Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/449

PAUL 427 other hand, it seems to be implied that the earthly body will be dissolved, and that what awaits us is a new body, " a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens " (2 Cor. v. 1). This change will come to all believers at the " advent " (irapovtria., 1 Cor. [i. 9, Cod. D.] xv. 23; 1 Thess. ii. 19, &c.), or "revelation" (dTTo/cdXi ^is, 1 Cor. i. 7 ; 2 Thess. i. 7), or "manifestation" (^TTI- <j>dveia, 2 Thess. ii. 8, and afterwards in the pastoral epistles) of Jesus Christ. Some of them will have "fallen asleep in Christ," in which state he seems to conceive that they are " at home with the Lord " (2 Cor. v. 8) ; and others, among whom, in the language of confident hope, he includes himself, will be still alive (1 Thess. iv. 15-17). For "the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. i. 8, v. 5 ; 2 Cor. i. 1 4, &c. ) was conceived to be not far distant : " the night is far spent, the day is at hand" (Rom. xiii. 12), and "the mystery of lawlessness," which was to be revealed before that day could come, was already at work (2 Thess. ii. 3-7). But the "day" itself is variously conceived ; sometimes the eternal life of believers in and with Christ appears to begin at the very moment of the Advent (1 Thess. iv. 17), and hence the day is spoken of as "the day of deliverance " (Eph. iv. 30) ; but more frequently " the day of the Lord " is also the day of judgment (l!om. ii. 5, 16), according to the eschatological ideas which had for some time been current among the Jews ; in it all men, believers and unbelievers alike, are represented as standing before the judgment-seat of God (Rom. xiv. 10) or of Christ (2 Cor. v. 10) to give account of themselves to God, and to receive the reward of the things done in the body, whether good or evil. There is a similar variety of view in regard to what will happen after the Advent. The language which is used some times leads to the inference that the destruction of the enemies of the cross will be immediately effected (2 Thess. i. 9, ii. 8), and sometimes to the inference, which was also in accordance with current eschatological ideas, that there will be a Messianic reign, during which Christ will "put all enemies under His feet" (1 Cor. xv. 25). And, while in some passages unbelievers or evildoers are said to be punished with " eternal destruction from the face of the Lord " (2 Thess. i. 9 ; cf. Rorn. ii. 8, 9), the view elsewhere seems to be that "in Christ shall all be made alive," the universality of the life in Christ being coextensive with the universality of the death in Adam (1 Cor. xv. 22). It is difficult to reconcile these conceptions with one another, and still more so to reconcile some of them with other parts of Paul s doctrine of salvation, except perhaps on the hypothesis that even after his conversion many of the apocalyptic ideas which were current among his countrymen remained in his mind ; this hypo thesis is made the more probable by the fact that in the later and the probably post-Pauline epistles the apocalyptic elements are rare, and that the most definite eschatological statement which they contain is in full harmony with the conception of the believer s mystical union with Christ, "when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory" (Col. iii. 4). Such are the main elements of Paul s soteriology. To most of the philosophical questions which have since been raised in con nexion with it he neither gives nor implies an answer. It is possible that many of such questions did not even suggest them selves to him. The chief of all of them, that of the necessity of sacrifice, was probably axiomatic to a Jewish mind, and its place in Paul s system must be accepted with all the difficulties which such an acceptance involves. But there is one such philosophical ques tion which even in Paul s time had begun to have a fascination for Ration Oriental thinkers. What is the relation of free will to God? or in ) ree other words, Is what men do the result of their own choice, or is it i to determined for them ; and, if it be determined for them, how can 31. God punish them as though they had been free (Rom. iii. 5, ix. 19)? The answer is given in the form of an antinomy, of which the thesis is the sovereignty of God and the antithesis the respon sibility of men. The sovereignty of God is absolute. Instead of entertaining the objection which has since been raised, that God, having created rational and moral agents, has placed Himself under an obligation to deal with them as such, he makes the dependence of men upon God to be unconditioned, and the alleged rights of men as against God to be as non-existent as those of an earthenware vessel against the potter who has given it shape (Rom. ix. 20-21). Some men are "vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction," some are "vessels of mercy . . . prepared unto glory" (Rom. ix. 22, 23) ; and God s dealings with them are as little conditioned by necessity as His original creation of them : " He hath mercy on whom He will, and whom He will He hardeneth" (Rom. ix. 18). But, over against this view of God s sovereignty, and without any endeavour to reconcile the difficulties which suggest themselves, he places the fact of human responsibility. The purpose of God worked itself out in his tory, but not without men s co-operation. He had first "called" the Jews; and though, on the one hand, "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear" (Rom. xi. 8), yet, on the other hand, they were "a disobedient and gainsaying people" (Rom. x. 21), "seeking to establish their own righteousness," and not subjecting themselves "to the righteousness of God" (Rom. x. 3). God had now carried out another part of His purpose. He had " called " the Gentiles. In the earlier epistles Paul spoke of this calling as having been not only part of God s purpose, but also expressly announced from time to time by the prophets (Rom. ix. 25, 26, x. 20) ; but in the doubtful later epistles it is spoken of as a " mystery which hath been hidden from all ages and generations " (Col. i. 26), but now had been "made known through the church" "unto the principali ties and the powers in the heavenly places" (Eph. iii. 9, 10). But as with the Jews so with the Gentiles, the divine call was not only a fact but also a ground of obligation. While, on the one hand, " we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them " (Eph. ii. 10), yet, on the other hand, the Ephesians are entreated to "walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called " (Eph. iv. 1). In the Epistle to the Romans a still further part of God s purpose is indicated. The salvation which had come to the Gentiles by the fall of the Jews was "to provoke them to jealousy" (xi. 11) ; as in time past the Gentiles "were disobedient to God but now have obtained mercy " by the disobedience of the Jews, " even so have these also now been disobedient, that by the mercy shown to you they also may now obtain mercy" (xi. 30, 31). And so not only would "the fulness of the Gentiles come in," but also "all Israel shall be saved " (xi. 25, 26) ; " for God hath shut up all unto dis obedience that He might have mercy upon all " (xi. 32). But, just as the apparent fatalism of the theory of absolute pre- The destination without reference to works stands side by side with the "called obligation of men to " work out their own salvation with fear and or the trembling" (Phil. ii. 12), so this apparent universalism stands side "saints. : by side with the fact that all men do not receive the gospel. Out of the mass of men some, whether Jews or Gentiles, are "called." They constitute a separate class. As from one point of view they are the " called according to God s purpose " (Rom. viii. 28), or "called to be saints" (Rom. i. 7 ; 1 Cor. i. 2), or simply "called" (1 Cor. i. 24 ; it is to be noted that the expression does not occur in the later epistles), or "chosen" (Rom. viii. 33; Col. iii. 12), so, on the other hand, they are "they that believe" (Rom. iii. 22; 1 Cor. i. 21, xiv. 22 ; Gal. iii. 22 ; Eph. i. 19 ; 1 Thess. i. 7, ii. 10, 13 ; 2 Thess. i. 10) ; the call and the belief are complementary of each other, and therefore the terms are used as convertible (1 Cor. i. 21, 24). But the more frequent terms are those which came to Paul from his earlier associations. The Jews had known one another, and had spoken of themselves, in contrast to the rest of the world, as "brethren" (e.g., Deut. xv. 12, xvii. 15; Philo, ii. 285, ed. Mang.) or "saints" (e.g., Deut. xxxiii. 3 ; Dan. vii. 21). Paul applies these terms to the new "people of God"; they are " brethren " (e.g., Rom. i. 13, most commonly as a term of address), and "the saints" (e.g., Rom. xii. 13, xv. 25 ; 1 Cor. vi. 1). As such they are regarded as forming collectively a unity or society, which Paul, adopting a current Latinism, calls a " body " (corpus is frequently used in this sense ; <TW/JM is its Hellenistic translation in, e.g., the letter of Mark Antony in Joseph., Ant. Jud., xiv. 12, 3, TO rrjs A(naj o-cijjaa). A more important and permanent application of the view that those who believed in Jesus took the place of the Jews, and stood to God in the same special relation in which the Jews had stood, was the use of the term " congregation " or "assembly" (Heb. qahal, which the LXX. renders by both ffwa- yuyri and eKKi]ala ; in the Epistle of James (ii. 2) the former of these words is used of a particular Christian congregation ; Paul uses the latter only, and the English translators render it invariably by "church") to designate the mass of believers regarded as a unity. The use of the word ^/cKAr?<n a in this sense in the undis puted epistles is rare,- probably only in 1 Cor. xv. 9, Gal. i. 13, in each of which passages it is qualified, as in, e.g., Deut. xxiii. 1, Nehem. xiii. 1, as "God s congregation. " But either towards the end of his life, or, according to many modern critics, only among his followers after his death, this conception of Christians as forming a congregation was idealized. The common metaphor of a- " body " by which that congregation had been designated, and which had already been elaborated as indicative of the diversity of parts and functions in the several Christian communities (1 Cor. xii. 12-30), is elaborated in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians as indicative of the relation of the aggregate of believers to Christ. They are conceived, not as forming a society which bears Christ s name, :but as bearing to Him partly the relation which the several members of an organized body bear to the head (Eph. i. 22, iv. 15, 16 ; Col. i. 18, 24), and partly the relation of a wife to a husband (Eph. v. 23-32). In a phrase of difficult and doubtful meaning the congregation of Christians, or "church," is spoken of as His "fulness" (ir-fipwfj.a, Eph. i. 23), and the progress in Christian virtues is represented partly as the growth of an organism to its full stature (Eph. iv. 14-16 ; Col. ii. 19), and partly as the filling out or realization of that which is empty or imperfect (Eph. iii. 19 ; Col. i. 9). Side >y side with this conception of the "called" or "saints" as collectively forming a "body" or "congregation," which was the Christian counterpart and fulfilment of the Jewish " congre-