familiar, it is not unnatural to find that almost all writers have approached the subject with a certain amount of prepossession in favour of some particular interpretation or com bination of Paul s phrases. (6) Another kind of difficulty arises from the very limited extent to which it is possible to apply to his theology the method of comparison. If it were possible to recover a sufficient amount of current Palestinian theology for the purpose, any exposition of Paul s theology would begin by setting forth the main points of the system of ideas in which he was educated, and would proceed to show how far they were affected by the new elements which were introduced into that system by his conversion. Much light is thrown upon some points by the large knowledge of current Alexandrian theology which may be obtained from Philo ; but, although Palestinian and Alexandrian theology had many elements in common, they seem to have differed most of all in those respects in which a knowledge of the former would have thrown light upon Paul. It becomes necessary, in the absence of most of the materials which would have been valuable for comparison, to content ourselves with putting together the predicates which he attaches to the several terms which he employs, with disentangling the winding threads of his arguments, and with endeavouring to ascertain what conceptions will best account for the several groups of his varying metaphors. The danger of stating the results of these processes in a systematic form is partly that, without the checks and side-lights which arc afforded by a knowledge of their antecedents and surroundings, any such statement is liable to have a false perspective, by making prominent that which was subordinate and giving to unimportant phrases a disproportionate value ; and partly that Paul s own variety and complexity of expression re flect the variety and complexity of the spiritual truths with which he deals, and for which any single form of statement is inadequate. Sin, the The most fundamental conception, both historically in the de- funda- velopment of Paul s own thought, and logically as the ground mental from which the rest of his theology may be deduced, is that of sin. concep- The word is used sometimes to denote the actual doing of a wrong tion. action, or the consciousness of having done it, and sometimes to denote the tendency to do such actions, or the quality of such actions in the abstract. This tendency or quality is conceived as a quasi-personal being, which dwells in men (Rom. vii. 20), which exercises dominion over them (Rom. v. 21, vi. 12, 14), to which they are slaves (Rom. vi. 13, 17 sq. , vii. 14), which pays them wages (Rom. vi. 23), which imposes its law upon them (Rom. vii. 23, 25, via. 2), which keeps them shut up in prison (Gal. iii. 22), or which, in less metaphorical language, causes evil desires (Rom. vii. 8). It is not precisely defined, but, since it is the opposite of obedience (Rom. vi. 16), its essence may be regarded as disobedience. No such definition was at the time necessary, for neither in his belief in the existence of sin nor in his conception of its nature did he differ from the great mass of his countrymen. His pecu liarity was that he both believed in its universality and made that fact of its universality the basis of his teaching. In the early chapters of the Epistle to the Romans he rests the proof of the fact on an appeal to common experience. But the proof is rather of rhetorical than of logical validity. It was easy in addressing a congregation of Gentiles to point to the general and deep depravity of the society which surrounded them, and in addressing Jews not only to show that they fell short of their own standard, but also to clench the argument by an appeal to Scripture, which declared that "there is none righteous, no not one " (Ps. xiv. 1 ; Rom. iii. 10 ; cf. Gal. iii. 22). But the general prevalence of depravity did not show its universality, and the appeal to Scripture was not convincing to a Gentile. These arguments are not further insisted on, and a more cogent proof is found in the fact of the universality of death ; for it was a fixed Jewish belief that "God created man to be immortal " (Wisd. ii. 23), and the fact that all men died showed that all men sinned (Rom. v. 12). Nor was even this proof suffi cient. What had to be shown, for the purposes of his further arguments, was not merely that sin was universal but that it was so inevitably. This is done by showing that sin is inseparable from human nature on two grounds, the relation of which to each other is neither clear in itself nor clearly explained by Paul. (1) The one is that mankind as a race were involved in the sin of Adam (Rom. v. 12-19; 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22). "Through the one man s disobedience the many were made sinners" (Rom. v. 19) is an alternative expression with "through the trespass of the one the many died" (Rom. v. 15). But as to the mode in which the "disobedience" or "trespass" of Adam affected the whole human race no information is given, and the question has been one of the chief puzzles of Christian theology in all ages. It is a point upon which, more than perhaps upon any other, light would be thrown by a fuller knowledge of contemporary Jewish theology (cf. Ecclesi- asticus, xxv. 24, "of the woman came the beginning of sin and through her we all die " ; the question is complicated by the men tion of Adam in 1 Cor. xv. 47 as "of the earth, earthy," and apparently corruptible by virtue of his earthy nature, without reference to his trangression). (2) The second ground is at once more prominent and more intelligible to a modern mind. It is that human nature consists of two elements, and that one of them, as Paul gathered from his own experience, which he took to be identical in this respect with the universal experience of mankind, is constantly suggesting sinful actions. Whether it does so because it is in itself essentially sinful, or because sin has effected a perma nent lodgment in it, is a question which has been vigorously debated, and which is the more difficult of solution because some of Paul s expressions appear to favour the former view and some the latter. To this element of human nature he gives the name "flesh," apparently including under it not only the material body but also, and more especially, the affections and desires which spring out of the body, such as love and hate, jealousy and anger ; its tendency or " mind " ((f>p6vij/j.a) is always in antagonism at once to the higher element or "spirit" (Gal. v. 17) and to the law of God, so that "they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. viii. 7, 8). So far, in his conception of the dualism of human nahire, of the inevitable tendency of the lower part to prevail over the higher, and of the consequent universality of wrongdoing, Paul did not differ from the majority of those who have at any time reflected cither upon themselves or upon mankind. The idea of sin was common to him with the Stoics. But it was impossible for him to stop where the Stoics stopped, at the exhortation to men to live by the rule of what was highest in them, and so to "follow God." For he was not a philosopher but a theologian ; he was not a " citizen of the world " but a " Hebrew of the Hebrews." God had stood to his race in an especially close relation ; He had given it a code of laws, and that code of laws was to a Jewish theologian the measure not only of duty but of truth. How was the conception of the universality of sin consistent with the existence of "statutes" and "judgments, which if a man do he shall live in them " (Lev. xviii. 5, quoted in Rom. x. 5 ; Gal. iii. 12) ? That statement of Scripture clearly implied, and most of his countrymen believed, that the perfect observance of the law was possible, and that so a man might be " righteous before God. " It was at this point that he broke off, not only from the majority His co of his countrymen, but from his own early beliefs. The thought ceptioi came to him with the overwhelming power of a direct revelation, of the that the law not only had not been, but could not be, perfectly law. observed. In one sense he seems to have held even to the end of his life that there was "a righteousness that is in the law" (Phil, iii. 6). But in another and truer sense such a righteousness was impossible. " By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified " (Gal. ii. 16), and that not only in fact but of necessity. For the law went deeper than was commonly supposed. 1 It touched not only the outer but also the inner life, and in doing so it inevitably failed from the very constitution of human nature. The existence in that nature of the " fleshly " element was of itself a constant breach of the law. The "mind," the "inner man," might delight in the law of God, but the "flesh," even if it were not inherently sinful, was in perpetual "captivity to the law of sin." And for this state of things the law had no remedy. On the one hand, it was external to men ; it could not give them the force of a new life (faoTToirjffai, Gal. iii. 21). On the other hand, the flesh was too strong for it (Rom. viii. 3). Its failure had been foreseen and provided for. The blessing of which, before the law, God had spoken to Abraham was to come, not by observance of the law, but as the result of " promise " on the part of God, and of " faith " on the part of men (Horn. iv. 13-14; Gal. iii. 11-18). And when the question naturally presented itself, Why, if the law was an inevitable and predestined failure, it had been given at all ? two answers suggested themselves; the one was that "it was added because of transgressions," i.e., probably to make men s sins and their failure to avoid them more apparent (Gal. iii. 19), since " through the law came the knowledge of sin " (Rom. iii. 20) ; the other was that the law came in " that the trespass might abound " (Rom. v. 20), and that so " through the commandment sin miglit 1 It must be noted that there appears to be a constant interchange in his mind between the conception of the Mosaic law and the ideal conception of law in the abstract; but it is difficult to inaintiiin that the two conceptions may always be distinguished by the presence or absence of the Greek article. 1 Cor. ix. 20, Phil. iii. 5, seem of themselves sufficient to make such a distinc tion untenable, but the contrary view is maintained in an excellent discussion of the point by Dr Giflbrd, "Introduction to the Epistle to the Romans," p. 41 sq., in the Xjieaker s Commentary on the New Testament.