IV. But it is time that we should proceed to consider, how-

ever briefly, the witness of that great Apostle, whose Epistles form so much larger a contribution to the sacred volume of the New Testament than is supplied by any other among the inspired servants of Christ.
1. In comparing St. Paul with St. John, a modern author has remarked that at first sight two objects stand out prominently in the theological teaching of the beloved disciple, while three immediately challenge observation in the writings of the Apostle of the Gentiles. At first sight, St. John’s doctrine appears to place us face to face only with God and the human world. Christ as the Eternal Logos is in St. John plainly identical with God ; although when we contemplate the life of the Godhead He is dis- cerned to be personally distinct from the Father. But we cannot really understand St. John, and withal establish in our thought an essential separation between God and the Word Incarnate. Although Jesus is a manifestation of God’s glory in the world of sense, He is ever internal to that Divine Essence Whose glory He manifests; He is with God, and He is God. In St. Paul, on the other hand, we are confronted more distinctly with three objects. These are, God, the human world, and between the two, Jesus Christ, Divine and human, the One Mediator between God and man. Of course the primdé facie impression produced on the mind by the sacred writers is all that is here in question, and this impression is not to be confounded with their real relations to each other. The Christ of St. John is as truly Human as the Christ of St. Paul is literally Divine; St. John exhibits the Mediator not less truly than St. Paul, St. Paul the Divine Son of the Father not less truly than St.John. But the observation referred to enables us to do justice to the form of St. Paul’s Christology; and we may well observe in his writings the prominence which is given to two truths which supply the foil, on this side and on that, to the doctrine of our Lord’s essential Godhead.
(2) St. Paul insists with particular earnestness upon the truth
© St. Jude ver, 21: προσδεχόμενοι τὸ ἔλεος τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ, εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον. [ Lect.
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| Stress laid on our Lord's Manhood. 307
of our Lord’s real Humanity. This truth is not impaired by such expressions as the ‘form of a servantt,’ the ‘fashion of a man 8,’ the ‘likeness of sinful flesh 4, which are employed either to describe Christ’s Humanity as a mode of being, or to hint at Its veiling a Higher Nature undiscerned by the senses of man, or to mark the point at which, by Its glorious inaccessibility to sin, It is in contrast with the nature of that frail and erring race to which It truly belongs. Nor is our Lord’s Humanity con- ceived of as a phantom, when the Apostle has reached a point of spiritual growth at which the outward circumstances of Christ’s Life are wellnigh forgotten in an overmastering perception of His spiritual and Divine gloryi. St. Paul speaks plainly of our Lord as being manifest in the flesh; as possessing a Body of material flesh!; as being ‘made of a woman™;’ as being ‘ born of the seed of David according to the flesh ;’ as having drawn the substance of His Flesh from the race of Israel®. As a Jew, Jesus Christ was born under the yoke of the LawP. His Hu- man Life was not merely one of self-denial 4 and obedience ; it was pre-eminently a life of sharp suffering". The Apostle uses energetic expressions to describe our Lord’s real share in our physical human weakness 3, as well as in those various forms of pain, mental and bodily, which He willed to undergo, and which reached their climax in the supreme agonies of the Pas- siont, If however Christ became obedient unto death, even the © death of the cross", this, as is implied, was of His own free condescension ; and St. Paul dwells with rapture upon the glory of Christ’s risen Body, to which our bodies of humiliation will
{ Phil. ii. 7: μορφὴν δούλου.
8 Ibid. ver. 8: σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὧς ἄνθρωπος.
bh Rom. viii. 3: ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας.
1 2 Cor. v. 16: εἰ δὲ καὶ ἐγνώκαμεν κατὰ σάρκα Χριστὸν, ἀλλὰ νῦν οὐκ ἔτι γινώσκομεν. ὶ
K 1 Tim. iii. 16: ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί.
1 Col. i. 22: ἐν τῷ σώματι τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ.
™ Gal. iv. 4: γενόμενον ex γυναικός.
= Rom. i. 3: τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαβὶδ κατὰ σάρκα.
© Ibid. ix. 5: ἐξ ὧν 6 Χριστὸς τὸ κατὰ σάρκα.
P Gal. iv. 4: γενόμενυν ὑπὸ νόμον.
4 Rom. xv. 3: καὶ γὰρ ὁ Χριστὸς οὐκ ἑαυτῷ ἤρεσεν.
τ Heb. v. 8: καίπερ dy vids, ἔμαθεν ἀφ᾽ ὧν ἔπαθε τὴν ὑπακοήν.
5.2 Cor. xiii. 4: ἐσταυρώθη ἐξ ἀσθενείας.
ὁ Ibid. i. 5: τὰ παθήματα τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Phil. iii. 10: τὴν κοινωνίαν τῶν παθημάτων αὐτοῦ. Col. i. 24: τὰ ὑστερήματα τῶν θλίψεων τοῦ Χριστοῦ.
u Phil. ii, 8: ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτὸν, γενόμενος ὑπήκοος μέχρι θανάτου, θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ,
vi | x2
208 St. Paul on our Lord’s Manhood.
hereafter in their degrees, by His Almighty Power, be assimi- latedv. Upon two features of our Lord’s Sacred Humanity does St. Paul lay especial stress. First, Christ’s Manhood was clearly void of sin, both in Soul and Body; and in this respect It was unlike any one member of the race to which It belonged*. This sinlessness, however, did but restore humanity ‘in Christ’ to its original type of perfection. Thus, secondly, Christ’s Man- hood is representative of the human race; it realizes the arche- typal idea of humanity in the Divine Mind. Christ, the Second Adam, according to St. Paul, stands in a relation to the regene- rate family of men analogous to that ancestral relationship in which the first Adam stands to all his natural descendants. But this correspondence is balanced by a contrast. In two great passages St. Paul exhibits the contrast which exists between the Second Adam and the first ¥. This contrast is physical, psycho- logical, moral, and historical. The body of the first Adam is corruptible and earthly; the Body of the Second Adam is glorious and incorruptible%. The first Adam enjoys natural life; he is made a living soul. The Second Adam is a super- natural Being, capable of communicating His Higher Life to others; He is a quickening Spirit ἃ, The first Adam is a sinner, and his sin compromises the entire race which springs from him. The Second Adam sins not; His Life is one mighty act of righteousness»; and they who are in living communion with Him share in this His righteousness®. The historical conse- quence of the action of the first Adam is death, the death of the body and of the soul. This consequence is transmitted to his
v Phil. iii. a1: ὃς μετασχηματίσει τὸ σῶμα τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν, 1. σύμμορφον τῷ σώματι τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ, κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν τοῦ δύνασθαι αὐτὸν καὶ ὑποτάξαι ἑαυτῷ τὰ πάντα. 1 Cor. xv. 44: σῶμα πνευματικόν.
x 2 Cor. v. 21: τὸν γὰρ μὴ γνόντα & ἁμαρτίαν, ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἁμαρτίαν, ἐποίησεν. Gal. ii, 17: ἄρα Χριστὸς ἁμαρτίας διάκονος ; μὴ γένοιτο. Rom. viii. 3; cf. Art. xv.
y Rom. v. 12-21; 1 Cor. xv. 45-49.
* 1 Cor. xv. 47: ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος ἐκ γῆς, χοϊκός" ὁ δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος [ὁ Κύριος], ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. Ojos 6 χοϊκὸς, τοιοῦτοι καὶ οἱ χοϊκοί" καὶ οἷος 6 ἐπου- ράνιος, τοιοῦτοι καὶ of ἐπουράνιοι.
4. Ibid. ver. 45: ἐγένετο ὃ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος ᾿Αδὰμ εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν" ὁ ἔσχατος ᾿Αδὰμ εἰς πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν. Cf, vers. 21, 22.
> δικαίωμα, Rom. v. 18.
ο Rom. v. 18, 19: ἄρα οὖν ὡς δι᾽ ἑνὸς παραπτώματος, εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους, εἰς κατάκριμα: οὕτω καὶ δι᾽ ἑνὸς δικαιώματος, εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους, εἰς δικαίωσιν ζωῆς. ὥσπερ γὰρ διὰ τῆς παρακοῆς τοῦ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἁμαρτωλοὶ κατεστάθησαν οἱ πολλοὶ, οὕτω καὶ διὰ τῆς ὑπακοῆς τοῦ ἑνὸς δίκαιοι καταστα- θήσονται οἱ πολλοί.
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Christ 1s Mediator as being truly Man. 309
descendants along with his other legacy of transmitted sin. The historical consequence of the action and suffering of the Second Adam is life; and communion with His living right- eousness is the gauge and assurance to His faithful disciples of a real exemption from the law of sin and death4, Such a contrast, you observe, might well suggest that the Second Adam, Representative of man’s race, its true Archetype, its Restorer and its Saviour, is Himself more than man. Certainly; but nevertheless it is as Man that Christ is contrasted with our first parent; and it is in virtue of His Manhood that He is our Mediator, our Redeemer 9, our Saviour from Satan’s power, our Intercessor with the Father. Great stress indeed does St. Paul lay upon the Manhood of Christ as.the instrument of His media- tion between earth and heaven, as the channel through which intellectual truth and moral strength descend from God into the souls of men, as the Exemplar wherein alone human nature has recovered its ideal beauty, as entering a sphere wherein the Sinless One could offer the perfect, world-representing sacrifice of a truly obedient Will. So earnestly and constantly does St. Paul’s thought dwell on our Lord’s mediating Humanity, that to unreflecting persons his language might at times appear to imply that Jesus Christ is personally an inferior being, ex- ternal to the Unity of the Divine Essences’. Thus he tells the Corinthians that Christians have one Lord Jesus Christ as well as one Godh, Thus he reminds St. Timothy that there is One
4 Rom, v. 12: δ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἣ ἁμαρτία eis τὸν κόσμον εἰσῆλθε, καὶ διὰ τῆς ἁμαρτίας ὁ θάνατος. Ibid. ver. 17: εἰ γὰρ ἐν ἑνὶ [τῷ τοῦ ἑνὸς, text. rec.] παραπτώματι ὃ θάνατος ἐβασίλευσε διὰ τοῦ ἑνὸς, πολλῷ μᾶλλον οἱ τὴν περισσείαν τῆς χάριτος καὶ τῆς δωρεᾶς τῆς δικαιοσύνης λαμβάνοντες, ἐν ζωῇ βασιλεύσουσι διὰ τοῦ ἑνὸς ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Cf. Ibid. ver. 21.
¢ 1 Tim. ii. 5, 6: ἄνθρωπος Χριστὸς ᾿Ιησοῦς, ὁ δοὺς ἑαυτὸν ἀντέλυτρον ὑπὲρ πάντων.
£ Heb. ii. 14: ἐπεὶ οὖν τὰ παιδία κεκοινώνηκε σαρκὸς καὶ αἵματος, καὶ αὐτὸς παραπλησίως μετέσχε τῶν αὐτῶν, ἵνα διὰ τοῦ θανάτου καταργήσῃ τὸν τὸ κράτος ἔχοντα τοῦ θανάτου, τουτέστι, τὸν διάβολον. Ibid. v. I.
& As in 1 Cor. iii. 23, xi. 3. Compare Eph. ii. 18-20.
h 1 Cor. viii. 6: εἷς Κύριος ᾿Ιησοῦς Χριστός. Here however (1) Κύριος, as contrasted with Θεὸς, implies no necessary inferiority; else we must say that the Father is not Κύριος ; ef. St. Chrys. de Incompr. Dei Nat. v. 2; in 1 Cor. x. 20, 21, Κύριος is used of Chriss in contrast with the demon- gods of heathendom: while (2) the clause δι᾽ οὗ τὰ πάντα, καὶ ἡμεῖς δι’ αὐτοῦ, (which could not be restricted to our Lord’s redemptive work without great arbitrariness, since it plainly refers to His creation of the universe, ) places Jesus Christ on a level with the Father. Compare the position of διὰ between ἐξ and εἰς, Rom. xi. 36; cf. Col. i. 16. Our Lord is here dis- tinguished from the ‘One God,’ as being Human as well as Divine; cf. the VI
310 Luture ‘subjection’ of Our Lord’s Llumanity.
God and One Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself a ransom for alli, Thus he looks forward to a day when the need for Christ’s mediatorial Royalty having ceased, His Manhood, shall be subject. to Him That put all things under Him, that God may be all in 411}. It is at least certain that no modern Humanitarian could recognise the literal reality of our Lord’s Humanity with more explicitness than did the Apostle who had never seen Him on earth, and to whom He had been manifested in visions which a Docetic en- thusiast might have taken as sufficient warrant for denying His actual participation in our flesh and blood *,
(8) On the other hand, St. Paul is as strict a monotheist as any unconverted pupil of Gamaliel ; he does not merely retain
relation of μεσίτης to Θεὸς in 1 Tim. ii. 5. But the real antithesis lies not between εἷς Θεὸς and εἷς Κύριος, but between the εἷς Θεὸς ὁ Πατήρ and the θεοὶ πολλοί of heathendom, and the εἷς Κύριος and the heathen κύριοι πολλοί: cf. ver. 5. Baur’s remarks on 1 Cor. viii. 6 (Vorlesungen, p. 193), which proceed upon the assumption that only four Epistles of St. Paul are extant, and therefore that Col. i. 16 17 is nothing to the purpose, and which moreover endeavour to impose the plain redemptive reference of 2 Cor. v. 17, 18 upon this passage, are so capricious ‘as to shew very re- markably the strength and truth of the Catholic interpretation. Cf. Water- land, Works, ii. 54.
τα Tim. ii. 5,6: εἷς yap Θεὸς, εἷς καὶ μεσίτης Θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων, ἄνθρωπος Χριστὸς ᾿Ιησοῦς. Cf. Wilberforce, Doctr. Inc. pp. 212-214, ed. 3.
31 Cor. xv. 28: ὅταν δὲ ὑποταγῇ αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα, τότε καὶ αὐτὸς ὃ Tids ὑποταγήσεται τῷ ὑποτάξαντι αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα, ἵνα ἢ ὁ Θεὸς τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν. That our Lord’s Humanity is the subject of ὑποταγήσεται is the opinion of St. Augustine (de Trin. i. c. 8), St. Jerome (adv. Pelag. i. 6), Theodoret (in loc.). If αὐτὸς ὁ Tiss means the Divine Son most naturally, the predicate ὑποταγήσεται is ati instance of communicatio idiomatum (cf. Acts xx. 28; 1 Cor. ii. 8; Rom. viii. 32, ix. 5; Heb. vi. 6; St. John iii. 13); since it can only apply to a created nature. A writer who believed our Lord to be literally God (Rom. ix. 5) could not have supposed that, at the end of His mediatorial reign as Man, a new relation would be introduced between the Persons of the Godhead. The subordination (κατὰ τάξιν) of the Son is an eternal fact in the inner Being of God. See Lect. IV. p. 202. But the visible subjection of His Humanity (with Which His Church is so organically united as to be called ‘Christ’ 1 Cor. xii. 12) to the supremacy of God will be realized at the close of the present dispensation. Against the attempt to infer from this passage an ἀποκατάστασις of men and devils, cf. Meyer in loc.; and against Pantheistic inferences from τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν, cf. Julius Miiller, Lehre von ἃ. Siinde, i. p. 157, quoted ibid.
k There seems, however, to be a distinction between such visions and trances as those of 2 Cor. xii. 1-4; Acts xviii. 9; xxii. 17, and the appear- ance of Jesus Christ at midday, at St. Paul’s conversion, Acts ix.17, Of this last St. Paul appears to speak more especially in 1 Cor, ix. 1, and xv. 8. Cf. Macpherson on the Resurrection, p. 330.
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St. Paul on the Divine Unity. 311
his hold upon the primal truth of God’s inviolate Unity; he is especially devoted to it.
God is parted from the very highest forms of created life by a measureless interval, and yet the universe is a real reflection of His Nature], The relation of the creatures to God is three- fold. Nothing exists which has not proceeded originally from God’s creative Hand. Nothing exists which is not upheld in being and perfected by God’s sustaining and working energy. Nothing exists which shall not at the last, whether mechanically or consciously, whether willingly or by a terrible constraint, sub- seive God’s high and resistless purpose. For as He is the Creator and Sustainer, so He is the One last End of all created existences. Of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things™, So absolute an idea of God excludes all that is local, transient, particular, finite. God’s supreme Unity is the truth which determines the universality of the Gospel; since the Gospel unveils and proclaims the One supreme, world-controlling God. Hence the Apostle infers the deep misery of Paganism. The Pagan representation of Deity was ‘a lie’ by which this essential truth of God’s Being® was denied. The Pagans had forfeited that partial apprehension of the glory of the incorruptible God which the physical universe and the light of natural conscience placed within their reach. They had yielded to those instincts of creature-worship P which mere naturalism is ever prone to indulge. The Incarnation alone subdues these instincts by consecrating them to the service of God Incarnate ; while beyond
1 Rom. i, 20: τὰ yap ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασι νοούμενα καθορᾶται.
m Tbid. xi. 36: ὅτι ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ 5? αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα. “Α1165 ist aus Gott (Urgrund), in sofern Alles aus Gottes Schépferkrafte hervor- gegangen ist; durch Gott (Vermittelungsgrund), in sofern nichts ohne Gottes Vermittelung (continuirliche Einwirkung) existirt ; fiir Gott (teleo- logische Bestimmung), in sofern Alles den Zwecken Gottes dient.’ Meyer in loc.
Ὁ Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 205: ‘Auf dieser Auffassung der Idee Gottes beruht der Universalismus des Apostels, wie er diess in dem Satz ausspricht, dass Gott sowohl der Heiden als der Juden Gott sei. Rom. ii. 11, iii. 29, x. 12, Das Christenthum ist selbst nichts anderes (it is this, but it is a great deal more) als die Aufhebung alles Particularistischen, damit die reine absolute Gottes-Idee in der Menschheit sich verwirkliche, oder in ihr zum Bewusstsein komme.’ The Pantheistic touch of the last phrase does not destroy the general truth of the observation.
© Rom. i. 25: μετήλλαξαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν τῷ ψεύδει.
® Ibid. vers. 18-25; especially 23: ἤλλαξαν τὴν δόξαν τοῦ ἀφθάρτου Θεοῦ ἐν ὁμοιώματι εἰκόνος φθαρτοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ πετεινῶν καὶ τετραπόδων καὶ ἑρπετῶν, K.T.A.
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312 Monothesm,opposed toPaganismandGnosticism.
the Church they perpetually threaten naturalistic systems with an utter and disastrous subjection to the empire of sense. When _man then had fairly lost sight of the Unity and Spirituality of God, Paganism speedily allowed him to sink beneath a flood of nameless sensualities; he had abandoned the Creator to become, in the most debased sense, the creature’s slave 4.
At another time the Apostle’s thought rests for an instant upon the elegant but impure idolatries to which the imagination and the wealth of Greece had consecrated those beautiful temples which adorned the restored city of Corinth. ‘To us Christians,’ he fervently exclaims, ‘there is but one God, the Father; all things owe their existence to Him, and we live for His purposes and His glory'.’ In after years, St. Paul is writing to a fellow- labourer for Christ, and he has in view some of those Gnostic imaginations which already proposed to link earth with heaven by a graduated hierarchy of AZons, thus threatening the re- introduction either of virtual polytheism or of conscious creature- worship. Against this mischievous speculation the Apostle utters his protest; but it issues from his adoring soul upwards to the footstool of the One Supreme and Almighty Being in the richest and most glorious of the doxologies which occur in his Epistles. God is the King of the ages of the world; He is the imperishable, invisible, only wise Being*®. God is the Blessed and Only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords; He only has from Himself, and originally, immortality; He dwells in the light which is inaccessible to creatures; no man has seen Him; no man can see Him; let honour and power be for ever ascribed to Him t,
« Rom. i, 24: παρέδωκεν αὐτοὺς ὃ Θεὸς ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τῶν καρδιῶν αὐτῶν εἰς ἀκαθαρσίαν. Ibid. ver. 26: ἐϊς πάθη ἀτιμίας. Ibid. ver. 28: εἰς ἀδόκιμον νοῦν. See the whole context.
τα Cor. viii. 5, 6: καὶ γὰρ εἴπερ εἰσὶ λεγόμενοι θεοὶ, εἴτε ἐν οὐρανῷ, εἴτε ἐπὶ γῆς (the two spheres of polytheistic invention) ὥσπερ εἰσὶ θεοὶ πολλοὶ, καὶ κύριοι πολλοί" ἀλλ᾽ ἡμῖν εἷς Θεὸς ὁ Πατὴρ, ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα, καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς αὐτόν.
51 ΤΊ, ἱ, 17: τῷ δὲ βασιλεῖ τῶν αἰώνων, ἀφθάρτῳ, ἀοράτῳ μόνῳ σοφῷ Θεῷ, Tuih καὶ δόξα εἰς τοὺς aidvas τῶν αἰώνων. Here μόνῳ σοφῷ Θεῷ ex- cludes current Gnostic claims on behalf of AZons; in Rom. xvi. 27 (with which compare St. Jude 25) it contrasts the Divine Wisdom manifested in the plan of Redemption through Jesus Christ with human schemes and theories, whether Jewish or Gentile.
ty Tim. vi. 15, 16: 6 μακάριος καὶ μόνος δυνάστης, 6 βασιλεὺς τῶν βασι- λευόντων, καὶ Κύριος τῶν κυριευόντων, 6 μόνος ἔχων ἀθανασίαν, φῶς οἰκῶν ἀπρόσιτον, ὃν εἶδεν οὐδεὶς ἀνθρώπων, οὐδὲ ἰδεῖν δύναται, ᾧ τιμὴ καὶ κράτος αἰώνιον, ἀμήν.
[ Lect.
Its bearing on the estimate of Christ's Person. 313
St. Paul is, beyond all question, an earnest monotheist; his faith is sensitively jealous on behalf of the supremacy and the rights of God. What then is the position which he assigns to Jesus - Christ in the scale of being? That he believed Jesus Christ to be merely a man is a paradox which could be maintained by no careful reader of his Epistles. But if, according to St. Paul, Christ is more than man, what is He? Is He still only an Arian Christ? or is He a Divine Person? In St. Paul’s thought this question could not have been an open one. His earnest, sharply- defined faith in the One Most High God must force him to say either that Christ is a created Being, or that He is internal to the Essence of God. Nor is the subject of such a nature as to admit of accommodation or compromise in its treatment. In practical matters, and where the law of God permits, St. Paul may become all things to all men that he may by all means save some", But he cannot, as if he were a pagan politician of old, or a modern man of the world, compliment away his deepest faith. He cannot ascribe Divinity to a fellow-creature by way of panegyrical hyperbole ; his belief in God is too powerful, too exacting, too keen, too real. St. Paul may teach the Athenians that we live and move and have our being in the all-present, all- encompassing Life of Gody; he may bid the Corinthians expect a time when God shall be known and felt by every member of His great family to be all inall4%. But St. Paul cannot merge the Maker and Ruler of the universe, so gloriously free in His creative and providential action®, in any conception which identifies Him with the work of His hands, or which reduces Him to the level of an impersonal quality or force. The Apostle may contemplate the vast hierarchy of the blessed angels, ranging in their various degrees of glory between the throne of God and the children of menb, But no heavenly intelligence, however exalted, is seen in his pages to trench for one moment upon the incommunicable prerogatives of God. St. Paul may describe the regenerate life of Christians in such terms as to warrant us in saying that Christ’s true members become divine by spiritual communion with God in His Blessed Sone. But the saintliest of men, the most exalted and majestic of seraphs, are alike removed by an infinite interval from the One Uncreated, Self-existent, Incor-
ΒΤ ΊΟΟΓ Σ᾿ 22. Ὁ 2 (ΟὟΣ, 1. 18, 11. 17 Υ Acts xvii. 28. at ΟἿΣ; ΧΥ: 28. ® Rom. ix. 21. » Col. i. 16. These hierarchical distinctions appear to have been pre- served among the fallen angels (Eph. vi. 12). ¢ 1 Cor, iii, 16, 17; vi. 19, 20. vi |
314 St. Paul's devotion to our Lord’s condescension.
ruptible Essenced, There is no room in St. Paul’s thought for an imaginary being like the Arian Christ, hovering indistinctly between created and Uncreated life; since, where God is be- lieved to be so utterly remote from the highest creatures beneath His throne, Christ must either be conceived of as purely and simply a creature with no other than a creature’s nature and rights, or He must be adored as One Who is for ever and neces- sarily internal to the Uncreated Life of the Most High.
2. It has been well observed by the author of ‘Ecce Homo’ that ‘the trait in Christ which filled St. Paul’s whole mind was His condescension ;’ and that ‘the charm of that condescension lay in its being voluntary®.’ Certainly. But condescension is - the act of bending from a higher station to a lower one; and the question is, from what did Christ condescend? If Christ was merely human, what was the human eminence from which St. Paul believed Him to be stooping? Was it a social emi- nence? But as the favourite of the synagogue, and withal as pro- tected by the majesty of the Roman franchisef, St. Paul occupied a social position not less widely removed from that of a Galilean peasant leading a life of vagrancy, than are your circumstances, my brethren, who belong to the middle and upper classes of this country, removed from the lot of the homeless multitudes who day by day seek relief in our workhouses. Was it an intellec- tual eminence? But the Apostle who had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, and had drawn largely from the fountains of Greek thought and culture, had at least enjoyed educational advantages which were utterly denied to the Prophet of Nazareth. Was it then a moral eminence? But, if Jesus was merely Man, was He, I do not say morally perfect, but morally eminent at all? Was not His self-assertion such as to be inconsistent with any truthful recognition whatever of the real conditions of a created exist- ence? But was the eminence from which Christ condescended arigelical as distinct from human? St. Paul has drawn the sharpest distinction between Christ and the angels; Christ is related to the angels, in the belief of the Apostle, simply as the Author of their being&; while the appointed duties of the angels are to worship His Person and to serve His servants ἢ,
What then was the position from which Christ condescended ? Two stages of condescension are indeed noted, one within and
ἃ Rom. xi. 34-34. ¢ Ecce Homo, p. 49. Ἢ Acts xxii. 29. & Col. i. 16, h Heb. i. 6, Ἕ LECT.
From what posttion did Christ condescend? 315
one beyond the limits of our Lord’s Human Life. Being found in fashion as a Man, He voluntarily humbled Himself and be- came obedient unto deathi. But the earlier and the greater act ᾿ of condescension was that whereby He had become Man out of a state of pre-existent glory *. St. Paul constantly refers to the pre-existent Life of Jesus Christ. The Second Adam differs from the first in that He is ‘from heaven!” When ancient Israel was wandering in the desert, Christ had been Him- self invisibly present as Guardian and Sustainer of the Lord’s people™, St. Paul is pleading on behalf of the poor Jewish Churches with their wealthier Corinthian brethren; and he points to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, when He was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich®. Here Christ’s eternal wealth is in contrast with His temporal impoverishment. For His poverty began with the manger of Bethlehem; He became poor by the act of His Incarnation; being rich according to the unbegun, unending Life of His Higher Nature, He became poor in time 9, When St. Paul says that our Lord was ‘ manifested in the flesh?,’
1 Phil. ii. 8: σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὧς ἄνθρωπος, ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτὸν, γενόμενος ὑπήκοος μέχρι θανάτου, θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ.
k Ibid. vers. 6, 7: ἐν μορφῇ Θεοῦ ὑπάρχων, .. ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε, μορφὴν δούλου λαβών.
1 1 Cor. xv. 47: 6 δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος [ὃ Κύριος] ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. Cf. Tert. adv. Mare. v. Io.
τὰ 1 Cor. x. 4: 7 δὲ πέτρα [the πέτρα ἀκολουθοῦσα commemorated by Jewish traditions] ἦν 6 Χριστός. Ibid. ver. 9: μηδὲ ἐκπειράζωμεν τὸν Χριστὸν, καθὼς καί τινες αὐτῶν ἐπείρασαν.
n 2 Cor. viii. 9: γινώσκετε γὰρ τὴν χάριν τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὅτι δ᾽ ὑμᾶς ἐπτώχευσε πλούσιος ὧν, ἵνα ὑμεῖς τῇ ἐκείνου πτωχείᾳ πλου- τήσητε. ‘
° Baur suggests that ἐπτώχευσε need mean no more than that Christ was poor. (Vorlesungen, p. 193.) But ‘der Aorist bezeichnet das einst gesche- hene Hintreten des Armseins (denn πτωχεύειν heisst nicht arm werden, sondern arm sein), nicht das von Christo gefiihrte ganze Leben in Armuth und Niedrigkeit, wobei er gleichwohl reich an Gnade gewesen sei.’ (Meyer in 2 Cor. vili. 9.)
P 1 Tim. iii. 16: ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί. Cf. Bishop Ellicott in loc. The bishop pronounces ὃς to be the reading of the Codex A, ‘after minute personal inspection,’ and has adopted it in his text. Mr. Scrivener however has examined the Codex more recently, and with a different result. ‘On holding the leaf,’ he says, ‘up to the light one singularly bright hour, February 7, 1861, and gazing at it with and without a lens, with eyes which have something of the power and too many of the defects of a mi- croscope, I saw clearly the tongue of the € through the attenuated vellum, crossing the circle about two thirds up, (much above the thick modern a the knob at its extremity falling without the circle. On laying vi
316 Christ ts ‘over all ~
he at least implies that Christ existed before this manifestation ; when St. Paul definitely ascribes to our Lord the function of a Creator who creates not for a Higher Power but for Himself, we
rise from the idea of pre-existence to the idea of a relationship ©
towards the universe, which can belong to One Being alone. This will presently be considered. Certainly St. Paul used the terms ‘form of God,’ ‘image of God,’ when speaking of the Divinity of Jesus Christ4. But these terms do not imply that Christ’s Divinity only resembles or is analogous to the Divinity of the Father. They do not mean that, as Man, He represents the Divine Perfections in an inferior and partial manner to our finite intelligence which is incapable of raising itself sufficiently to contemplate the trans- cendent reality. They are necessary in order to define the personal distinction which exists between the Divine Son and the Eternal Father. Certainly it is no mere human being or seraph Whom St. Paul describes as being ‘ over all, God blessed for evert.’ You remind me that these words are referred by some modern scholars to the Eternal Father. Certainly they are:. but on what grounds? Of scholarship? What then is St. Paul’s general purpose when he uses these words? He has just been enumerating those eight privileges of the race of Israel, the thought of which kindled in his true Jewish heart the generous and passionate desire to be made even anathema for his rejected countrymen. To these privileges he subjoins a climax. The Israelites were they, ἐξ ὧν ὁ Χριστὸς τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, ὁ ὧν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητὸς εἰς τυὺς αἰῶνας. It was from the blood of Israel that the true Christ had sprung, so far as His Human Nature was concerifed : but Christ’s Israelitic descent is, in the Apostle’s eyes, so consummate a glory for Israel, because Christ is much more than one of the sons of men; because
down the leaf I saw immediately after (but not at the same moment) the slight shadow of the real ancient diameter, only just above the recent one.’ Still. on a review of the whole mass of external proof, particularly of the verdict of Codex x, and of the versions and Fathers, Mr. Scrivener decides for ὃς as the probable reading although ‘he dares not pronounce θεὸς a cor- ruption.’ See the very full statement in his ‘ Introduction to the Criticism of the N. T., 3rd ed.,’ pp. 637-642. If then it be admitted that the reading ©= is too doubtful to be absolutely relied on; in any case our Lord’s Pre- existence lies in the ἐφανερώθη (1 St. Johni. 2), which cannot without violence be watered down into the sense of Christ’s manifestation in the teaching and belicf of the Church, as distinct from His manifestation in history.
a Phil. ii. 6; Col. i, 15.
F Rom. ix. 5.
[ποτ᾿
Gop blessed for ever. 319
by reason of His Higher Pre-existent Nature He is ‘over all, God blessed for ever.’ This is the natural’ sense of the pas- sage. If the passage occurred in a profane author and its sense and structure alone had to be considered, few critics would think of overlooking the antithesis between Χριστὸς τὸ κατὰ σάρκα and Θεὸς εὐλογητός t, Still less possible would it be to destroy this antithesis outright, and to impoverish the climax of the whole passage, by cutting off the doxology from the clause which precedes it, and so erecting it into an independent ascrip- tion of praise to God the Father ἃ, If we should admit that the
® Reuss, Théol. Chrét. ii. 76, note. M. Reuss says that the Catholic inter- pretation of Rom ix. 5 is ‘l’explication la plus simple et la plus naturelle.’ ‘Man hat hier verschiedene Auswege gesucht, der Nothwendigkeit zu entge- hen, [6] ὧν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεός auf Christum zu beziehen; aber bei jedem bieten sie solche Schwierigkeiten dar, die immer wieder auf die einfachste und von der Grammatik gebotene Auslegung zuriickfiihren.’ (Usteri, Entwickelung des Paulinischen Lehrbegriffes, p. 309.) “That the text was understood in the early Church to apply to Jesus Christ will appear from St. Iren. iii. 16. 3 ; Tert. adv. Prax. 13, 15; St. Hipp. c. Noet. 6; Origen in Rom. vii. 13; Cone. Ant. A.D. 269, ap. Routh, Reliq. Sacr. iii. 292; St. Athan. Orat, c. Ar. i. 10, iv. 1, sub init.; Theodoret, Her. Fab. v.14; St. Chrys. de Incompr. Dei Nat. v. 2; in Joan. hom. xxxiii.1; in 1 Cor. hom. xx. 3; St. Cyr. Alex. Contr. Julianum, x. 328. It seems probable that any non- employment of so striking a passage by the Catholics during their earlier controversial struggles with the Arians is to be attributed to their fear of being charged with construing it in a Sabellian sense. (Cf. Olsh. in loc.; Reiche, Comm. ii. 268, note.) The language of the next age was unhesitating: εἶπεν αὐτὸν “ἐπὶ mdvtwy’... ‘Ocdv’... “εὐλογητὸν᾽ ... ἔχοντες οὖν τὸν Χριστὸν καὶ ὄντα Θεὸν καὶ εὐλογητὸν, αὐτῷ προσκυνήσωμεν. St. Procl. ad Arm, (Labbe, iii. 1231:) Wetstein erroneously assumed that those early fathers who refused to apply ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς to Christ would have objected to the predicate actually employed by the Apostle, ἐπὶ πάντων Θεός. (Cf. Fritzsche, Comm. in Rom. i. p. 262 sqq.) And indeed Socinus himself (see Tholuck in loc.) had no doubt of the reference of this passage to Christ; although he explained it of a conferred, not of a ‘natural’ Divinity. (Cat. Rac. 159 sqq.) See too Dr. Vaughan, Comm. in loc., against the ‘harsh, evasive and most needless interpretation,’ which applies it to the Father.
t Observe Rom. i. 3, where ἐκ σπέρματος Δαβὶδ κατὰ σάρκα is in contrast with Yiod Θεοῦ... κατὰ Πνεῦμα ‘Aywotvns. Here as σάρξ designates the lower human Nature in Christ, Πνεῦμα ᾿Αγιωσύνης must mean His Higher Divine Nature, conceived of generally, according to which He is the Son of God. The Holy Spirit is nowhere called πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης in the New Testament, while πνεῦμα is used of the Divine Nature in St. John iv. 24; 2 Cor. iii. 17; Heb. ix. 14. See Philippiin loc.; Lect. VI. p. 344, note.
« As to the punctuation of this passage the early MSS. themselves of course determine nothing; but the citations and versions to which Lach- mann generally appeals for the formation of his text are decisively in favour of referring ὁ ὧν to Χριστός. The Sabellian use of the text to prove that
vr]
318 Christ ἐς ‘over all Gop blessed for ever.’
doctrine of Christ’s Godhead is not stated in this precise form elsewhere in St. Paul’s writings *, that admission cannot be held
the Father became Man, and the orthodox replies shewing that this was not the sense of the passage, equally assume that the doxological clause refers to Christ. Nothing can with safety be inferred as to the received reading in the Church from the general and of course prejudiced statement of the Emperor Julian, that τὸν γοῦν Ἰησοῦν οὔτε Παῦλος ἐτόλμησεν εἰπεῖν Θεόν. St. Cyril. cont. Jul. x. init., Op. tom. vi. p. 327. Besides CL (Tisch. ed. 8), two cursive MSS. of the twelfth century (5 and 47) interpose a punctuation after σάρκα, and so raise the following clause into an inde- pendent doxology addressed to God the Father. But the construction which is thus rendered necessary (1) makes the participle ὧν altogether superfluous. In 2 Cor. xi. 31, 6 ὧν εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας is an exactly parallel construction to that of Rom. ix. 5. (Cf. also Rom. i. 25.) It is instructive to observe the facility with which the natural force of the passage is at once recognised in the former and denied in the latter case (see Prof. Jowett in loc., and Baur, Vorlesungen, p.194, who begs the question, —‘ Christus ist noch wesentlich Mensch, nicht Gott’). There is no authority for transposing 6 ὧν into ὧν 6 (with Schlichting, Whiston, and Whitby), in order to evade the natural force of the participle. (2) The construction which the isolation of the clause renders necessary violates the invariable usage of Biblical Greek. ‘If the Apostle had wished to express “God, Who is over all, be blessed for ever,” he must, according to the unvarying usage of the New Testament and the LXX. (which follows the use of 7113), have placed εὐλογητός first, and written εὐλογητὸς ὁ ὧν «.7.A. There are about forty places in the Old Testament and five in the New in which this formula of doxology occurs, and in every case the arrangement is the same, ‘‘ Blessed be the God Who is over all, for ever.”’ (Christ. Rem. April 1856, p. 469.) In the only apparent exception, Ps. Ixviii. 19, LXX. (cited by Winer, N. T. Gr. Eng. Tr. p. 573), Κύριος 6 Θεὸς εὐλογητὸς, εὐλογητὸς Κύριος, the first εὐλογητός has no corresponding word in the Hebrew text, and if not interpolated is a paraphrastic clause, intended to concentrate rhetorical emphasis on the doxology of the usual form, which follows. Dean Alford observes that 1 Kings x. 6; 2 Chron. ix. 8; Job i. 21; Ps. cxii. 2, are not exceptions; ‘since in all of them the verb εἴη or γένοιτο is expressed, requiring the substantive to follow it closely.” We may be very certain that, if ἐπὶ πάντων Θεός could be proved to be an unwarranted reading, no scholar would hesitate to say that 6 dy εὐλογητὸς K.7.A. should be referred to the proper name which precedes it.
* Our Lord is not, we are reminded, called εὐλογητός elsewhere in the New Testament. But εὐλογημένος is certainly applied to Him, St. Matt. xxi. 9; St. Luke xix. 28; and as regards εὐλογητός, the limited number of the doxologies addressed to Him might account for the omission. The predicate could only be refused to Him on the ground of His being, in the belief of St. Paul, merely a creature; whereas St. Paul calls Him Θεός, Eph. v. 5. See Lect. VI. p. 340, note; Harless and Riickert in loc. ; Col. ii. 2, τοῦ Θεοῦ Χριστοῦ; Tisch. 8th ed., where the comma before Χριστοῦ is unwarranted ; and Tit. ii. 13, μέγας Θεός (cf. note y, p. 319). Itisarbitrary to maintain that no word can possibly be applied to a given subject because there is not a second instance of such application within a limited series of books. Even if the application of ὁ dv ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς mn to
LECT.
Christ is ‘our great Gop and Saviour’ 319
to justify us in violently breaking up the passage, in order to escape from its natural meaning, unless we are prepared to deny that St. Paul could possibly have employed an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. Nor in point of fact does St. Paul say more in this famous text than when in writing to Titus he describes Christians as ‘look- ing for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us.’ Here the grammar apparently, and the context certainly, oblige us to recognise the identity of ‘our Saviour Jesus Christ’ and ‘our Great God’ As a matter of fact, Christians are not waiting for any manifestation of the Father. And He Who_
Christ were an ἅπ, Acy., it would be justified by the consideration that a writer who habitually thinks of Christ as God (Col. i. 15, 16, 17; Eph. i. 23; Rom. i. 7; 1 Cor.i. 3; Rom.x.13; Phil. ii. 10, 11) would naturally call Him God in a passage designed to express in the most vivid terms the crowning privilege of Israel. Against ἐπὶ πάντων Θεός, besides the foregoing ob- jection, it is further urged that it cannot be appl'ed to our Lord, Who, although consubstantial with, is subordinate to, the Eternal Father, and withal personally distinct from Him; cf. Eph. iv. 5; 1 Cor. viii. 6, where, however, see p. 309, note ἃ, But St. Paul does not call our Lord ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς ; the article would lay the expression open to a Sabellian construction; St.Paul says that Christ is ἐπὶ πάντων ©.ds, where the Father of course is not included among τὰ πάντα, 1 Cor. xv. 27; and the sense corresponds substantially with Acts x. 36, Rom. x. 12. It asserts that Christ is internal to the Divine Essence, without denying His personal distinctness from, or His filial relation to, the Father. Cf. Alford in loc. ; Usteri, Entwickelung des Paulinischen Lehrbegriffes, p. 309 sqq.; Ols- hausen, Comm. in loc. :
Υ Tit. ii. 13: προσδεχόμενοι τὴν μακαρίαν ἐλπίδα καὶ ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς 5dtns τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ds ἔδωκεν ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν. ‘Nicht Gott und Christus, sondern bloss Christus gemeint ist ; denn es ist von der herrlichen Wiederkunft Christi die Rede, und eine Erschei- nung Gottes (of the Father) anzunehmen, wiire ausser aller Analogie; auch bediirfte Gott der Vater nicht erst des erhebenden und preisenden Epithets μέγα:, vielmehr deutet auch dieses auf Christum.’ (Usteri, Lehrbegriff, p. 310.) For St. Paul’s habitual association of ἐπιφανεία τῆς δόξης with Christ, cf. 2 Thess. ii. 8; 1 Tim, vi. 14: 2 Tim. i. 10; 2 Tim. iv.1, 8. To these arguments Bishop Ellicott adds that the subsequent allusion to our Lord’s profound Self-humiliation accounts for St. Paul’s ascribing to Him, ᾿ by way of reparation, ‘a title, otherwise unusual, that specially and anti- thetically marks His glory,’ and that two ante-Nicene writers, Clemens Alexandr. (Protrep. 7) and St. Hippolytus, together with the great bulk of post-Nicene fathers, although not all, concur in this interpretation. The bishop holds that grammatically there is a presumption in favour of this interpretation, but, on account of the defining genitive ἡμῶν, nothing more. Nevertheless, taking the great strength of the exegetical evidence into account, he sees in this text a ‘direct, definite, and even studied declaration of the Divinity of the Eternal Son.’ See his note; Words- worth in loc.; Middleton, Greek Article, ed. Rose, p. 393; Pfleiderer Paulinismus, Kap. xi. p. 474. v1 |
320 Christ ‘in the form of’ and ‘equal with’ Goo.
gave Himself for us can be none other than our Lord Jesus Christ.
Reference has already been made to that most solemn passage in the Epistle to the Philippians, which is read by the Church in the Communion Service on Palm Sunday%, in order, as it would seem, to remind Christians of the real dignity of their suffering Lord. Our Lord’s Divine Nature is here represented as the seat of His Eternal Personality; His Human Nature is a clothing which He assumed in time. Ἐν μορφῇ Θεοῦ ὑπάρχων,
ες ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε, μορφὴν δούλου λαβών ἃ, It is impossible not to be struck by the mysterious statement that Christ, being in the form of God, did not look upon equality with God (τὸ εἶναι ἴσα Θεῷ) as a prize to be seized and kept hold on? (οὐκ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο). It has been maintained that St. Paul is here contrasting the apostolic belief in our Lord’s condescending love with an early Gnostic speculation respecting an AXon. ‘This Aton desired by an immediate and violent assault to lay hold on the invisible and incomprehensible God ; whereas God could only be really known to and contemplated by the Monogenes. The ambition of the fabled AXon is thus said to be in contrast with the ‘self-empty- ing’ of the Eternal Christ. Such a contrast. if it had been in the Apostle’s mind, would have implied the Absolute Pre-existent Divinity of Christ. Christ voluntarily lays aside the glory which was His; the fabled on would violently grasp a glory
z See Epistle for Sunday next before Easter.
* Phil. ii. 6, 7. ‘Die Gnostiker sprachen von einem Aeon, welcher das absolute Wesen Gottes auf unmittelbare Weise erfassen wollte, und weil er so das an sich Unmégliche erstrebte aus dem πλήρωμα in das κένωμα herabfiel. Dieser Aeon begieng so gleichsam einen Raub, weil er, der in der Qualitat eines gittlichen Wesens an sich die Fahigkeit hatte, sich mit dem Absoluten zu vereinigen, diese Identitiét, welche erst durch den ganzen Weltprocess realisirt werden konnte, gleichsam sprungweise, mit Einem Male, durch einen gewaltsamen Act, oder wie durch einen Raub an sich reissen wollte, So erhilt erst die bildliche Vorstellung eines aprayuds ihre eigentliche Bedeutung.’ (Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 266.) Compare, however, Meyer, Philipperbrief, p. 68, Anmerkung. Baur has spun a large web out of St. Ireneeus, Adv. Her. I. 2.1.2. The notion that the Aton sought to attain an identity with God,—and this assumption is necessary in order to construct a real parallel with St. Paul’s words,—has no foundation in the text of St. Irenzus,
> Cf. Bp. Ellicott in loc. ; and in Aids to Faith, p. 436; Déllinger, First Age of the Church, p. 163. (E.T.) renders ἁρπαγμὸν as ‘a spoil whch was not His by right, and of which He might be deprived.’ apz. is clearly a thing or state, not an action. Thus the description of the glory from which our Lord stooped ends at ὑπάρχων; the description of His con- descension begins with οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν, and ἀλλ᾽ has its full force.
[ LECT.
Christ ‘the Image of the Invisible Gon.” 321
which could not rightfully belong to him. But if this explana- tion of the energetic negative phrase of the Apostle should not be accepted, it is in any case clear that the force of St. Paul’s moral lesson in the whole passage must depend upon the real Divinity of the Incarnate and Self-immolating Christ. The point of our Lord’s example lies in His emptying Himself of the glory or ‘form’ of His Eternal Godhead. Worthless indeed would have been the force of His example, had He been in reality a created Being, who only abstained from grasping tenaciously at Divine prerogatives which a creature could not have arrogated to himself without impious folly® Christians are to have in themselves the Mind of Christ Jesus; but what that mind is they can only understand, by considering what His Apostle believed Christ Jesus to have been, before He took on Him the form of a-servant and became obedient unto death,
Perhaps the most exhaustive assertion of our Lord’s Godhead which is to be found in the writings of St. Paul, is that which occurs in the Epistle to the Colossians4. This magnificent dog- matic passage is introduced, after the Apostle’s manner, with a strictly practical object. The Colossian Church was exposed to the intellectual attacks of a theosophic doctrine, which degraded Jesus Christ to the rank of one of a long series of inferior beings, supposed to range between mankind and the supreme God. Against this position St. Paul asserts that Christ is the εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ dopdrov—the Image of the Invisible God® The ex- pression εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ supplements the title of ‘the Son.’ As ‘the Son’ Christ is derived eternally from the Father, and He is of One Substance with the Father. As ‘the Image,’ Christ is, in that One Substance, the exact likeness of the Father, in all things except being the Father. The Son is the Image of the Father, not as the Father, but as God: the Son is ‘the Image
¢ The Arian gloss upon this text was this: ὅτι θεὸς ὧν ἐλάττων οὐχ ἥρπασε τὸ εἶναι ἴσα τῷ Θεῷ τῷ μεγάλῳ καὶ μείζονι. St. Chrysostom comments thus: Καὶ μικρὸς καὶ μέγας Θεὸς ἔνι; καὶ τὰ Ἑλληνικὰ τοῖς τῆς ἐκκλησίας δόγμασιν ἐπεισάγετε;. .. El γὰρ μικρὸς, πῶς καὶ Θεός ; (Hom. vi. in loc.) Μορφὴ is the ‘manner of existence;’ and only God could have the ‘manner of existence’ of God. Trench. Syn. N. T. p.248. Cp. δόξα, St. John xvii. 5. Of this μορφὴ (as distinct from Deity Itself) our Lord ἐκένωσεν ἑαυτόν. The word ὑπάρχων points to our Lord’s ‘original subsistence’ in the splendour of the Godhead. The expression ἐν μορφῇ Θεοῦ ὑπάρχων is virtually equivalent to τὸ εἶναι ἴσα Θεῷ. See Dean Alford’s exhaustive note upon this passage.
4 Col, i. 15-17. 9 Cf. 2 Cor. iv. 4: ὅς ἐστιν εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ. vi | Υ
322 Christ, existing ‘before every creature.
of God.’ The εἰκὼν is indeed originally God’s unbegun, unending reflection of Himself in Himself; but the εἰκὼν is also the Organ whereby God, in His Essence invisible, reveals Himself to His creatures. Thus the εἰκὼν is, so to speak, naturally the Creator, since creation is the first revelation which God has made of Himself. Man is the highest point in the visible universe; in man, God’s attributes are most luminously exhibited ; man is the image and glory of Godf. But Christ is the Adequate Image of God, God’s Self-reflection in His Own thought, eternally pre- sent with Himself. As the εἰκὼν, Christ is the πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως : that is to say, not the First in rank among created beings, but born before any created beings& That this is a true sense of the expression is etymologically certain!; but it is also the only sense which is in real harmony with the relation in which, according to the context, Christ is said to stand to the
1 Cor. xi. 7: εἰκὼν καὶ δόξα Θεοῦ.
& πρωτότοκος was apparently preferred by St. Paul to mpwrdyovos, the favourite Alexandrian word, because it suggested that Christ was the true Messiah as well as the true Logos. Lightfoot, Colossians, p. 212.
h As cix+y here defines our Lord’s relation to God the Father, so πρωτό- toxos defines His relation to the creatures, βούλεται δεῖξαι ὅτι πρὸ πάσης τῆς κτίσεώς ἐστιν 6 Tids πῶς Sv; διὰ γεννήσεως" οὐκοῦν καὶ τῶν ἀγγέλων Tpd- τερος, καὶ οὕτως, ὥστε καὶ αὐτὸς ἔκτισεν αὐτούς. (Theophyl. in loc.) Christ is not the first of created spirits; He exists before them, and as One ‘begotten not made.’ ‘Der genit. πάσης κτίσεως ist nicht Genit. partitiv. (obwohl diess noch de Wette fiir unzweifelhaft hilt), weil πᾶσα κτίσις nicht die ganze Schipfung heisst, mithin nicht die Kategorie oder Gesammtheit aussagen kann, zu welcher Christus als ihr erstgebornes Individuum gehire ; es heisst, jedwedes Geschipf; vrgl. z. πᾶσα οἰκοδομή, Eph. ii. 21), sondern es ist der Genit. comparat.: der Erstgeborne in Vergleich mit jedem Ge- schipfe (s. Bernhardy, p. 139), d. h. eher geboren als jedes Geschopf. Vregl. Bahr z. St. ἃ. Ernesti Ursprung ἃ, Siinde, p. 241. Anders ist das Ver- haltniss Apoc. i. 5: πρωτότοκος τῶν νεκρῶν, WO τῶν νεκρῶν die Kategorie anzeigt, vrgl. πρωτότοκος ἐν πολλοῖς ἀδελφοῖς (Rom, viii. 29). Unser Genit. ist ganz zu fassen wie der vergleichende Genit. bei πρῶτος Joh. i. 15, 30; Winer, p. 218; Fritzsche ad Rom. ii. p. 421. Das Vergleichungs-Moment ist das Verhaltniss der Zeit, und zwar in Betreff des Ursprungs: da aber letzterer bei jeder κτίσις anders ist als bei Christo, so ist nicht πρωτόκτιστος oder πρωτόπλαστος gesagt, welches von Christo eine gleiche Art der Entste- hung wie von der Creatur anzeigen wiirde, sondern πρωτότοκος σον ΒΗ], welches in der Zeitvergleichung des Ursprungs die absonderliche Art der Entstehung in Betreff Christi anzeigt, dass er namlich von Gott nicht geschaffen sei, wie die anderen Wesen, bei denen diess in der Benennung κτίσις liegt, sondern geboren, aus dem Wesen Gottes gleichartig hervorge- gangen. Richtig Theodoret: οὐχ ὡς ἀδελφὴν ἔχων τὴν κτίσιν, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς πρὸ πάσης κτίσεῳς γεννηθείς. Wortwidrig ist daher die Arianische Erkla- rung, dass Christus als das erste Geschipf Gottes bezeichnet werde.’ Meyer, Kolosserbrief, p.184. See Lightfoot, Colossians. p. 212. [
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3 4 3 =
Christ, the Author and the End of created life. 323
created universei, That relation, according to St. Paul, is threefold. Of all things in earth and heaven, of things seen and unseen, of the various orders of the angelic hierarchy, of thrones, of dominions, of principalities, of powers—it is said that they were created in Christ, by Christ, and for Christ. Ἐν αὐτῷ, ἐκτίσθη 2... δὲ αὐτοῦ, καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται. In Him. There was no creative process external to and independent of Him; since the archetypal forms after which the creatures are modelled, and the sources of their strength and consistency of being, eter- nally reside in Him*k. By Him. The force which has sum- moned the worlds out of nothingness into being, and which upholds them in being, is His; He wields it; He is the One Producer and Sustainer of all created existence. For Him. He is not, as Arianism afterwards pretended, merely an inferior workman, creating for the glory of a higher Master, for a God superior to Himself. He creates for Himself; He is the End of created things as well as their immediate Source ; and in living for Him every creature finds at once the explanation and the law of its being. For ‘ He is before all things, and by Him all things consist!’ After such a statement it follows naturally
! Schleiermacher’s desire to apply to the new creation, what is here said of the natural, illustrates his tendency ‘to expound the Bible by the verdict of his consciousness, instead of permitting his consciousness to be regulated by the Bible.’ Auberlen on the Divine Revelation, pt. 2. iv. 2. a.
2 Compare Rom. xi. 36: ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ 5? αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα. As in this passage the Apostle is speaking of God, without hinting at any distinction of Persons within the Godhead, he writes ἐξ αὐτοῦ, not ἐν αὐτῷ. The Eternal Father is the ultimate Source of all life, both intra and extra Deum; while the production of created beings depends immediately upon the Son. The other two prepositions—the last being theologically of most import—correspond in the two passages.
Κ ἐκτίσθη describes the act of creation; ἔκτισται points to creation as a completed and enduring fact. In ἐν αὐτῷ, the preposition signifies that. ‘in Christo beruhete (ursiachlich) der Act der Schépfung, so dass die Voll. ziehung derselben in Seinen Person begriindet war, und ohne ihn nicht geschehen wiire.’ Cf. St. John i. 3: χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν, ὃ γέγονεν. But although the preposition immediately expresses the dependence of created life upon Christ as its cause, it hints at the reason of this depend- ence, namely, that our Divine Lord is the causa exemplaris of creation, the κόσμος νοητὸς, the Archetype of all created things, ‘die Dinge ihrer Idee nach, Selbst, er triigt ihre Wesenheit in sich.’ (Olshausen in loc.)
1 Col. i. 17: καὶ αὐτός ἐστι πρὸ πάντων, Kal τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκε. Meyer in loc. ‘Und Er (Er eben), durch welchen und fiir welchen τὰ πάντα ἔκτισται, hat eine friihere Existenz als Alles, und das Simmtliche besteht in ihm. .... πρὸ πάντων wie πρωτότοκος von der-Zeit, nicht vom Range; wiederholt und nachdriicklich betont wird von P. die Priiexistenz eg Statt ἔστι hatte er ἦν sagen kénnen (Joh, i, 1); jenes aber ist vi Y 2
324 Christ's Divinity in Heb. i. 5-14.
that the πλήρωμα, that is to say, the entire cycle of the Divine attributes, considered as a series of powers or forces, dwells in Jesus Christ; and this, not in any merely ideal or transcendental manner, but with that actual reality which men attach to the presence of material bodies which they can feel and measure through the organs of sense. Ἔν αὐτῷ κατοικεῖ πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σωματικῶς τὰ, Although throughout this Epistle the word λόγος is never introduced, it is plain that the εἰκὼν of St. Paul is equivalent in His rank and functions to the λόγος of St. John. Each exists prior to creation; each is the one Agent in creation; each is a Divine Person; each is equal with God and shares His essential Life; each is really none other than God.
Indeed with this passage in the Colossians only two others in the entire compass of the New Testament can, on the whole, be compared. Allusion has already been made to the prologue of St. John’s Gospel; and it is no less obvious to refer to the opening chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Most of those writers who earnestly reject the Pauline authorship of that Epistle admit that it is of primary canonical authority, and assign to its author the highest place of honour in ‘the school of St. Paul.’ There are reasons for believing that, at the utmost, it is not more distantly related to his mind than is the Gospel of St. Luke ; if indeed it does not furnish a crowning instance of the spiritual versatility of the great Apostle, addressing himself to a set of circumstances unlike any other of which the records of his ministry have given us information®. Throughout the
gesagt, weil Er die Permanenz des Seins Christi im Auge hat und darstellt, nicht aber historisch iiber ihn berichten will, was nur in den Hiilfssiitzen mit ἅτι vers. 16. ἃ. 19. geschieht.” Cf. St. John viii. 58.
m Col. ii. g: πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα. Meyer in loc.: ‘Wird durch τῆς θεότητος niher bestimmt, welches angiebt, was seiner ganzen Fiille nach, d. i. nicht etwa blos theilweise, sondern in seiner Gesammtheit, in Christo wohne.... n θεότης die Gottheit (Lucian, Icarom. 9; Plut. Mor. p. 415, C.) das Abstractum von 6 Θεός, ist zu unterscheiden von ἡ θειότης dem Abstractum von θεῖος (Rom. i. 20; Sap. xviii. g; Lucian de Calumn., 17). Jenes ist Deitas, das Gottsein, d.i. die gittliche Wesenheit, Gottheit ; dieses aber die Divinitas, ἃ. i. die gittliche Qualitdt, Gottlichkeit.’ So Bengel: ‘Non modd divine virtutes, sed ipsa divina natura.” See too Abp. Trench, Syn, N. Τὶ i. p. 8. Thus in this passage the πλήρωμα must be understood in the metaphysical sense of the Divine Essence, even if in Col. i. το it is referred to the fulness of Divine grace. Contrast too the permanent fact involved in the present κατοικεῖ of the one passage with the historical aorist εὐδόκησε of the other.
2 The Pauline authorship of the Epistle has been maintained τὸ great
LECT,
Christ obeyed and worshipped by the Angels. 325
Epistle to the Hebrews a comparison is instituted between Christianity and Judaism ; and this comparison turns partly on the spiritual advantages which belong to the two systems respec- tively, and partly on the relative dignity of the persons who represent the two dispensations, and who mediate accordingly, in whatever senses, between God and humanity. Thus our Incarnate Lord as the one great High-priest is contrasted with Aaron® and his successors. Thus too as the one perfect Re- vealer of God, He is compared with MosesP and the Jewish prophets. As the antitype of Melchisedec, Christ is a higher Priest than Aaron 4; as a Son reigning over the house of God, Christ is a greater Ruler than the legislator whose praise it was that he had been a faithful servant™. As Author of ἃ final, complete, and unique revelation, Christ stands altogether above the prophets by whom God had revealed His Mind in many modes and in many fragments, in revelations very various as to their forms, and, at certain epochs, almost incessant in their occurrence’. But if the superiority of Christianity to Judaism was to be completely established, a further comparison was necessary. The later Jewish theologians had laid much stress upon the delivery of the Sinaitic Law through the agency of angels acting as delegates for the Most High Godt. The Author of Christianity might be superior to Moses and the prophets, but could He challenge comparison with those pure and mighty spirits compared with whom the greatest of the sons of Israel, as beings of flesh and blood, were insignificant and sinful? The answer is, that if Christ is not the peer of the
ability by Biesenthal, ‘Das Trostschreiben des Ap. Paulus an die Hebriier,’ Leipzig, 1878, cf. pp. 19-43 [1881].
© Heb. v. 4; x. II. P Thid. iii, 1-6,
4 Ibid. vii. 1-22.
τ Ibid. iii. 5, 6: καὶ Μωσῆς μὲν πιστὸς ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ οἴκῳ αὐτοῦ, ὡς θεράπων, «+e. Χριστὸς δὲ, ὡς υἱὸς ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ, οὗ οἶκός ἐσμεν ἡμεῖς. The preceding words are yet more noteworthy: Moses and the house of Israel stand to Jesus Christ in the relation of creature to the Creator. πλείονος γὰρ δόξης οὗτος Tapa Μωσῆν ἠξίωται, καθ᾽ ὕσον πλείονα τιμὴν ἔχει τοῦ οἴκου 6 κατασκευάσας αὐτόν. πᾶς γὰρ οἶκος κατασκευάζεται ὑπό Tivos’ ὃ δὲ τὰ πάντα κατασκευάσας (sc. Jesus Christ), Θεός. So too the ἀπὸ Θεοῦ ζῶντος of ver. 12 refers most naturally to our Lord, not to the Father.
§ Ibid. i. 1: πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως πάλαι ὁ Θεὸς λαλήσας τοῖς πατράσιν ἐν τοῖς προφήταις.
t Ibid. ii. a: ὁ δὲ ἀγγέλων λαληθεὶς λόγος. Acts vii. 38: μετὰ τοῦ ἀγγέλου τοῦ λαλοῦντος αὐτῷ ἐν τῷ ὄρει Σινᾶ. Ibid. ver. 53: οἵτινες ἐλάβετε τὸν νόμον εἰς διαταγὰς ἀγγέλων. Gal. iii, 19: ὁ νόμος... προσετέθη... διαταγεὶς δι᾽ ἀγγέλων.
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326 How Christ differs from the Angels.
angels, this is because He is their Lord and Master¥. The angels are ministers of the Divine Will; they are engaged in stated services enjoined on them towards creatures lower than them- selves, yet redeemed by Christ’. But He, in His glory above the heavens, is invested with attributes to which the highest angel could never pretend. In His crucified but now enthroned Humanity, He is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high¥; He is seated there, as being Heir of all things*; the angels are themselves but a portion of His vast inheritance. The dignity of His titles is indicative of His essential rank Y. Indeed He is expressly addressed as God%; and when He is termed the Son of God, or the Son, the full sense of that term is drawn out in language adopted, as it seems, from the Book of Wisdom, and not less explicit than that which we have been considering in the Epistle to the Colossians, although of a distinct type. That He is One with God as having streamed forth eternally from the Father’s Essence, like a ray of light from the parent fire with which it is unbrokenly joined, is implied in the expression ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης >, That He is both personally distinct from, and yet literally equal to, Him of Whose Essence He is the adequate imprint, is taught us in the phrase χαρακτὴρ τῆς tmoordcews®. By Him,
« Heb. ii. 3: owrnplas... ἀρχὴν λαβοῦσα λαλεῖσθαι διὰ τοῦ Κυρίου.
τ Ibid. i. 14: λειτουργικὰ πνεύματα, εἰς διακονίαν ἀποστελλόμενα διὰ τοὺς μέλλοντας κληρονομεῖν σωτηρίαν.
w Ibid. ver. 3: ἐκάθισεν ἐν δεξιᾷ τῆς μεγαλωσύνης ἂν ὑψηλοῖς. The superiority of Christ to the Angels is already implied in the climax at Gal. iv. 14, while the elevation of Christ’s Manhood above all orders of Angelic life is taught in Eph. i, 20, 21.
* Heb. i. 2: κληρονόμον πάντων.
Υ Ibid. ver. 4: τοσούτῳ κρείττων γενόμενος τῶν ἀγγέλων, ὅσῳ διαφορώτερον παρ᾽ αὐτοὺς κεκληρονόμηκεν ὄνομα. As to γενόμενος, it will be borne in mind that the subject of the whole passage is the Word now truly Incarnate, and not, as is sometimes assumed, the pre-existent Logos alone. The γενόμενος would therefore refer to the exaltation of our Lord’s Humanity. (See Ebrard, Comm. in loc.) St. Cyril observes that it does not imply that in Christ’s superior nature He could be made superior to angels, Thes. p. 199.
* Heb. i. 8: πρὸς δὲ τὸν Tidv, “ὁ θρόνος σου, ὃ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα Tot αἰῶνος. Ps, xlv. 6.
® Wisd. vii. 26; cf. Lect. IT. p. 63.
> Heb. i. 3.
¢ Ibid. A. V. has ‘Express image of His Person,’ ‘So Beza, who dreaded Arianism, and accordingly used ‘Person’ instead of ‘Substance,’ from an apprehension that the latter rendering would here imply something inconsistent with the Homoousion.
[ LET.
seit teed
Christ's Deity boundupwithSt.Paul’s wholemind.32 7
therefore, the universe was made4; and at this moment all things are preserved and upheld in being by the fiat of His almighty word®, What created angel can possibly compare with Him? In the Name which He bears and which unveils His Naturef; in the honours which the heavenly intelligences themselves may not refuse to pay Him, even when He is enter- ing upon His profound Self-humiliation §; in the contrast be- tween their ministerial duties and His Divine and unchanging Royalty»; in His relationship of Creator both to earth and heaveni; and in the majestic certainty of His trumph over all who shall oppose the advance of His kingdom k,—we recog- nise a Being, for Whose Person, although It be clothed in a finite Human Nature!, there is no real place between humanity and God. While the Epistle to the Hebrews lays even a stronger emphasis than any other book of the New Testament upon Christ’s true Humanity™, it is nevertheless certain that no other book more explicitly asserts the reality of His Divine prerogatives ἢ,
3. Enough will have been said, to shew that the Apostle Paul believed in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, not in the moral sense of Socinianism, nor in the ditheistic sense, so to speak, of Arianism, but in the literal, metaphysical, and absolute sense of the Catholic Church. Those passages in his writings which may appear to interfere with this conclusion are certainly to be referred either to his anxiety to insist upon the reality of our Lord’s Manhood, or to his recognition of the truth that Christ’s Eternal Sonship is Itself derived from the Person of the Father. From the Father Christ eternally receives an equality of life and power, and therefore, as being a recipient, He is so far subordinate to the Father. We have indeed
ἃ Heb. i. 2: 82 οὗ καὶ τοὺς αἰῶνας ἐποίησεν. See Delitzsch and Biesenthal, in loc.
6 Ibid. ver. 3: φέρων τε τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ.
£ Thid. ver. 5: Ὑἱός μου εἶ ov. See Biesenthal, in loc.
® Ibid. ver. 6: προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες ἄγγελοι Θεοῦ. Psalm xcvii. 7.
h Heb. i. 7-9, 14.
1 Ibid. ver. 10: σὺ κατ᾽ ἀρχὰς, Κύριε, τὴν γῆν ἐθεμελίωσας, καὶ ἔργα τῶν χειρῶν σου εἰσὶν οἱ οὐρανοί.
K Ibid. ver. 13: πρὸς τίνα δὲ τῶν ἀγγέλων εἴρηκέ ποτε, “ Κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν μου, ἕως ἂν θῶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν σου ;᾽
1 Tbid. iii. 2: πιστὸν ὄντα τῷ ποιήσαντι αὐτόν.
m Jbid. ii. 14, 18, iv. 15, v. 7. So xiii. 20;
π Cf. especially Heb. xiii. 8, than which no stronger language could be ake to describe the Alone Unchangeable, VI
328 Christology of St.Paul’s missionary sermons.
already seen that Christ’s eternal derivation from the Father is set forth nowhere more fully than in the Gospel of St. John, and by the mouth of our Lord Himself. But the doctrine before us, as it lies in the writings of St. Paul, is not to be measured only by an analysis of those particular texts which proclaim it in terms. The evidence for this great doctrine is not really in suspense until such time as the critics may have finally decided by their microscopical and chemical ap- paratus, whether the bar of the © in a famous passage of St. Paul’s first Epistle to Timothy is or is not really discernible in the Alexandrian manuscript. The doctrine lies too deep in the thought of the Apostle, to be affected by such contingencies®. You cannot make St. Paul a preacher of Humanitarianism, without warping, mutilating, degrading his whole recorded mind. Par- ticular texts, when duly isolated from the Apostle’s general teaching, may be pressed with plausible effect into the service of Arian or Humanitarian theories; but take St. Paul’s doctrine as a whole, and it must be admitted to centre in One Who is at once and truly God as well as Man.
St. Paul never speaks of Jesus Christ as a pupil of less originality and genius might speak of a master in moral truth, whose ideas he was recommending, expanding, defining, defend- ing, popularizing, among the men of a later generation. St. Paul never professes to be working on the common level of human power and knowledge with a master from whom he differed, as an inferior teacher might differ, only in the degree of his capacity and authority. St. Paul always writes and speaks as becomes the slave of Jesus. He is indeed a most willing and enthusiastic slave, reverently gathering up and passionately enforcing all that touches the work and glory of that Divine Master to Whom he has freely consecrated his liberty and his life.
In St. Paul’s earliest sermons, we do not find the moral precepts of Jesus a more prominent element than the glories of His Person and of His redemptive work. That the reverse
° This is indirectly recogonised by those writers who would, for instance, deny the Pauline authorship of such Epistles as those to the Ephesians and Colossians, for this reason among others, that our Lord’s profound relations to the Church, as set forth in these Epistles, involve a doctrine of His Person, which they reject; cf. Baur, Vorlesungen iiber N. T. Theologie, 272, sqq. Pfleiderer regards the Epistle to the Colossians as due to the later influence of Alexandrianism upon St. Paul’s doctrine; while that to the Ephesians, he says, belongs to the transition stage from ‘Paulinism’ to ‘Catholicism.’ ‘Taulinismus,’ 1873. pp. 366, 431 [1881].
[ LECT.
τ ΤΟΝ
Discourses at Antioch and Athens. 329
is the case is at once apparent from a study of the great dis- course which was pronounced in the synagogue of the Pisidian Antioch. The past history of Israel is first summarized from a point of view which regards it as purely preparatory to the manifestation of the anticipated SaviourP; and then the true Messiahship of Jesus is enforced by an appeal to the testimony of John the Baptist, to the correspondence of the circumstances of Christ’s Death with the prophetic announcements", and to the historical fact of His resurrection from the grave’, which had been witnessed by the apostles as distinctlyt as it had been foretold by the prophets¥. Thus the Apostle reaches his prac- tical conclusion. To believe in Jesus Christ is the one condition of receiving remission of.sins and (how strangely must such words have sounded in Jewish ears!) justification from all things from which men could not be justified by the divinely- given law of Moses’. To deny Jesus Christ is to incur those penalties which the Hebrew Scriptures denounced against scornful indifference to the voice of God and to the present tokens of His Love and Power Υ͂,
At first sight, St. Paul’s sermon from the steps of the Areo- pagus might seem to be rather Theistic than Christian. St. Paul had to gain the ear of a ‘ philosophical’ audience which imagined that ‘Jesus and the Resurrection’ were two ‘strange demons %,’ who might presently be added to the stock of deities already venerated by the Athenian populace. St. Paul is therefore eager to set forth the lofty spirituality of the God of Christendom ; but, although he insists chiefly on those Divine attributes which are observable in Nature and Providence, his sermon ends with Jesus. After shewing what God is in Himself¥, and what are the natural relations which subsist between God and mankind 4, St. Paul touches the conscience of his Athenian audience by a sharp denunciation of the vulgar idolatry which it despised®, and he calls men to repent by a reference to the coming judgment,
P Acts xiii. 17-23. a Ibid. vers. 24, 25. τ Tbid, vers. 26-30.
8 Ibid. ver. 30. ὁ Ibid. ver. 31. Ὁ Tbid. vers. 32-37.
v Ibid. vers. 38, 39: διὰ τούτου ὑμῖν ἄφεσις ἁμαρτιῶν καταγγέλλεται" Kad ἀπὸ πάντων ὧν οὐκ ἠδυνήθητε ἐν τῷ νόμῳ Μωσέως δικαιωθῆναι, ἐν τούτῳ πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων δικαιοῦται.
w Ibid. ver. 40: βλέπετε οὖν μὴ ἐπέλθῃ ἐφ᾽ ὑμᾶς τὸ εἰρημένον ἐν τοῖς προφήταις" “Ἴδετε, οἱ καταφρονηταὶ, καὶ θαυμάσατε καὶ ἀφανίσθητε: ὅτι ἔργον ἐγὼ ἐργάζομαι ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ὑμῶν. Hab. i. 5.
x Acts xvii. 18: ξένων δαιμονίων δοκεῖ καταγγελεὺς εἶναι.
¥ Ibid. vers. 24, 25. ® Ibid. vers, 26 28.
® Ibid, vers. 29, 30.
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330 Christology of St. Paul’s apologetic speeches.
which conscience itself foreshadowed. But the certainty of that judgment has been attested by the historical fact of the resurrec- tion of Jesus; the risen Jesus is the future Judge Ὁ,
Or, listen to St. Paul as with fatherly authority and tender- ness he is taking his leave of his fellow-labourers in Christ, the presbyters of Ephesus, on the strand of Miletus. Here the Apostle’s address moves incessantly round the Person of Jesus. He protests that to lead men to repentance towards God and faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ¢, had been the single object of his public and private ministrations at Ephesus. He counts not his life dear to himself, if only he can complete the mission which is so precious to him because he has received it from the Lord Jesus4, The presbyters are-bidden to ‘shepherd the Church of God which He has purchased with His Own Bloode;’ and the Apostle concludes by quoting a saying of the Lord Jesus which has not been recorded in the Gospels, but which was then reverently treasured in the Church, to the effect that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive ἵν
In the two apologetic discourses delivered, the one from the stairs of the tower of Antonia before the angry multitude, and the other in the council-chamber at Cesarea before King Agrippa II. of Chalcis, St. Paul justifies his missionary activity by dwelling upon the circumstances which accompanied and immediately followed his conversion. Everything had turned upon a fact which the Apostle abundantly insists upon ;—he had received a revelation of Jesus Christ in His heavenly glory. | It was Jesus Who had spoken to St. Paul from heaven; it was Jesus Who had revealed Himself as persecuted in His suffering Church); it was to Jesus that St. Paul had surrendered his moral libertyi; it was from Jesus that he had received specific
> Acts xvii. 31; 1 Thess. ii. 10.
© Acts xx. 21: d:auaptupducvos.... τὴν εἰς τὸν Θεὸν μετάνοιαν, καὶ πίστιν τὴν εἰς τὸν Κύριον ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστόν.
4 ΤρΙά, ver. 24.
© Ibid. ver. 28: ποιμαίνειν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ [Κυρίου, Tisch. al.] ἣν περιεποιήσατο διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίον. See Dr. Wordsworth’s note in loc. In the third edition of his Greek Testament, Dean Alford restored the reading τοῦ Θεοῦ, which he had abandoned for Κυρίου in the two former editions. See especially the note in his fifth edition. For Κυρίου are A, C, Ὁ, E; for Θεοῦ, B, 8, Syr., Vulg. Compare Scrivener, Introduction to Criticism of the N.T., ed. 3, p. 620 sqq.
! Acts xx. 35: μνημονεύειν τε τῶν λόγων τοῦ Κυρίου ᾿Ιησοῦ, ὅτι αὐτὸς εἶπε" “Μακάριόν ἐστι μᾶλλον διδόναι ἢ λαμβάνειν.᾽
6 Ibid. xxii. 7; xxvi. 14, 8 Ibid. xxii. 8; xxvi. 15. / Ibid. = Io.
LECT.
St. Paul teaches Christ’s Deity implicitly. 331
orders to go into Damascusk; Jesus had commissioned him to be a minister and witness both of what he had seen, and of the truths which were yet to be disclosed to him!; it was by Jesus that he was sent both to Jews and Gentiles, ‘to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that,’ continued the Heavenly Speaker, ‘they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that isin Me™’ It was Jesus Who had appeared to St. Paul when he was in an ecstasy in the Temple, had bidden him leave Jerusalem suddenly, and had sent him to the Gentiles". The revelation of Jesus had been emphatically the turning-point of the Apostle’s life; it had first determined the direction and had then quickened the intensity of hisaction. He could plead with truth before Agrippa that he had not been disobedient unto the heavenly vision °. - But who can fail to see that the Lord who in His glorified Manhood thus speaks to His servant from the skies, and Who is withal revealed to him in the very centre of his soul P, is no created being, is neither saint nor seraph, but in very truth the Master of consciences, the Monarch Who penetrates, inhabits, and rules the secret life of spirits, the King Who claims the fealty and Who orders the ways of men ?
St. Paul’s popular teaching then is emphatically a ‘ preaching of Jesus Christ 4.’ Our Lord is always the Apostle’s theme ; but the degree in which His Divine glory is unveiled variés with the capacities of the Jewish or heathen listeners for bearing the great discovery. The doctrine is distributed, if we may so speak, in a like varying manner over the whole text of St. Paul’s Epistles. It les in those greetings™ by which the Apostle
Ek Acts xxii. Io. 1 Thid. xxvi. 16. m Tbid. vers. 17, 18.
Ὁ Jbid. xxii. 17: ἐγένετο. ... προσευχομένον pov ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ, γενέσθαι με ἐν ἐκστάσει, καὶ ἰδεῖν αὐτὸν λέγοντά μοι, Σπεῦσον καὶ ἔξελθε ἐν τάχει ἐξ Ἱερουσαλήμ. Ibid. ver. 21: εἰς ἔθνη μακρὰν ἐξαποστελῶ σε.
© Ibid. xxvi. 19: οὐκ ἐγενόμην ἀπειθὴς τῇ οὐρανίῳ ὀπτασίᾳ.
P Gal. i. 15, 16: εὐδόκησεν 6 Θεὸς . .. . ἀποκαλύψαι τὸν Tidy αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐμοί.
4 Acts ix. 20, xvii. 3, 18, xxviii. 31: διδάσκων. τὰ περὶ τοῦ Κυρίου ᾿Τησοῦ. Cf. Ibid. v. 42; 1 Cor. i. 23; 2 Cor. iv. 5; Phil. i. 15, 17, 18. Hence Rom. xvi. 25: τὸ κήρυγμα ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ.
τ Βοιη. 1. 7: χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ Θεοῦ Πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 1 Cor. i. 3; 2 Cor. 1. 2; Gal. i. 3; Eph. 1.2: Phil. i. 2; Col. i. 2; 1 Thess. 1.1; 2 Thess, i. 2; Philemon 3. In1 Tim. i. 2; 2 Tim. i. 2; ἔλεος is inserted between χάρις and εἰρήνη, probably because Timothy, on account of his ministerial responsibilities, needed the pitying mercy of God a]. than unordained Christians,
VI
332 Christology of Benedictions and Hymns.
associates Jesus Christ with God the Father, as being the source uo less than the channel of the highest spiritual blessings. It is pointedly asserted when the Galatians are warned that St. Paul is ‘an Apostle not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father 8. It is implied in commands and benedic- tionst which are pronounced in the Name of Christ without naming the Name of God¥. It underlies those early apostolica! hymns, sung, as it would seem, in the Redeemer’s honour Y; it
5. Gal. i. 1: οὐκ ἀπ᾽ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ δι᾽ ἀνθρώπου, ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ Θεοῦ Πατρός. Compare vers. 11, 12.
t 2 Thess. iii. 6, 12.
Ὁ Rom. xvi. 20: 7 χάρις τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν. 1 Cor. xvi, 23; 2 Cor. xiii. 13. In Gal. vi. 18, μετὰ τοῦ πνεύματος ὑμῶν. Phil. iv. 23; 1 Thess, v. 28. 2 Thess. ii. 16: αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦς Χριστὸς, καὶ 6 Θεὸς καὶ Πατὴρ ἡμῶν, 6 ἀγαπήσας ἡμᾶς καὶ δοὺς παράκλησιν αἰωνίαν καὶ ἐλπίδα ἀγαθὴν ἐν χάριτι, παρακαλέσαι ὑμῶν τὰς καρδίας, καὶ στη- ρίξαι ὑμᾶς ἐν παντὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἔργῳ ἀγαθῷ. 2 Thess. iii. 18.
Υ Such are 1 Tim. i. 15, from a hymn on redemption :—
Χριστὸς ᾿Ιησοῦς ἦλθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἁμαρτωλοὺς σῶσαι. And Ibid. iii. 16, from a hymn on our Lord’s Incarnation and triumph :— ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκὶ, ἐδικαιώθη ἐν πνεύματι, ὥφθη ἀγγέλοις, ἐκηρύχθη ἐν ἔθνεσιν, Α ἐπιστεύθη ἐν κόσμῳ, ἀνελήφθη ἐν δόξῃ. And 2 Tim, ii, 11-13, from a hymn on the glories of martyrdom :— εἰ συναπεθάνομεν, καὶ συζήσομεν" εἰ ὑπομένομεν, καὶ συμβασιλεύσομεν" εἰ ἀρνούμεθα, κἀκεῖνος ἀρνήσεται ἡμᾶϑ" εἰ ἀπιστοῦμεν, ἐκεῖνος πιστὸς μένει" ἀρνήσασθαι ἑαυτὸν οὐ δύναται. And Tit. iii. 4-7, from a hymn on the way of salvation ; οὗ, Keble’s Sermona Acad, and Occ., p. 182 :— ὅτε δὲ ἣ χρηστότης καὶ ἣ φιλανθρωπία ἐπεφάνη τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ΘΕΟΥ͂, οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων τῶν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ ὧν ἐποιήσαμεν ἡμεῖς, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸν αὑτοῦ ἔλεον, ἔσωσεν ἡμᾶς, διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας, καὶ ἀνακαινώσεως ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΣ ‘ATIOY, οὗ ἐξέχεεν ἐφ᾽ ἡμᾶς πλουσίως, διὰ ἸΗΣΟΥ͂ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ͂ τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν, ἵνα δικαιωθέντες τῇ ἐκείνου χάριτι, κληρονόμοι γενώμεθα Kat’ ἐλπίδα ζωῆς αἰωνίου. Although in Tit. iii. 4 Σωτῆρος Θεοῦ refers to the Father, it is Jesus Christ our Saviour through Whom He has given the Spirit and the sacraments, the grace of justification, and an inheritance of eternal life. Jesus is the more prominent Subject of the hymn. Compare the fragment of a hymn, whether for a baptism or on penitence, based on Isa. lx. 1, and quoted in Eph, v. 14:— [ LECT.
Implied Christology of St. Pauls Epistles. 333
justifies the thanksgivings and doxologies which set forth His praise’. It alone can explain the application of passages, which are used in the Old Testament of the Lord Jehovah, to the Person of Jesus Christ*; such an application would have been impossible unless St. Paul had renounced his belief in the authority and sacred character of the Hebrew Scriptures, or had explicitly recognised the truth that Jesus Christ was Jehovah Himself visiting and redeeming His people. Mark too how the truth before us mingles with the current topics of St. Paul’s Epistles; how it is often presupposed even where it is not asserted in terms. Does that picture of the future Judge Whose Second Coming is again and again brought before us in the Epistles to the Thessalonians befit one who is not Diviney? Is the Justifier of humanity in the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, to Whom the whole of the Old Testament points as its fulfilment, only a human martyr after 4171 Why then is the effect of His Death so distinct in kind from any which has followed upon the martyrdom of His ser- vants®? How comes it that by dying He has achieved that restoration of the rightful relations of man’s being towards God and moral truth», which the law of nature and the Law of Sinai had alike failed to secure? Does not the whole repre- sentation of the Second Adam in the Epistle to the Romans and in the first Epistle to the Corinthians point to a dignity more than human? Can He, Who is not merely a living soul, but a quickening Spirit; from Whom life radiates throughout renewed humanity¢; from Whom there flows a stream of grace more abundant than the inheritance of sin which was bequeathed
ἔγειραι ὃ καθεύδων καὶ ἀνάστα ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν, καὶ ἐπιφαύσει σοι ὁ Χριστός. Cf. Miinter, iiber die dilteste Christliche Poesie, p. 29. w Rom. ix. §; and perhaps xvi. 27, see Ols. in loc.; 1 Tim. i. 12: χάριν ἔχω τῷ ἐνδυναμώσαντί με Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν x.7.A, Cf. Heb. xiii. 20. * e.g. certainly Joel ii. 32 in Rom, x. 13; and very probably Jer. ix. 23, 24 in I Cor, i, 31, etc. : ¥ 1, Thess, ΠΣ 10, 1171 13, ν..2.. 6.,16;.17., Κ..23. .2 Chess:.1..7,,8,-0,.10, ii. 8. Compare Rom. xiv. Io, 11, 12.
= Rom. x. 4; Gal. iii. 24.
® Rom. iii. 25, 26; Gal. ii. 16, etc. St. Paul’s argument in Gal. iii. 20 implies our Lord’s Divinity; since, if Christ is merely human, He would be a mediator in the same sense in which Moses was a mediator. Of the two arties, God and Israel, the μεσίτης of the Law could properly represent srael alone. The μεσίτης of 1 Tim. ii. 5 is altogether higher.
» δικαιοσύνη. Comp. Rom. v. 1, 2, 11.
¢ Rom, v. 18, 19; xv. 18. vr |
334 Lmpled Christology of the Epistles
by our fallen parent 4—can He be, in His Apostle’s mind, merely one of the race which He thus blesses and saves? ? And if Jesus Christ be more than man, is it possible to suggest any interme- diate position between humanity and the throne of God, which St. Paul, with his earnest belief in the God of Israel, could have believed Him to occupy ?
In the Epistles to the Corinthians St. Paul is not especially maintaining any one great truth of revelation; he is entering with practical versatility into the varied active life and pressing wants of a local Church. Yet these Epistles might alone suffice to shew the high and unrivalled honour paid to Jesus Christ in the Apostle’s heart and thought. Is the Apostle contrasting his preaching with the philosophy of the Greek and the hopes of the Jewish world around him? Jesus crucifiedf is his central subject ; Jesus crucified is his whole philosophy&, Is he pre- scribing the law of apostolic labours in building up souls or Churches? ‘Other foundation can no man lay’ than ‘Jesus Christ» Is he unfolding the nature of the Church? It is not a self-organized multitude of religionists who agree in certain tenets, but ‘the Body of Christi’ Is he arguing against sins of impurity? Christians have only to remember that they are members of Christi. Is he deepening a sense of the glory and of the responsibility of being a Christian? Christians are re- minded that Jesus Christ is in them except they be reprobates *. Is he excommunicating or reconciling a flagrant offender against natural law? He delivers to Satan in the Name of Christ; he
ἃ Rom. v. 15; Xv. 29.
e St. Paul styles himself in Rom. i, 1, δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ: and his zalue for this designation appears from Gal. i. 10, εἰ ἔτι ἀνθρώποις ἤρεσκον, Χριστοῦ δοῦλος obx ἂν ἤμην, where observe the antithesis between Χριστοῦ and ἀνθρώποις : cf. Eph. vi. 6. With these compare his earnest precept, 1 Cor, vii. 23, μὴ γίνεσθε δοῦλοι ἀνθρώπων. How much is implied too in the stern description, Rom. xvi. 18, τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν Χριστῷ οὐ δουλεύουσιν, ἀλλὰ τῇ ἑαυτῶν κοιλίᾳ. Cf, Phil. iii. 19.
fy Cor. i. 23, 24: ἡμεῖς δὲ κηρύσσομεν Χριστὸν ἐσταυρωμένον ... . Θεοῦ δύναμιν καὶ Θεοῦ σοφίαν.
Ε Ibid. ii, a: οὐ γὰρ ἔκρινα τοῦ εἰδέναι τι ἐν ὑμῖν, εἰ μὴ Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν, καὶ τοῦτον ἐσταυρωμένον.
h ΤΡΙΑ, iii. 11; θεμέλιον γὰρ ἄλλον οὐδεὶς δύναται θεῖναι παρὰ τὸν κείμενον» ὅς ἐστιν ᾿Ιησοῦς 6 Χριστός. Isa, xxviii. 16; Eph. ii. 20.
τα Cor. xii. 27: ὑμεῖς δέ ἐστε σῶμα Χριστοῦ καὶ μέλη ἐκ μέρους. Thus he even identifies the Church with Christ. Ibid. ver. 12: καθάπερ γὰρ τὸ σῶμα ἕν ἐστι, καὶ μέλη ἔχει πολλὰ ..... οὕτω καὶ 6 Χριστός.
J Ibid. vi. sa οὖὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι τὰ σώματα ὑ ὑμῶν μέλη Χριστοῦ ἐστιν ;
k Cor, xiii, : ἢ οὐκ ἐπιγινώσκετε ἑαυτοὺς, ὅτι ᾿Ιησοῦς Χριστὸς ἐν ὑμῖν ἐστιν ; εἰ μή τι ΠΝ ἐστε.
[ Lect.
20 the Romans and the Corinthians. 335
absolves in the Person of Christ! Is he rebuking irreverence towards the Holy Eucharist ? The broken bread and the cup of blessing are not picturesque symbols of an absent Teacher, but veils of a gracious yet awful Presence; the irreverent receiver is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord Which he does not ‘discern™,’ Is he pointing to the source of the soul’s birth and growth in the life of light? It is the ‘illumination of the Gospel of the Glory of Christ, Who is the Image of God;’ it is the ‘illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God in the Person of Jesus Christ. Is he describing the spirit of the Christian life? It is perpetual self-mortification for the love of Jesus, that the moral life of Jesus may be manifested to the world in our frail human nature® Is he sketching out the intellectual aim of his ministry? Every thought is to be brought as a captive into submission to Christ P. Is he unveiling the motive which sustained him in his manifold suf- feringst All was undergone for Christ4. Is he suffering from a severe bodily or spiritual affliction? Thrice he prays to Jesus Christ for relief. And when he is told that the trial will not be removed, since in possessing Christ’s grace he has all that he needs, he rejoices in the infirmity against which he had prayed, ‘that the power of Christ may tabernacle upon him’. Would he summarize the relations of the Christian to Christ ? To Christ
1y Cor. v. 4, 5: ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν “Inood,.... σὺν τῇ δυνάμει τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν ἸΙησοῦ Χριστοῦ παραδοῦναι τὸν τοιοῦτον τῷ Σατανᾷ. 2 Οὐχ, ii. 10: καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ εἴ τι κεχάρισμαι, ᾧ κεχάρισμαι, δι᾽ ὑμᾶς, ἐν προσώπῳ Χριστοῦ, ἵνα μὴ πλεονεκτηθῶμεν ὑπὸ τοῦ Σατανᾶ.
m Tbid. x. 16: τὸ ποτήριον τῆς εὐλογίας ὃ εὐλογοῦμεν, οὐχὶ κοινωνία τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐστι; τὸν ἄρτον ὃν κλῶμεν, οὐχὶ κοινωνία τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐστι; Ibid. xi. 27: ὃς ἂν ἐσθίῃ τὸν ἄρτον τοῦτον ἢ πίνῃ τὸ ποτή- ριον τοῦ Κυρίου ἀναξίως, ἔνοχος ἔσται τοῦ σώματος καὶ αἵματος τοῦ Κυρίου. Ibid. ver. 29: 6 γὰρ ἐσθίων καὶ πίνων [ἀναξίως], κρίμα ἑαυτῷ ἐσθίει καὶ πίνει, μὴ διακρίνων τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Κυρίου.
2 Cor. iv. 4. The god of this world has blinded the thoughts of the unbelievers, εἰς τὸ μὴ αὐγάσαι αὐτοῖς τὸν φωτισμὸν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου τῆς δόξης τοῦ Χριστοῦ, bs ἐστιν εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ. On the other hand, God, Who bade light shine out of darkness, has shined in the hearts of believing Christians, πρὸς liad τῆς γνώσεως τῆς δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν προσώπῳ ᾿Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (ver. 6).
© Ibid. ver. 10: ἵνα καὶ 7 ζωὴ τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ ἐν τῷ σώματι ἡμῶν φανερωθῇ.
P Ibid. x. 5: αἰχμαλωτίζοντες πᾶν νόημα εἰς τὴν ὑπακοὴν τοῦ Χριστοῦ.
4 Ibid. xii. 10: εὐδοκῶ ἐν ἀσθενείαις, ἐν ὕβρεσιν, ἐν ἀνάγκαις, ἐν διωγμοῖς, ἐν στενοχωρίαις ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ.
τ Tbid. vers. 7-9: ἐδόθη μοι σκόλοψ τῇ σαρκὶ. . .. ὑπὲρ τούτου τρὶς τὸν Κύριον παρεκάλεσα, ἵνα ἀποστῇ ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ" καὶ εἴρηκέ μοι, “᾿Αρκεῖ σοι ἣ χάρις μου" 7 γὰρ δύναμίς μου ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ τελειοῦται. ἥδιστα οὖν μᾶλλον καυχήσομαι ἐν ἐν ἀσθενείαις μου, ἵνα ἐπισκηνώσῃ ἐπ᾽ ἐμὲ ἡ δύναμις τοῦ Χριστοῦ,
ΥΙ
336 Lmpled Christology of the Epistles
he owes his mental philosophy, his justification before God, his progressive growth in holiness, his redemption from sin and death’, Would he mark the happiness of instruction in that ‘hidden philosophy’ which was taught in the Church amoug the perfect, and which was unknown to the rulers of the non-Chris- tian world? It might have saved them from crucifying the Lord of Glory t. Would he lay down an absolute criterion of moral ruin? ‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran-atha ἃ, Would he impart an apostolical bene- diction? In one Epistle he blesses his readers in the Name of Christ alone’; in the other he names the Three Blessed Persons : while ‘the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ’ is mentioned, not only before ‘the fellowship of the Holy Ghost,’ but before ‘the love of God ¥,’
Here are texts, selected almost at random from those two among the longer Epistles of St. Paul which are most entirely without the form and method of a doctrinal treatise, dealing as they do with the varied contemporary interests and contro- versies of a particular Church*. Certainly some of these texts, taken alone, do not assert the Divinity of Jesus Christ. But put them together; add, as you might add, to their number; and consider whether the whole body of language before you, however you interpret it, does not imply that Christ held a place in the thought, affections, and teaching of St. Paul, higher than that which a sincere Theist would assign to any creature, and, if Clirist be only a creature, obviously inconsistent
® 1 Cor. i. 30: ὃς ἐγενήθη ἡμῖν σοφία ἀπὸ Θεοῦ, δικαιοσύνη τε καὶ ἁγιασμὸς καὶ ἀπολύτρωσι-.
t Thid. ii. 8: εἰ γὰρ ἔγνωσαν, οὐκ ἂν τὸν Κύριον τῆς δόξης ἐσταύρωσαν.
ἃ Ibid. xvi. 22: εἴ τις οὐ φιλεῖ τὸν Κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν, ἤτω ἀνάθεμα, μαρὰν ἀθά.
Υ Ibid. ver. 23.
w 2 Cor. xiii. 13; ef. 1 Cor. i. 8: ὃς καὶ βεβαιώσει ὑμᾶς ἕως τέλους.
x Thus to the passages already quoted from 2 Cor. may be added, those on our Lord’s unchangeableness, i. 19, 20, comp. Numb, xxiii. 19, Mal. iii, 6, St. James.i. 17, and Heb. xiii. 8; His being the Divine Πνεῦμα, iii. 17, comp. note, p. 317; the φόβος τοῦ Κυρίου, with reference to His coming to judgment, v. 11; the explanation of ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ πρεσβεύομεν by ws Tod Θεοῦ παρακαλοῦντος δι᾽ ἡμῶν, v. 20, cf. ver. 19; Christ’s condescension, viii. 9, cf. p.314; the implied force of viii. 19, 23; Christ’s bestowal of ἐξουσία, x. 8, xiii. 10; His being the ‘boast’ of Christians, x. 17-18, comp. vers. 7, 14, and I Cor. i. 31, although this reference to our Lord admits of being disputed; His being Bridegroom of the Church, xi, 2, cf. Rev. xix. 7, as Jehovah is of Israel in Ezek. xvi. 8-14, Is. Ixii. 5, etc.; the adjurations, xi. Io, xii. 19, cf. Is. Ιχν. 16; Christ’s speaking in His servants, xiii. 3, through the Holy Spirit, St. Matt. x. 20.
[ LECT.
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with the supreme and exacting rights of God. In these Epistles, it is not the teaching, but the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, . upon which St. Paul’s eye appears to rest. Christ Himself is, in St. Paul’s mind, the Gospel of Christ ; and if Christ be not God, St. Paul cannot be acquitted of assigning to Him generally a prominence which is inconsistent with serious loyalty to mono- theistic truth.
Still more remarkably do the Epistles of the First Imprison- ment present us with a picture of our Lord’s Work and Person which absolutely presupposes, even where it does not in terms assert, the doctrine of His Divinity. The Epistles to the Ephe- sians and the Colossians are even more intimately related to each other than are those to the Romans and the Galatians. They deal with the same lines of truth; they differ only in method of treatment. That to the Ephesians is devotional and expository; that to the Colossians is polemical. In the Colossians the dignity of Christ’s Person is put forward most explicitly as against the speculations of a Judaizing theosophy which degraded Christ to the rank of an archangel 2, and which recommended, as a substitute for Christ’s redemptive work, ascetic observances,, grounded on a trust in the cleansing and hallowing properties and powers of nature®. In the Epistle to the Ephesians our Lord’s Personal dignity is asserted more indirectly. It is implied in His reconciliation of Jews and heathens to each other and to God, and still more in His relationship to the pre- destination of the saints», In both Epistles we encounter two
* Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 274: ‘Die im Colosserbrief gemeinten Engels- verehrer setzten ohne Zweifel Christus selbst in die Classe der Engel, als ἕνα τῶν ἀρχαγγέλων, wie diess Epiphanius als einen Lehrsatz der Ebioniten angiht, wogegen der Colosserbrief mit allem Nachdruck auf ein solches κρατεῖν Thy κεφαλὴν dringt, dass alles, was nicht das Haupt selbst ist, nur in einem absoluten Abhingigkeits-verhiltniss zu Ihm stehend gedacht wird, ii, 19.’
a Ibid. ‘Eine Lehre, welche den Menschen in religiéser Hinsicht von seinem natiirlichen biirgerlichen Sein, von der materiellen Natur abhingig machte, und sein religidses Heil durch die reinigende und heiligende Kraft, die man den Elementen und Substanzen der Welt zuschrieb, den Einfluss der Himmels-cérper, das natiirlich Reine im Unterschied von dem fiir unrein Gehaltenen vermittelt werden liess, setzte die στοιχεῖα Tod κόσμου an dieselbe Stelle, welche nur Christus als Erliser haben sollte. In diesem Sinne werden V. 8 die στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου und Christus einander gegenii- bergestellt. Das ist die Philosophie in dem Sinne in welchem das Wesen der Philosophie als Weltweisheit bezeichnet wird, als die Wissenschaft, die es mit den στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου zu thun hat. Als solche isé sie auch nur eine κενὴ ἀπάτη, eine blosse παράδοσις τῶν ἀνθρώπων.᾽
᾿ Ibid. p. 270: ‘Der transcendenten Christologie dieser Briefe und ihrer VI Z
338 Lmplied Christology of the Epistles
prominent lines of thought, each, in a high degree, pointing to Christ's Divine dignity. The first, the absolute character of the Christian faith as contrasted with the relative character of heathenism and Judaism¢; the second, the re-creative power of the grace of Christ4, In both Epistles the Church is con- sidered as a vast spiritual society © which, besides embracing as its heritage all races of the world, pierces the veil of the unseen, and includes the families of heavenf in its majestic compass. Of this society Christ is the Heads, and it is ‘ His Body, the fulness of Him That filleth all in all’ Christ is the predestined point of unity in which earth and heaven, Jew and Gentile, meet and are oneh, Christ’s Death is the triumph of peace in the spiritual world. Peace with God is secured through the taking away of the law of condemnation by the dying Christ, Who nails it to His Cross and openly triumphs over the powers of darknessi, Peace among men is secured, because the Cross is the centre of the regenerated world, as of the moral universe J.
darauf beruhenden Anschauung von dem alles umfassenden und iiber alles iibergreifenden Charakter des Christenthums ist es ganz gemiiss, dass sie in der Lehre von der Beseligung der Menschen auf eine iiberzeitliche Vorher- bestimmung zuriickgehen, Eph. i. 4, δ᾿
¢ Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 273: ‘So ist... auch die absolute Erhabenheit des Christenthums iiber J udenthum und Heidenthum ausgesprochen. Beide verhalten sich gleich negativ (but by no means in the same degree) zum Christenthum, das ihnen gegeniiber ὁ λόγος τῆς ἀληθείας ist Eph. i. 13, oder φῶς im Gegensatz von σκότος (v. 8). Die Juden und die Heiden waren wegen der allgemeinen Siindhiftigkeit dem gittlichen Zorn ver- fallen, Eph. ii. 3. Der religidse Charakter des Heidenthums wird noch besonders dadurch bezeichnet, dass die Heiden ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ sind (ii. 12), ἐσκοτωμένοι τῇ διανοίᾳ ὄντες (iv. 18), ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι THs ζωῆς Tod Θεοῦ διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τὴν οὖσαν ἐν αὐτοῖς (iv. 18), περιπατοῦντες κατὰ τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου κατὰ τὸν ἄρχοντα τῆς ἐζουσίας τοῦ ἀέρος (ii. 2). Beiden Religionen gegeniiber ist das Christenthum die absolute Religion. Der absolute Charakter des Christenthums selbst aber ist bedingt durch die Person Christi.’
4 Col. iii. 9; Eph. iv. 21 sqq.; ef. Ibid. ii. 8-10. Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 270: ‘Die Gnade ist das den Menschen durch den Glauben an Christus neu schaffende Princip. Etwas Neues muss nimlich der Mensch durch das Christenthum werden,’
ὁ. Col. i. 5,6: τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, τοῦ παρόντος εἰς ὑμᾶς, καθὼς καὶ ἐν παντὶ τῷ κόσμῳ, καὶ ἔστι καρποφορούμενον. Eph. i. 13. {ἘΡΆ. iii. 15.
8 Eph. i. 22, 23: αὐτὸν ἔδωκε κεφαλὴν ὑπὲρ πάντα τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἥτις ἐστὶ τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ, τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι πληρουμένου. V. 23, 30.
h Thid. ver. 10: ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι τὰ πάντα ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ, τά τε ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς καὶ τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς vis’ ἐν αὐτῷ, ἐν ᾧ καὶ ἐκληρώθημεν.
4 Col. ii, 14, 15.
J Col. 1. 20, 21: δύ αὐτοῦ ἀποκαταλλάξαι τὰ πάντα εἰς αὑτὸν, erat
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Divided races, religions, nationalities, classes, meet bencath the Cross; they embrace as brethren; they are fused into one vast society which is held together by an Indwelling Presence, re- flected in the genera] sense of boundless indebtedness to a transcendent Love *. Hence in these Epistles such marked emphasis is laid upon the unity of the Body of Christ!; since the reunion of moral beings shews forth Christ’s Personal Glory. Christ is the Unifier. As Christ in His Passion is the Combiner and Reconciler of all things in earth and heaven; so He ascends to heaven, He descends to hell on His errand of reconciliation and combination ™, He institutes the hierarchy of the Church»; He is the Root from which her life springs, the Foundation on
διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ σταυροῦ αὐτοῦ, δι’ αὐτοῦ, εἴτε τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, εἴτε τὰ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς.
k Col. iii, 11: οὐκ ἔνι Ἕλλην καὶ Ιουδαῖος, περιτομὴ καὶ ἀκροβυστία, βάρ- βαρος, Σκύθης, δοῦλος, ἐλεύθερος: ἀλλὰ τὰ πάντα καὶ ἐν πᾶσι Χριστός. Ob- serve the moral inferences in vers. 12-14, the measure of charity being καθὼς καὶ 6 Χριστὸς ἐχαρίσατο ὑμῖν. Especially Jews and Gentiles are re- conciled beneath the Cross, because the Cross cancelled the obligatoriness of the ceremonial law, Eph. ii. 14-17: αὐτὸς γάρ ἐστιν ἡ εἰρήνη ἡμῶν, ὁ ποιήσας τὰ ἀμφότερα ἕν, καὶ PS μεσότοιχον τοῦ φραγμοῦ λύσας, τὴν ἔχθραν ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ αὐτοῦ, τὸν νόμον τῶν ἐντολῶν ἐν δόγμασι, καταργήσας" ἵνα τοὺς δύο κτίσῃ ἐν ἑαυτῷ εἰς ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον, ποιῶν εἰρήνην, καὶ ἀποκαταλλάξῃ τοὺς ἀμφο- τέρους ἐν ἑνὶ σώματι τῷ Θεῷ διὰ τοῦ σταυροῦ, ἀποκτείνας τὴν ἔχθραν ἐν αὐτῷ. Col. iii. 15.
1 Baur, Christenthum, p.119: ‘Die Einheit ist das eigentliche Wesen der Kirche, diese Einheit ist mit allen zu ihr gehérenden Momenten durch das Christenthum gegeben, es ist Ein Leib, Kin Geist, Ein Herr, Ein Glaube, Eine Taufe u.s. w. Eph. iv. 4, f..... Von diesem Punkte aus steigt die Anschauung hoher hinauf, bis dahin, wo der Grund aller Einheit liegt. Die einigende, eine allgemeine Gemeinschaft stiftende Kraft des Todes Christi lasst sich nur daraus begreifen, dass Christus tiberhaupt der alles tragende und zusammenhaltende Centralpunkte des ganzen Universums ist..... Die Christologie der beiden Briefe hangt aufs Innigste zusammen mit dem in der unmittelbaren Gegenwart gegebenen Bediirfniss der Eini- gung in der Idee der Einen, alle Unterschiede und Gegensiitze in sich auf- hebenden Kirche. Es ist, wenn wir uns in die Anschauungsweise dieser Briefe hineinversetzen, schon ein iicht katholisches Bewusstsein das sich in ihnen ausspricht.’ This may be fully admitted without accepting Baur’s conclusions as to the date and authorship of the two Epistles.
m Eph. iv. 10: 6 καταβὰς, αὐτός ἐστι καὶ ὃ ἀναβὰς ὑπεράνω πάντων τῶν οὐρανῶν, ἵνα πληρώσῃ τὰ πάντα. St. Aug. Ep. 187, ad Dardanum: ‘Christum Dominum ... ubique totum prasentem esse, non dubites, ἐαηφιαηι Deum,’
a Eph. iv. 11-13: καὶ αὐτὸς ἔδωκε τοὺς μὲν ἀποστόλους, τοὺς δὲ mpo- φήτας, τοὺς δὲ εὐαγγελιστὰς, τοὺς δὲ ποιμένας καὶ διδασκάλους, πρὸς τὸν καταρτισμὸν τῶν ἁγίων, εἰς ἔργον διακονίας, εἰς οἰκοδομὴν τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ: μέχρι καταντήσωμεν οἱ πάντες εἰς τὴν ἑνότητα τῆς πίστεως καὶ τῆς ἐπιγνώσεως τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ, εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον, εἰς μέτρον ἡλικίας τοῦ πληρώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Compare 1 Cor, xii. 28: ἔθετο ὁ Θεός,
vi | 22
340 Lmpled Christology of the Epistles
which her superstructure rests°; He is the quickening, organ- izing, Catholicizing Principle within herP. The closest of natural ties is the chosen symbol of His relation to her; she is His bride. For her, in His love, He gave Himself to death, that He might sanctify her by the cleansing virtue of His baptism, and might so present her to Himself, her Lord,—blameless, immaculate, glorious4, And thus He is the Standard of per- fection with which she must struggle to correspond. Her mem- bers must grow up unto Him im all things. Accordingly, not to mention the great passage, already referred to, in the Epistle to the Colossians, Jesus Christ is said in that Epistle to possess ‘the intellectual as well as the other attributes of Deity". In the allusions to the Three Most Holy Persons, which so remark- ably underlie the structure and surface-thought of the Epistle to the Ephesians, Jesus Christ is associated most significantly with the Father and the Spirit’. He is the Invisible King, Whose slaves Christians are’. Nay, His Realm is termed ex- plicitly ‘the kingdom of Him Who is Christ and God";’ the Church is subject to Him’. He is the object of Christian study, and of Christian hope*. In the Epistle to the Philippians it is expressly said that all created beings in heaven, on earth, and in hell, when His triumph is complete, shall acknowledge the
© Col. ii. 7: ἐρριζωμένοι καὶ ἐποικοδομούμενοι ἐν αὐτῷ.
P Eph. iv. 15, 16: 6 Χριστὸς, ἐξ οὗ πᾶν τὸ σῶμα συναρμολογούμενον καὶ συμβιβαζόμενον διὰ πάσης ἁφῆς τῆς ἐπιχορηγίας, κατ᾽ ἐνέργειαν ἐν μέτρῳ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου μέρους, τὴν αὔξησιν τοῦ σώματος ποιεῖται εἰς οἰκοδομὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἐν ἀγάπῃ. Col. ii. 19.
a Eph. v. 25-27: 6 Χριστὸς ἠγάπησε τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ ἑαυτὸν παρέδωκεν ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς" ἵνα αὐτὴν ἁγιάσῃ, καθαρίσας τῷ λουτρῷ τοῦ ὕδατος ἐν ῥήματι, ἵνα παραστήσῃ αὐτὴν ἑαυτῷ ἔνδοξον, τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, μὴ ἔχουσαν σπίλον ἢ ῥυτίδα ἤ τι τῶν τοιούτων, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα ἢ ἁγία καὶ ἄμωμος.
τ Col. ii. 2, 3: ἐν ᾧ εἰσὶ πάντες οἱ θησαυροὶ τῆς σοφίας καὶ τῆς γνώσεως ἀπόκρυφοι. Scrivener, Introd. Crit. N. T., p. 451. Col. i. το, ii. 9.
8 Eph. i. 3: Πατὴρ τοῦ Κυρίου. Ibid. ver. 6: ἐν τῷ ἠγαπημένῳ. Ibid. ver.13: ἐσφραγίσθητε τῷ Πνεύματι. Ibid. ii. 18: δ αὐτοῦ ἔχομεν τὴν προσ- αγωγὴν οἱ ἀμφότεροι ἐν ἑνὶ Πνεύματι πρὸς τὸν Πάτερα. Ibid. 111. 6: συγ- κληρόνομα, καὶ σύσσωμα, καὶ συμμέτοχα, where the Father Whose heirs we are, the Son of Whose Body we are members, the Spirit of Whose gifts we partake, seem to be glanced at by the adjectives denoting our relationship to the ἐπαγγελία, Cf. Ibid. iii, 14-17.
t Ibid. vi. 6: μὴ κατ᾽ ὀφθαλμοδουλείαν ὡς ἀνθρωπάρεσκοι, GAN ws δοῦλοι τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Cf. ver. 5: ὡς τῷ Χριστῷ. Cf. p. 334, note.
u Ibid. v. 5: ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ Θεοῦ, where, ‘in the absence of the article before Θεοῦ, Christ and God are presented as a single concep- tion.’ See Harless in loc. Col. i. 13.
v Eph. v. 24: ἡ ἐκκλησία ὑποτάσσεται τῷ Χριστῷ,
* Ibid. iv. 20; i, 123. vi. 6-9.
[ Lect.
of the first tmprisonment, 341
majesty even of His Human Naturey. The preaching of the Gospel is described as the preaching Christ. Death is a blessing for the Christian, since by death he gains the eternal presence of Christ®, The Philippians are specially privileged in being permitted, not merely to believe on Christ, but to suffer for Him». The Apostle trusts in Jesus as in Providence to be able to send Timothy to Philippic. He contrasts the selfishness of ordinary Christians with a disinterestedness that seeks the things (it is not said of God, but) of Christ4. The Christian ‘boast’ centres in Christ, as did the Jewish in the Lawe; the Apostle had counted all his Jewish privileges as dung that he might win Christf; Christ has taken possession of himg; Christ strengthens him}; Christ will one day change this body of our humiliation, that it may become of like form with the Body of His glory, according to the energy of His ability even to subdue all things unto Himselfi. In this Epistle, as in those to the Corinthians, the Apostle is far from pursuing any one line of doctrinal statement: moral exhorta- tions, interspersed with allusions to persons and matters of interest to himself and to the Philippians, constitute the staple of his letter. And yet how constant are the references to Jesus Christ, and how inconsistent are they, taken as a whole, with any conception of His Person which denies His Divinity i!
¥ Phil. ii. 10: ἵνα ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι ᾿Ιησοῦ πᾶν γόνυ κάμψῃ ἐπουρανίων καὶ ἐπιγείων καὶ καταχθονίων. Cf. St. Cyril Alex. Thes. p. 128.
2 Phil. i. 16: τὸν Χριστὸν καταγγέλλουσιν, Ibid. ver. 18: Χριστὸς καταγ- γέλλεται.
4. Thid. ver. 23: ἐπιθυμίαν ἔχων εἰς τὸ ἀναλῦσαι, καὶ σὺν Χριστῷ εἶναι. Cf. 2 Cor. v. 8; 1 Thess. iv. 17.
b Phil. i. 29: ὑμῖν ἐχαρίσθη τὸ ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ, ob μόνον τὸ εἰς αὐτὸν mo- τεύειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ πάσχειν. ΟΥ̓, i. 20: μεγαλυνθήσεται Χριστὸς ἐν τῷ σώματί μου.
© Thid. ii. 19: ἐλπίζω δὲ ἐν Κυρίῳ Ἰησοῦ, Τιμόθεον ταχέως πέμψαι ὑμῖν.
ἃ Tbid. ver. 21: οἱ πάντες γὰρ τὰ ἑαυτῶν (ζητοῦσιν, οὐ τὰ τοῦ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ.
6 Thid. iii. 3: καυχώμενοι ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ.
1 Ibid. ver. 8: δι’ ὃν τὰ πάντα ἐζημιώθην" καὶ ἡγοῦμαι σκύβαλα εἶναι, ἵνα Χριστὸν κερδήσω, καὶ εὑρεθῶ ἐν αὐτῷ. Cf. St. Matt. x. 37, 39, xiii. 44, 46; St. Luke xiv. 33.
8 Ibid. iii. 12: κατελήφθην ὑπὸ Χριστοῦ ᾿Ἰησοῦ.
h Ibid. iv. 13: πάντα ἰσχύω ἐν τῷ ἐνδυναμοῦντί με [Χριστῷ]. Cf. i. 19: ἐπιχορηγία τοῦ Πνεύματος ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ.
i Tbid. ili. 20, 21: ὃς μετασχηματίσει τὸ σῶμα τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν, εἰς τὸ γενέσθαι αὐτὸ σύμμορφον τῷ σώματι τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ, κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν τοῦ δύνασθαι αὐτὸν καὶ ὑποτάξαι ἑαυτῷ τὰ πάντα. Cf. iv. 4: ὁ Κύριος ἐγγύς.
2 It should be added that in the Epistle to Philemon our Lord is asso- a1 with the Father as the source of grace and peace, ver. 3, while He V1
342 Impled Christology
The Pastoral Epistles are distinguished, not merely by the specific directions which they contain respecting the Christian hierarchy and religious societies in the apostolical Church *, but also and especially by the stress which they lay,upon the vital distinction between heresy and orthodoxy!. Each of these lines of teaching radiates from a most exalted conception of Christ’s Person, whether He is the Source of ministerial power ™, or the Sun and Centre-point of orthodox truth. In stating the doctrine of redemption these Epistles insist strongly upon its universality 9, _The whole world was redeemed in the inten-
is represented as the object of Christian faith and activity, vers. 5, 6; and the pregnant phrases ἐν Χριστῷ, ἐν Κυριῷ, occur four times in this short Epistle.
k 1 Tim. iii. iv. v.; Tit. i. 5-9; ii. 1-10, etc.
1 St. Paul’s language implies that the true faith is to the soul what the most necessary conditions of health are to the body. ὑγιαίνουσα διδασκαλία (1 Tim. i. 10; Tit. i. 9, ii. 1); so λόγος ὑγιὴς (Tit. ii. 8), λόγοι ὑγιαίνοντες (2 Tim. i. 13). Thus the orthodox teaching is styled 7 καλὴ διδασκαλία (1 Tim. iv. 6), or simply ἡ διδασκαλία (Ibid. vi. 1), as though no other deserved the name. Any deviation (ἑτεροδιδασκαλεῖν, Ibid. i. 3; vi. 3) is self-condemned as being such. The heretic prefers his own self-chosen private way to the universally-received doctrine ; he is to be cut off, after two admonitions, from the communion of the Church (Tit. iii. 10) on the ground that ἐξέστραπται ὁ τοιοῦτος, καὶ ἁμαρτάνει, ὧν αὐτοκατάκριτος (Ibid.). Heresy is spoken of by turns as a crime and a misfortune, περὶ τὴν πίστιν ἐναυάγησαν (1 Tim. i. 19); ἀπεπλανήθησαν ἀπὸ τῆς πίστεως (Ibid. vi. 10); περὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἠστόχησαν (2 Tim. ii. 18), Deeper error is characterized in severer terms, ἀποστήσονται τῆς πίστεως, προσέχοντες πνεύμασι πλάνοις καὶ διδασκαλίαις δαιμονίων... . κεκαυτηριασμένων τὴν ἰδίαν συνείδησιν κ-τ.λ. (1 Tim. iv. 1, 2); οὗτοι ἀνθίστανται τῇ ἀληθείᾳ, ἄνθρωποι κατεφθαρμένοι τὸν νοῦν, ἀδόκιμοι περὶ τὴν πίστιν (2 Tim. iii. 8); ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας τὴν ἀκοὴν ἀποστρέψουσιν, ἐπὶ δὲ τοὺς μύθους ἐκτραπήσονται (Ibid. iv. 4). Heresy eats its way into the spiritual body like a gangrene, 6 λόγος αὐτῶν ὡς γάγ- γραινα νομὴν ἕξει (Ibid. ii. 17). It is observable that throughout these Epistles πίστις is not the subjective apprehension, but the objective body of truth; not fides qud ecreditur, but the Faith. And the Church is στύλος καὶ ἑδραίωμα τῆς ἀληθείας (I Tim. iii. 15). This truth, which the Church supports, is already embodied in a ὑποτύπωσις ὑγιαινόντων λόγων (2 Tim. i. 13).
my Tim. i. 12: θέμενος εἰς διακονίαν. 2 Tim. ii. 3: στρατιώτης Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. So when the young widows who have entered into the Order of widows wish to marry again,,this is represented as an offence against - Christ, with Whom they have entered into a personal engagement, ὅταν yap καταστρηνιάσωσι τοῦ Χριστοῦ, γαμεῖν θέλουσιν, ἔχουσαι κρίμα, ὅτι Thy πρώτην πίστιν ἠθέτησαν (1 Tim. v. 11, 12).
» 1 Tim. vi. 3, where moral and social truth is specially in question,
° Thid. ii. 3. Intercession is to be offered for all. τοῦτο yap καλὸν καὶ arddextov ἐνώπιον τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Θεοῦ, ds πάντας ἀνθρώπους θέλει σωθῆναι καὶ εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν ἀληθείας ἐλθεῖν. εἷς γὰρ Θεὸς, εἷς καὶ μεσίτης ies καὶ
LECT.
ee Fa. δον AC
of the Pastoral Epistles. 343
tion of Christ, however that intention might be limited in effect by the will of man. As the theories, Judaizing and Gnostic, which confined the benefits of Christ’s redemptive work to races or classes, were more or less Humanitarian in their estimate of His Person; so along with the recognition of a world- embracing redemption was found the belief in a Divine Re- deemer. Accordingly in the Pastoral Epistles the Divinity of our Lord is taught both in express termsP and by tacit implication?, His functions as the Awarder of indulgence and mercy", His invisible Presence among angelic attendants 8, His active providence over His servants, and His ready aid in trouble t, are introduced naturally as familiar topics. And if the Manhood of the One Mediator is prominently alluded to as being the instrument of His Mediation", His Pre-existence in a Higher Nature is as clearly intimated ¥,
After what has already been said on the prominence of the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity in the Epistle to the Hebrews, it may suffice here to remark that the power οἱ His Priestly
ἀνθρώπων, ἄνθρωπος Χριστὸς ᾿Ιησοῦς, ὃ δοὺς ἑαυτὸν ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ πάντων. Cf. Ibid. iv. 10; Tit. ii. 11.
P Tit. ii. 13: τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Cf. p- 319, note y.
Ge.g. 2 Tim. is, ii. 1. Cf. St.Johni. 14, 16; 2 Tim.i.g, 10. Cf. Tit. ii, 11, ili. 4, ete.
τὰ Tim.i. 16: διὰ τοῦτο ἠλεήθην, ἵνα ἐν ἐμοὶ πρώτῳ ἐνδείξηται ᾿Ιησοῦς Χριστὸς τὴν πᾶσαν μακροθυμίαν. Cf. ver. 13. Compare the intercession for the (apparently) deceased Onesiphorus: δῴη αὐτῷ ὁ Κύριος εὑρεῖν ἔλεος παρὰ Κυρίου ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ (2 Tim. i. 18); where the second Κύριος also is Jesus Christ (Gen. xix. 24; St. Luke xi. 17; St. Matt. xii. 26) the Judge, at Whose Hands St. Paul himself expects to receive the crown of right- eousness (Ibid. iv. 8, 14).
5. Observe the adjurations, διαμαρτύρομαι ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Κυρίου ἸΙησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν ἀγγέλων (1 Tim. ν. 21); παραγγέλλω σοι ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ζωοποιοῦντος τὰ πάντα, καὶ Χριστοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ τοῦ μαρτυρή- σαντος ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου τὴν καλὴν ὁμολογίαν (Ibid. vi. 13). Cf. 2 Tim. iv. 1.
t 2 Tim. iii. 11: ἐκ πάντων (sc. διωγμῶν} με ἐῤῥύσατο ὁ Κύριος. Ibid. iv. 17: 5 δὲ Κύριός μοι παρέστη, καὶ ἐνεδυνάμωσέ με. Ibid. ver. 18: ῥύσεταί με 6 Κύριος ἀπὸ παντὸς ἔργου πονηροῦ. Cf., yet more, Ibid. ii. 10: σωτηρίας τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ, μετὰ δόξης αἰωνίου. Cf. St. John x. 28, xvii. 22.
uy Tim, ii. 5.
Vv Ibid. iii. 16. Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 351: ‘Mensch wird zwar Christus ausdriicklich genannt (1 Tim. ii. 5) aber von einem menschlichen Subject kann doch eigentlich nicht gesagt werden ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί. Es passt diess nur fiir ein héheres iibermenschliches Wesen.’
Ww Heb. vil. 25: σώζειν εἰς τὸ παντελὲς δύναται. Ibid. ix. 1a: αἰωνίαν λύτρωσιν.
VI
344 Why can no human name be substituted jor
Mediation as there insisted on, although exhibited in His glorified Humanity, does of itself imply a superhuman Person- ality x. This indeed is more than hinted at in the terms of the comparison which is instituted between Melchisedec and His Divine Antitype. History records nothing of the parents, of the descent, of the birth, or of the death of Melchisedec ; he appears in the sacred narrative as if he had no beginning of days or end of life. In this he is ‘made like unto the Son of God,’ with His eternal Pre-existence and His endless days ¥. This Eternal Christ can save to the uttermost, because He has a Priesthood that is unchangeable, since it is based on His Own Everlasting Being 2.
In short, if we bear in mind that, as the Mediator, Christ is God and Man, St. Paul’s language about Him is explained by its twofold drift. On the one hand, the true force of the dis- tinction between ‘ One God’ and ‘ One Lord’ or ‘One Mediator’ becomes apparent in those passages, where Christ in His as- sumed Manhood is for the moment in contrast with the Un- - incarnate Deity of the Father®. On the other hand, it is only possible to read the great Christological passages of the Apostle without doing violence to the plain force of his language, when we believe that Christ is God. Doubtless the Christ of St. Paul is shrouded in mystery; but could any real intercourse be- tween God and man have been re-established which should be wholly unmysterious? Strip Christ of His Godhead that you may denude Him of mystery, and what becomes, I do not say of particular texts, but of all the most characteristic teach- ing of St. Paul? Substitute, if you can, throughout any one Epistle the name of the first of the saints or of the highest among the angels, for the Name of the Divine Redeemer, and see how it reads. Accept the Apostle’s implied challenge. Imagine for a moment that Paul was crucified for you; that
* That it was our Lord’s Divine Nature which gave its supreme value to His sacrifice on the Cross seems to be taught in Heb. ix. 14, where πνεῦμα is the nature of God, Who is Spirit; see Rom. i. 4, 1 Tim. iii. 16, and St. John iv. 24. Cf. Bisping in loc.
y Heb. vii. 3: ἀπάτωρ, ἀμήτωρ, ἀγενεαλόγητος" μήτε ἀρχὴν ἡμερῶν, μήτε ζωῆς τέλος ἔχων" ἀφωμοιωμένος δὲ τῷ Ὑἱῷ τοῦ Θεοῦ. Bengel: ‘Non dicitur Filius Dei assimilatus Melchisedeko, sed contra. Nam Filius Dei est antiquior, et archetypus.’
* Heb. vii. 24, 25: ὁ δὲ, διὰ τὸ μένειν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, ἀπαράβατον ἔχει τὴν ἱερωσύνην" ὅθεν καὶ σώζειν εἰς τὸ παντελὲς δύναται.
® 1 Cor. viii. 6; Eph. iv. 5; 1 Tim. ii. 5.
[ Lect.
deg νον λον, ἢ
the Name of Fesus, in the writings of St. Paul? 34 5
you were baptized in the name of Paul®; that wisdom, holi- ness, redemption, come from the Apostle; that the Church is not Christ’s, but Paul’s>, Conceive, if you can, that the Apostle ascends his Master’s throne; that he says anathema to any who loves not the Apostle Paul; that he is bent upon bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Paul; that he announces that. in Paul are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; that instead of protesting ‘We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your ser- vants for Jesus’ sake¢, he could say, Paul is ‘the end of the law to every one that believeth4, or “1 beseech you for Paul’s sake and for the love of the Spirit¢.’ What is it in the Name of Christ which renders this language, when applied to Him, other than intolerable? Why is it that when coupled with any other name, however revered and saintly, the words of Paul respecting Jesus Christ must seem not merely strained, but exaggerated and blasphemous? Is it not that truth an- swers to truth, that all through these Epistles, and not merely in particular assertions, there is an underlying idea of Christ’s Divinity which is taken for granted, as being the very soul and marrow of the entire series of doctrines? that when this is lost sight of, all is misshapen and dislocated? that when this is recognised, all falls into its place as the exhibition of infinite Power and Mercy, clothed in a vesture of humiliation and sacrifice, and devoted to the succour and enlightenment of man ἢ
4. It is with the prominent features of St. Paul’s charac- teristic teaching as with the general drift of his great Epistles ; they irresistibly imply a Christ Who is Divine.
(a) Every reader of the New Testament associates St. Paul with the special advocacy of the necessity of faith as the indis- pensable condition of man’s justification before God. What is this ‘faith’ of St. Paul? It is in experience the most simple of the movements of the soul; and yet, if analysed, it turns out
® 1 Cor. i. 13: μὴ Παῦλος ἐσταυρώθη ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν; ἣ εἰς τὸ ὄνομα Παύλου ἐβαπτίσθητε;
b Rom. xvi. 16: αἱ ἐκκλησίαι πᾶσαι τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Gal. i. 22. Comp. St. Matt. xvi. 18: μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν. The more usual expression, it is significant to note, is ἐκκλησία τοῦ Θεοῦ. 1 Cor. i, 2, X. 32, xi. 16, 22, xv. 9; 2 Cor.i.1; Gal. i. 133-1 Tim. iii. 5, 15.
© 2 Cor. iv. 5. 4 Rom. x. 4.
© Rom. xv. 30: παρακαλῶ δὲ ὑμᾶς, ἀδελφοί, διὰ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ ah kal διὰ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ Πνεύματος.
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346 A Divine Christ implied
to be one of the most complex among the religious ideas in the New Testament. The word πίστις implies, first of all, both faithfulness and confidencef; but religious confidence is closely allied to belief, that is to say, to a persuasion that some unseen fact is trues. And this belief, having for its object the unseen, is opposed by St. Paul to ‘sighth. It is fed by, or rather it is in itself, a higher intuition than any of which nature is capablei; it is the continuous exercise of a new sense of spiritual truth with which man has been endowed by grace. It is indeed a spiritual second-sight; and yet reason has an- cillary duties towards it. Reason may prepare the way of faith in the soul by removing intellectual obstacles to its claims; or she may arrange, digest, explain, systematize, and so express the intuitions of faith in accordance with the needs of a particular locality or time. This active intellectual appre- ciation of the object-matter of faith, which analyses, discusses, combines, infers, is by no means necessary to the life of the Christian soul. It is a special grace or accomplishment, which belongs only to a small fraction of the whole body of the faithful. Their faith is supplemented by what St. Paul terms, in this peculiar sense, ‘knowledgeJ.’ Faith itself, by which the soul lives, is mainly passive, at least in respect of its in- tellectual ingredients: the believing soul may or may not apprehend with scientific accuracy that which its faith re- ceives. The ‘word of knowledge,’ that is, the power of analysis and statement which is wielded by theological science, is thus a distinct gift, of great value to the Church, although cer-
f Rom. iii. 3. πίστις Θεοῦ is the faithfulness of God in accomplishing His promises. Cf. πιστὸς 6 Θεός, 1 Cor. i.g; 1 Thess. v. 24. πίστις is confidence in God, Rom. iv. 19, 20; as πεπίστευμαι, ‘I have been entrusted with’ (Gal. ii. 7; 1 Tim. i. 11). Ὶ
ε The transition is observable in Rom. vi. 8: εἰ δὲ ἀπεθάνομεν σὺν Χριστῷ, πιστεύομεν ὅτι Kal συζήσομεν αὐτῷ. For belief in the truth of an unseen fact upon human testimony, cf. 1 Cor. xi, 18: ἀκούω σχίσματα ἐν ὑμῖν ὑπάρχειν, καὶ μέρος τι πιστεύω.
h 2 Cor. v. 7: διὰ πίστεως γὰρ περιπατοῦμεν, οὐ διὰ εἴδους.
1 χ Cor. xii. 3: οὐδεὶς δύναται εἰπεῖν" Κύριος Ἰησοῦς, εἰ μὴ ἐν Πνεύματι ᾿Αγίῳ.
J τ Cor. xii. 8: ἄλλῳ δὲ [δίδοται] λόγος γνώσεως, κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ Πνεῦμα. 2 Cor. viii. 7: ἐν παντὶ περισσεύετε, πίστει, καὶ λόγῳ, καὶ γνώσει. So in 1 Cor, xiii, 2 πᾶσα ἡ γνῶσις evidently means intellectual appreciation of the highest revealed truths, of which it is said in ver. 8 that καταργηθήσεται. Of course this γνῶσις was from the first capable of being abused; only, when it is so abused, to the hindrance of Divine truth, the Apostle maintains that it does not deserve the name (ἀντιθέσεις τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως. 1 Tim. vi. 20).
[τ ον.
in St. Paul’s account of Faith. 347
tainly not of absolute necessity for all Christians. But ‘ with- out faith’ itself ‘it is impossible to please God; and in its simplest forms, faith pre-supposes a proclamation of its object by the agency of preaching*. Sometimes indeed the word preached does not profit, ‘not being mixed with faith in them that hear itl’ But when the soul in very truth re- sponds to the message of God, the complete responsive act of faith is threefold. This act proceeds simultaneously from the intelligence, from the heart, and from the will of the be- liever. His intelligence recognises the unseen object as a fact™, His heart embraces the object thus present to his understanding ; his heart opens instinctively aud unhesitatingly to receive a ray of heavenly light™. And his will too resigns itself to the truth before it; it places the soul at the disposal of the object which thus rivets its eye and conquers its affec- tions® The believer accordingly merges his personal existence in that of the object of his faith; he lives, yet not he, but Another lives in himP. He gazes on truth, he loves it, he yields himself to it, he loses himself in it. So true is it, that in its essence, and not merely in its consequences, faith has a profoundly moral character. Faith is not merely a percep- tion of the understanding; it is a kindling of the heart, and a resolve of the will; it is, in short, an act of the whole soul, which, by one simultaneous complex movement, sees, feels, and obeys the truth presented to it.
Now, according to St. Paul, it is Jesus Christ Who is emi- nently the Object of Christian faith. The intelligence, the heart, the will of the Christian unite to embrace Him. How
Κ Rom. x. 14-17: ἡ πίστις ἐξ ἀκοῆς. Cf. λόγος ἀκοῆς, 1 Thess, ii, 13.
1 Heb. iv, 2.
m 1 Thess. iv. 14, πιστεύειν is used of recognising two past historical facts; Rom. vi. 8, of recognising a future fact; 2 Thess. ii, 11, of believing that to be a fact which is a falsehood.
» Rom. x. 9, 10: ἐὰν ὁμολογήσῃς ἐν τῷ στόματί cov Κύριον ᾿Ἰησοῦν, καὶ πιστεύσῃς ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ σου ὅτι 6 Θεὸς αὐτὸν ἤγειρεν ἐκ νεκρῶν, σωθήσῃ" καρδίᾳ γὰρ πιστεύεται εἰς δικαιοσύνην. Thus coincidently with the act of faith, 7 ἀγάπη τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐκκέχυται ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν (Rom. v. 5). The love of God is infused into the heart at the moment when His truth enters the understanding; and it is in this co-operation of the moral nature that the essential power of faith resides: hence faith is necessarily δι᾿ ἀγάπης ἐνεργουμένη.
9 Rom, vii. 4: εἰς τὸ γενέσθαι ὑμᾶς ἑτέρῳ, τῷ ἐκ νεκρῶν ἐγερθέντι. bid. xiv. 8, 9; 2 Cor. v. 15; Col. iii. 17.
P Gal. il. 20: (@ δὲ οὐκ ἔτι ἐγὼ, (ἢ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστός. Phil. i, 21: ἐμοὶ γὰρ τὸ (ἢν, Χριστός. νι]
348 A Divine Christ zmplied
versatile and many-sided a process this believing apprehension of Christ is, might appear from the constantly varied phrase of the Apostle when describing it. Yet of faith in all its aspects Christ is the legitimate and constant Object. Does St. Paul speak as if faith were a movement of the soul towards an end? That end is Christ9?. Does he hint that faith is a repose of the soul resting upon a support which guarantees its safety ἢ That support is Christ’. Does he seem to imply that by faith the Christian has entered into an atmosphere which encircles and protects, and fosters the growth of his spiritual life? That atmosphere is Christ’. Thus the expression ‘the faith of Christ’ denotes the closest possible union between Christ and the faith which apprehends Him*t. And this union, affected on man’s side by faith, on God’s by the instrumentality of the sacraments ¥, secures man’s real justification. The believer is justified by this identification with Christ, Whose perfect obedience and expiatory sufferings are thus transferred to him. St. Paul speaks of belief in Christ as involving belief in the Christian creed ¥; Christ has warranted the ventures which faith makes, by assuring the believer that He has guaranteed the truth of the whole object-matter of faith¥. Faith then is the starting-point and the strength of the- new life; and this faith must be pre-eminently faith in Christx. The precious
4 This seems to be the force of εἰς with πιστεύειν, Col. ii. 5: τὸ στερέωμα τῆς εἰς Χριστὸν πίστεως ὑμῶν. Phil. i. 29; Rom. x.14. The preposition πρὸς indicates the direction of the soul’s gaze, without necessarily implying the idea of movement in that direction. In Philem. 5: τὴν πίστιν, ἣν ἔχεις πρὸς [eis A. C. D.] τὸν Κύριον Ἰησοῦν. Cf. 1 Thess. i. 8.
τι Tim.i. 16: πιστεύειν ἐπ᾿ αὐτῷ (sc. Jesus Christ) εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον. Πιστεύειν ἐπὶ is used with the acc. of trust in the Eternal Father. Cf. Rom. iv. 5, 24.
8 Gal. ili. 26: πάντες γὰρ viol Θεοῦ ἐστε διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. Eph. i. 15: ἀκούσας τὴν καθ᾽ ὑμᾶς πίστιν ἐν τῷ Κυριῷ Ἰησοῦ. 2 Tim. iii. 15. The Old Testament can make wise unto salvation, διὰ πίστεως τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. 1 Tim, iii, 13: παρρησίαν ἐν πίστει TH ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ.
t Rom. iii. 22: διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Gal. ii. τ6, This genitive seems to have the force of the construct state in Hebrew.
5. Tit. iii; 5; 1 Cor. x. τό,
v 1 Tim. iii. 16: ἐπιστεύθη ἐν κόσμῳ. Christ’s Person is here said to have been believed in as being the Centre of the New Dispensation.
w 2 Tim. i. 12: olda γὰρ ᾧ ᾧ πεπίστευκα, καὶ πέπεισμαι ὅτι δυνατός ἐστι τὴν παραθήκην. μου φυλάξαι εἰς ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν. Rom. i. 16.
Gal. ii. 16: ἡμεῖς εἰς Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐπιστεύσαμεν, ἵνα δικαιωθῶμεν ἐκ πίστεως Χριστοῦ. So Rom. ἱ, 17: δικαιοσύνη γὰρ Θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ (Christ's Gospel) ἀποκαλύπτεται ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν. In like manner the Christian is termed ὁ ἐκ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ: his spiritual life dates from, and aoe
LECT,
an St. Paul’s account of Faith. 349
Blood of Christ, not only as representing the obedience of His Will, but as inseparably joined to His Majestic Person, is itself an object in which faith finds life and nutriment; the baptized Christian is bathed in it, and his soul dwells on its pardoning and cleansing power. It is Christ’s Blood; and Christ is the great Object of Christian faith ¥. For not Christ’s teaching alone, not even His redemptive work alone, but emphatically and beyond all else the Person of the Divine Redeemer is set forth by St. Paul before the eyes of Christians, as being That upon Which their souls are more especially to gaze in an ecstasy of chastened and obedient love 2.
Now if our Lord had been, in the belief of His Apostle, only a created being, is it conceivable that He should have been thus put forward as having a right well-nigh to engross the vision, the love, the energy of the human soul? For St. Paul does expressly, as well as by implication, assert that the hope ® and the love» of the soul, no less than its belief, are to centre in Christ. He never tells us that a bare intellectual realization of Christ’s existence or of Christ’s work will avail to justify the sinner before God. By faith the soul is to be moving ever towards Christ, resting ever upon Christ, living ever in Christ. Christ is to be the end, the support, the very atmosphere of its 1π|8 9, But how is such a relation possible, if Christ be not God ἢ Undoubtedly faith does perceive and apprehend the existence of invisible creatures as well as of the Invisible God. Certainly the angels are discerned by faith ; the Evil One himself is an object of faith. That is to say, the supernatural sense of the soul per- ceives these inhabitants of the unseen world in their different spheres of wretchedness and bliss. But angels and devils are
upon his faith. Rom. iii. 26. So, of ἐκ πίστεως (Gal. iii. 7); and, with an allusion to the Church as the true home of faith, οἰκείους τῆς πίστεως (Gal. vi. το.)
y Rom. iii. 25: διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι. We might have ex- pected ἐπὶ; and St. Paul would doubtless have used it, if he had meant to express no more than confidence in the efficacy of Christ’s Blood.
2 Thus it is that our Lord is, in the fullest sense, τῆς πίστεως ἀρχηγὸς «al τελειωτής, Heb. xii. 2, where ἀρχηγός means not ‘leader’ but ‘author,’ as Acts iii. 15, ἀρχηγὸς τῆς (ζωῆς, Heb. ii. 10, ἀρχηγὸς τῆς σωτηρίας. He is ἀρχηγὸς τῆς πίστεως, as ‘docens que credenda sunt et donans ut credamus,’ and He is Himself the object-matter of the grace which is His gift, and which He will reward hereafter with the vision of Himself.
= 1 tim; 1.1; © Cor, xv. 19; Colsi;a7> 1 Chess, ἢν 2.
> 1 Cor. xvi. 22.
© 2 Tim, iii. 12. The phrase εὐσεβῶς Civ ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ could be used of i created being, ‘extra Christum nulla pietas,’
VI
350 A Divine Christ implied
not objects of the faith which saves humanity from sin and death. The blessed spirits command not that loyalty of heart and will which welcomes Christ to the Christian soul. The soul loves them as His ministers, not as its end. No creature can be the legitimate satisfaction of a spiritual activity so complex in its elements, and so soul-absorbing in its range, as is the faith which justifies. No created form can thus be gazed at, loved, obeyed in that inmost sanctuary of a soul, which is con- secrated to the exclusive glory of the great Creator. If Christ were a creature, we may dare to affirm that St. Paul’s account of faith in Christ ought to have been very different from that which we have been considering. If, in the belief of St. Paul, Christ is only a creature, then it must be said that St. Faul, by his doctrine of faith in Christ, does lead men to live for the creature rather than for the Creator. In the spiritual teaching of St. Paul, Christ eclipses God if He is not God; since it is emphatically Christ’s Person, as warranting the preciousness of His work, Which is the Object of justifying faith. Nor can it be shewn that the intellect and heart and will of man could conspire to give to God a larger tribute of spiritual homage than they are required by the Apostle to give to Christ.
(8) Again, how much is implied as to the Person of Christ by the idea of Regeneration, as it is brought before us in the writings of St. Paul! St. Paul uses the word itself only once ἃ, But the idea recurs continually throughout his writings; it is not less prominent in them than is the idea of faith. This idea of regeneration is sometimes expressed by the image of a change of vesture®. The regenerate nature has put off the old man, with his deeds of untruthfulness and lust, and has put on the new or ideal man, the Perfect Moral Being, the Christ. Some- times the idea of regeneration is expressed more closely by the image of a change of formf. The regenerate man has been metamorphosed. He is made to correspond to the Form of
4 παλιγγενεσία, Tit. iii. 5. In St. Matt. xix. 28 the word has a much wider and a very distinct sense.
© Col. iii. 9, 10: ἀπεκδυσάμενοι τὸν παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον .. . « - - καὶ ἐνδυσ- ἄμενοι τὸν νέον. Eph. iv. 22-24: ἀποθέσθαι... . ..- τὸν παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον τὸν φθειρόμενον κατὰ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας τῆς ἀπάτης" ἀνανεοῦσθαι δὲ τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ νοὺς ὑμῶν, καὶ ἐνδύσασθαι τὸν καινὸν ἄνθρωπον τὸν κατὰ Θεὸν κτισθέντα ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ ὁσιότητι τῆς ἀληθείας, Gal. iii. 27: Χριστὸν ἐνεδύσασθε. Rom. xiii. 14.
f Rom, xii. 2: μεταμορφοῦσθε τῇ ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ vos ὑμῶν. Ibid. viii. 29: obs προέγνω, καὶ προώρισε συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ αὐτοῦ. Cf. Col. iii. 10: κατ᾽ εἰκόνα τοῦ κτίσαντος αὐτόν.
[ LECT.
in St. Paul’s account of Regeneration. 351
Christ ; he is renewed in the Image of Christ; his moral being is reconstructed. Sometimes, however, and most emphatically, regeneration is paralleled with natural birth. Regeneration is a second birth. The regenerate man is a new creature £; he is a work of God}; he has been created according to a Divine standardi, But—and this is of capital importance—he is also said to be created in Christ Jesusj; Christ is the sphere of the new creation*, The instrument of regeneration on Christ’s part, according to St. Paul, is the sacrament of baptism], to which the Holy Spirit gives its efficacy, and which, in the case of an adult recipient, must be welcomed to the soul by repentance and faith. Regeneration thus implies a double process, one destructive, the other constructive; by it the old life is killed, and the new life forthwith bursts into existence. This double process is effected by the sacramental incorporation of the baptized, first with Christ crucified and dead ™, and then with Christ rising from the dead to life; although the language of the Apostle distinctly intimates that a continued share in the resurrection-life depends upon the co-operation of the will of the Christian®. But the moral realities of the Christian life, to which the grace of baptism originally introduces the Chris- tian, correspond with, and are effects of, Christ’s Death and Resurrection. Regarded historically, these events belong to the irrevocable past. But for us Christians the Crucifixion and the Resurrection are not merely past events of history; they are energizing facts from which no lapse of centuries can sever us; they are perpetuated to the end of time within the kingdom of the Redemption®, The Christian is, to the end of time,
® Gal. vi. 15: καινὴ κτίσις.
h Eph. ii. 10: αὐτοῦ γάρ [sc. Θεοῦ7 ἐσμεν ποίημα.
1 Tbid. iv. 24: τὸν κατὰ Θεὸν κτισθέντα.
J Ibid. ii. 10: κτισθέντες ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ ἐπὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς.
Κ 2 Cor. v.17; and perhaps 1 Cor. viii. 6, where ἡμεῖς means ‘we re- generate Christians.’
1 Tit. iii. 5: ἔσωσεν ἡμᾶς, διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας καὶ ἀνακαινώσεως Πνεύματος ‘Ayiov. Gal. iii, 27: ὅσοι γὰρ εἰς Χριστὸν ἐβαπτίσθητε, Χριστὸν ἐνεδύσασθε. 1 Cor. xii. 13.
™ Rom. vi. 3, 4: ἢ ἀγνοεῖτε ὅτι ὅσοι ἐβαπτίσθημεν εἰς Χριστὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν, εἰς τὸν θάνατον αὐτοῦ ἐβαπτίσθημεν ; συνετάφημεν οὖν αὐτῷ διὰ τοῦ βαπτίσματος εἰς τὸν θάνατον.
Ὁ Ibid. vers. 4,5: ἵνα ὥσπερ ἠγέρθη Χριστὸς ἐκ νεκρῶν διὰ τῆς δόξης τοῦ Πατρὸς, οὕτω καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐν καινότητι ζωῆς περιπατήσωμεν. Εἰ γὰρ σύμφυτοι γεγόναμεν τῷ ὁμοιώματι τοῦ θανάτου αὐτοῦ, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς ἀναστάσεως ἐσόμεθα.
° Reuss, Théol. Chrét. ii. 140: ‘La régénération en tant qu’elle comprend Ἂν Ἢ αὶ éléments d’une mort et d’une renaissance, est tout naturellement VI
352 A Divine Christ implied |
crucified with Christ P; he dies with Christ 4; he is buried with Christ™; he is quickened together with Christ 8; he rises with Christ ὃ; he lives with Christ ¥. He is not merely made to sit together in heavenly places as being in Christ Jesus Y, he is a member of His Body, as out of His Flesh and out of His Bones ¥. And of this profound incorporation baptism is the original instrument. The very form of the sacrament of regeneration, as it was administered to the adult multitudes who in the early days of the Church pressed for admittance into her communion, harmonizes with the spiritual results which it effects. As the
taise en rapport direct avec la mort et la résurrection de Jésus-Christ. Ce rapport a été compris par quelques théologiens comme si le fait historique était un symbole du fait psychologique, pour lequel il aurait fourni la ter- minologie figurée. Mais assurément la pensée de l’apétre va au dela d’un simple rapprochement idéal et nous propose le fait d'une relation objective et réelle. Nous nous trouvons encore une fois sur le terrain du mysticisme évangélique; il est question trés-positivement d’une identification avec la mort et la vie du Sauveur, et il n'y a ici de figurée que lexpression, puisqu’au fond il ne s’agit pas de l’existence physique du Chrétien. Oui, d’aprées Paul, lo croyant meurt avec Christ, pour ressusciter avec lui; et cette phrase ne s’explique pas par ce que nous pourrions appeler un jeu de mots spirituel, ou un rapprochement ingénieux; elle est l application du grand principe de lunion personnelle, d apres lequel Vexistence propre de Vhomme cesse réellement, pour se confondre avec celle du Christ, qui répete, pour ainsi dire, la sienne, avec ses deux faits capitaux, dans chaque individualité se donnant ἃ lui.’ O si sic omnia!
P Rom. vi. 6: ὁ παλαιὸς ἡμῶν ἄνθρωπος συνεσταυρώθη. Gal. ii. 20: Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι.
4 2 Tim. ii. 11: συναπεθάνομεν. Rom. vi. 8: ἀπεθάνομεν σὺν Χριστῷ.
τ Rom. vi. 4: συνετάφημεν οὖν αὐτῷ διὰ τοῦ βαπτίσματος. Col. ii, 12: συνταφέντες αὐτῷ ἐν τῷ βαπτίσματι.
5 Eph. ii. 5: συνεζωοποίησε τῷ Χριστῷ. Col. ii. 13: συνεζωοποίησε σὺν αὐτῷ. The Aorists point to a definite event in the past.
t Eph. ii. 6: συνήγειρε [τῷ Χριστῷ]. There is no sufficient reason for understanding Eph. ii. 5, 6 of the future resurrection alone; although in that passage the idea of the future resurrection (cf. ver. 7) is probably combined with that of the spiritual resurrection of souls in the kingdom of grace. We have been raised with Christ here, that we may live with Him hereafter. Col. ii. 12: ἐν @ καὶ (se. ἐν Χριστῷ] συνηγέρθητε διὰ τῆς πίστεως τῆς ἐνεργείας Tod Θεοῦ. Ibid. iii. 1.
« Rom. vi. 8: συζήσομεν αὐτῷ. 2 Tim. ii. 11: εἰ γὰρ συναπεθάνομεν, καὶ συζήσομεν. τ Thess, v. 10.
v Eph. ii. 6: συνεκάθισεν ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ἰησοῦ.
πὶ Ibid. v. 30: μέλη ἐσμὲν τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ, ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων αὐτοῦ. Although omitted by δῇ. A. B., this passage is re- tained by 8°. D. E. F. G. L. P. and verss. except Copt. Cf. Meyer, App. Crit. in loc. Cf. Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 56, 7: ‘We are of Him and in Him, even as though our very flesh and bones should be made con- tinuate with His,’
[ tect.
tn St. Paul’s account of Regeneration. 353
neophyte is plunged beneath the waters, so the old nature is slain and buried with Christ. As Christ, crucified and entombed, _ rises with resistless might from the grave which can no longer hold Him, so, to the eye of faith, the Christian is raised from the bath of regeneration radiant with a new and supernatural life. His gaze is to be fixed henceforth on Christ, Who, being raised from the dead, dieth no more. The Christian indeed may fail to persevere ; he may fall from this high grace in which he stands. But he.need not do so; and meanwhile he is bound to account himself as ‘dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord*®.’ .
This regenerate or Christian life is further described by two most remarkable expressions. The Apostle speaks sometimes of Christians being in Christ ¥; sometimes of Christ being in Christians 2, The most recent criticism refuses to sanction the efforts which in former years have been made to empty these expressions of their literal and natural force. Hooker has ob- served that it is ‘too cold an interpretation whereby some men expound being in Christ to import nothing else but only that the selfsame nature which maketh us to be men is in Him, and maketh Him man as we are. For what man in the world is there which hath not so far forth communion with Jesus Christ*#’ Nor will it suffice to say that in such phrases as are here in question, ‘Christ’ means only the moral teaching of Christ, and that a Christian is ‘in Christ’ by the force of a mere intellectual loyalty to the Sermon on the Mount. The expression is too energetic to admit of this treatment ; it resists any but a literal explanation. By a vigorous metaphor an enthusiastic Platonist might perhaps speak of his ‘living in’ Plato, meaning thereby that his whole intellectual activity is absorbed by and occupied with the recorded thought of that philosopher. But he would scarcely say that he is ‘in’ Plato; since such a phrase would imply not merely an intellectual communion with Plato’s mind, but an objective inherence in his nature or being. Still less
* Rom. vi. Jo, 11: ὃ γὰρ ἀπέθανε [se. ὁ Xpiords], τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ ἀπέθανεν᾽ ἐφάπαξ' ὃ δὲ (H, (ἢ τῷ Θεῷ. οὕτω καὶ ὑμεῖς λογίζεσθε ἑαυτοὺς νεκροὺς μὲν εἶναι τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ, ζῶντας δὲ τῷ Θεῷ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν. Col, iii. 3, 4.
FROM, Vill, Lis. ΧΗ δὲ ΧΥΙ 7, ΤΕΣ Wor, 1..2,.20. χν 22: 2 Cor. ΤῊΣ Wel 73 ΧΙ ΤΟ Gal, 1,223 111. 20, 25; Hph.i, 1, 2. 1Ὸ} 5. 10; ii. 6} Phil, i. 1; 1 Thess. ii. 14; iv. 16. Comp. St. John xv. 4, 5.
* Rom. viii. 10; Gal. ii. 20; Eph. iii. 17; 2 Cor. xiii. §; Col. i. 27.
® Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 56, 7.
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354 atth in a Divine Christ the motive of
possible would it be to adopt the alternative phrase, and say that Plato is ‘in’ the student of Plato. When St. Paul uses these expressions to denote a Christian’s relation to Christ, he plainly ἢ is not recording any subjective impression of the human mind ; he is pointing to an objective and independent fact, strictly pecu- liar to the kingdom of the Incarnation. The regenerate Chris- tian is as really ‘in’ Christ, as every member of the human family is ‘in’ our first parent Adam». Christ is indeed much more to the Christian than is Adam to his descendants; Christ is the sphere in which the Christian moves and breathes ; but Christ is also the Parent of that new nature in which he shares; Christ is the Head of a Body, whereof he is really a member ; nay, the Body of which he is a member is itself Christ®, From Christ, risen, ascended, glorified, as from an exhaustless storehouse, there flow powers of unspeakable virtue4; and in this life-stream the be- lieving and baptized Christian is bathed and lives. And con- versely, Christ lives in the Christian; the soul and body of the Christian are the temple of Christ ; the Christian is well assured that Jesus Christ is in him, except he be reprobate 9.
My brethren, what becomes of this language if Jesus Christ be not truly God? No conceivable relationship to a human teacher or to a created being will sustain its weight. If it be not a mass of crude, vapid, worthless, misleading metaphor, it indicates rela- tionship with One Who is altogether higher than the sons of men, altogether higher than the highest archangel. It is true that we are in Him, by being joined to His Human Nature; but what is it which thus makes His Human Nature a re-creative and world- embracing power? Why is it that if any man be in Christ, there is a new creationf of his moral being? And how can Christ really be in us, if He is not one with the Searcher of hearts? Surely He only Who made the soul can thus sound its depths, and dwell within it, and renew its powers, and enlarge its capa- cities. If Christ be not God, must not this renewal of man’s nature rest only on an empty fiction, must not this regeneration of man’s soul be but the ecstasy of an enthusiastic dreamer ἢ
(y) It would, then, be a considerable error to recognize the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity only in those passages of St. Paul’s writings which distinctly assert it. The indirect evidence of the
> See Olshausen on the Epistle to the Romans, § 9, ‘Parallel between Adam and Christ,’ chap. v. 12-21, Introductory Remarks, ΒΟΥ Cor. ΧΙ 12. 4 Eph. iv. 7: ἐδόθη ἡ χάρις κατὰ τὸ μέτρον τῆς δωρεᾶς τοῦ Χριστοῦ. 4.2 Cor. xiii. 5. 1 Ibid. v. 17: εἴ τις ἐν Χριστῷ, καινὴ κτίσις. [ LECT.
St. Paul’s opposition to the Fudaizers. 355
Apostle’s hold upon the doctrine is much wider and deeper than to admit of being exhibited in a given number of isolated texts ; since the doctrine colours, underlies, interpenetrates the most characteristic features of his thought and teaching. The proof of this might be extended almost indefinitely; but let it suffice to observe that the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity is the key to the greatest polemical struggle of the Apostle’s whole life. Of themselves, neither the importation of Jewish ceremonial, nor even the disposition to sacrifice the Catholicity of the Church to a petty nationalism, would fully account for the Apostle’s attitude of earnest hostility to those Judaizing teachers whom he encoun- tered at Corinth, in Galatia, and, in a somewhat altered guise, at Colossee and at Ephesus. For, in point of fact, the Judaizers implied more than they expressly asserted. They implied that Christ’s religion was not of so perfect and absolute a character as to make additions to it an irreverent impertinence. They implied that they did its Founder no capital wrong, when, instead of recognizing Him as the Saviour of the whole human family, they practically purposed to limit the applicability of His work to a narrow section of it. They implied that there was nothing in His majestic Person which should have forbidden them to range those dead rites of the old law, which He had fulfilled and abolished, side by side with the Cross and Sacraments of Redemption. ‘The keen instinct of the Apostle detected the wound thus indirectly but surely aimed at his Master’s honour ; and St. Paul’s love for Christ was the exact measure of his determined opposition to the influence and action of the Juda- izers. If the Judaizers had believed in the true Divinity of Jesus, they could not have returned to the ‘weak and beggarly elements’ of systems which had paled and died away before the glories of His Advent. If they had fully and clearly believed Jesus to be God, that faith must have opposed an insurmountable barrier to these reactionary yearnings for ‘the things which had been destroyed.’ Their attempt to re-introduce circumcision into the Galatian Churches was a reflection upon the glory of Christ’s finished work, and so, ultimately, upon the transcendent dignity of His Person. They knew not, or heeded not, that they were members of a kingdom in which circumcision and uncircumcision were insignificant accidents, and in which the new creation of the soul by the atoning and sacramental grace of the Incarnate Saviour was the one matter of vital import 8.
® Gal. vi.15: ἐν γὰρ Χριστῷ "Inood οὔτε περιτομή τι ἰσχύει οὔτε ἀκροβυστία, ἀλλὰ καινὴ κτίσις. Here regeneration is viewed from without, on the side vi | Aa2
356 Contrasts between Apostles enhance the force
Although they had not denied Christ in terms, yet He had become of no effect to them; and the Apostle sorrowfully pro- claimed that as many of them as were justified by the law had fallen from graceh, They had practically rejected the plenary efficacy of Christ’s saving and re-creating power; they had implicitly denied that He was a greater than Moses. Their work did not at once perish from among men. For the Juda- izing movement bequeathed to the Churches of the Lesser Asia many of those theological influences which were felt by later ages in the traditional temper of the School of Antioch; while outside the Church it was echoed in the long series of Humani- tarian mutterings which culminated in the blasphemies of Paulus of Samosata. It must thus be admitted to figure conspicuously in the intellectual ancestry of the Arian heresy; and St. Paul, not less than St. John, is an apostolical representative of the cause and work of Athanasius.
Although the foregoing observations may have taxed your indulgent patience somewhat severely, they furnish at best only a sample of the evidence which might be brought to illustrate the point before us. But enough will have been urged to dispose of the suspicion, that St. John’s belief and teaching respecting the Divinity of Jesus Christ was only an intellectual or spiritual peculiarity of that Apostle. Ifthe form and clothing of St. John’s doctrine was peculiar to him, its substance was common to all the Apostles of Jesus Christ. Just as the titles and position assigned to Jesus Christ in the narrative of the fourth Gospel are really in harmony with the powers which He wields and with the rights which He claims in the first three Evangelists, so St. John’s doctrine of the Eternal Word is substantially one with St. Paul’s doctrine of the ‘Image of the Father,’ and with his whole description of the redemptive work of Christ, and of the attitude of the Christian soul towards Him. St. John’s fuller statements do but supply the key to the fervid doxologies of St. Peter, and to the profound and significant reverence of St. James. Indeed from these Apostles he might seem to differ in point of intellectual temper and method, even less than he differs from St. Paul. Between St. Paul and St. John how great
of the Divine Energy Which causes it; in Gal. v. 6, where it is equally contrasted with legal circumcision, it is viewed from within the soul, as consisting essentially in πίστις δι ἀγάπης ἐνεργουμένη. Cf. Lect. VI. p. 287. 4 Gal. v. 4: κατηργήθητε ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, οἵτινες ἐν νόμῳ δικαιοῦσθε, τῆς χάριτος ἐξεπέσατε. Of. Ibid. v. a: ἐὰν περιτέμνησθε, Χριστὸς ὑμᾶς οὐδὲν
ὠφελήσει. [ LECT.
a j 3 y 3
ον RT i hls Sa
of thetr common witness to Christ’s Divinity. 357
is the contrast! In St. Paul we are struck mainly by the wealth of sacred thought; in St. John by its simplicity. St. Paul is versatile and discursive; St. John seems to be fixed in the entranced bliss of a perpetual intuition. St. Paul is a dialectician who teaches us by reasoning; he refutes, he infers, he makes quotations, he deduces corollaries, he draws out his demonstra- tions more or less at length, he presses impetuously forward, reverently bending before the great dogmas which he proclaims, yet moving in an atmosphere of perpetual conflict. St. John speaks as if the highest life of his soul was the wondering study of one vast Apocalypse: he teaches, not by demonstrating truths, but by exhibiting his contemplations; he states what he sees; he repeats the statement, he inverts it, he repeats it once more ; he teaches, as it seems, by the exquisite tact of scarcely disguised but uninterrupted repetition, which is justified because there is no higher attainable truth than the truth which he repeats. St. Paul begins with anthropology, St. John with theology; St. Paul often appeals to theology that he may enforce truths of morals; St. John finds the highest moral truth in his most abstract theological contemplations. St. Paul usually describes the redemptive gift of Christ as Righteousness, as the restoration of man to the true law of his being; St. John more naturally contemplates it as Life, as the outflow of the Self-existent Being of God into His creatures through the quickening Humanity of the Incarnate Word. In St. Paul the ethical element predomi- nates, in St. John the mystical. St. John is more especially the spiritual ancestor of such fathers as was St. Gregory Nazianzen ; St. Paul of such as St. Augustine. It may be said, with some reservations, that St. Paul is the typical Apostle of Western, as St. John is of Eastern Christendom; that the contemplative side of the Christian life finds its pattern in St. John, the active in St. Paul. Yet striking as are such differences of spiritual method and temper, they are found in these great apostles side by side with an entire unity of teaching as to the Person of our Lord. ‘Certainly,’ says Neander, with deep truth, ‘it could be nothing merely accidental which induced men so differently constituted and trained as Paul and John to connect such an idea [as that of Divinity] with the doctrine of the Person of Christ. This must have been the result of a higher necessity, which is founded in the nature of Christianity, in the power of the impression which the life of Christ had made on the lives of men, in the reciprocal relation between the appearance of Christ and the ake that presents itself as an inward revelation of God in vi
358 Faith tn a Divine Christ,
the depths of the higher self-consciousness. And all this has found its point of connection and its verification in the manner in which Christ, the Unerring Witness, expressed His conscious- ness of the indwelling of the Divine Essence with Himi)’
This is indeed the only reasonable explanation of the re- markable fact before us, namely, that the persecutor who was converted on the road to Damascus, and the disciple who had laid on Christ’s breast at supper, were absolutely agreed as to the Divine prerogatives of their Master. And if we, my bre- thren, have ever been tempted to think that a creed like that of St. John befits only a contemplative or mystic life, alien to the habits of our age and to the necessities of our position, let us turn our eyes towards the great Apostle of the Gentiles. It would be difficult, even in this busy day, to rival St. Paul’s activity ; and human weakness might well shrink from sharing his burden of pain and care. It is given to few to live ‘in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from a man’s own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren,’ for a purely unselfish object. Few rise to the heroic scope of a life passed ‘in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, m hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness!’ But this is certain,—that at many lower levels of moral existence, there is much to be done, and much, sooner or later, to be endured, which we can only do manfully and bear meekly in the strength of the Apostle’s great conviction. If St. Paul can suffer the loss of all things that at
{ Planting and Tra‘ning, i. 505, Bohn’s edit. Neander adds: ‘ Had the doctrine of Christ’s Eternal Sonship, when it was first promulgated by Paul, been altogether new and peculiar to himself, it must have excited much opposition as contradicting the common monotheistic belief of the Jews, even among the apostles, to whom, from their previous habits, such a speculative theosophic element must have remained unknown, unless it had found a point of connexion in the lessons received from Christ, and in their Christian knowledge.’ Of such opposition, direct and avowed, there is no trace. Cf. Meyer. Ev. Joh. p. 49. ‘Die Materie der Lehre war bei Johannes, ehe er in jener gnostischen Form die entsprechende Dar- stellung fand, das Fundament seines Glaubens und der Inhalt seiner Erkenntniss, wie sie bei Paulus und bei allen anderen Aposteln es war, welche nicht, (ausser dem Verf. des Hebriierbriefs) von der Logos-Specu- lation beriihrt wurden; diese Materie der Lehre ist schlechthin auf Chris- tum selbst zuriickzufiihren, dessen Eroffnungen an seine Jiinger und dessen unmittelbarer Eindruck auf diese (Joh. i. 14) ihnen den Stoff gab, welcher sich spiiter die verschiedenen Formen der Darstellung dienstbar machte.’
Κ 2 Cor. xi, 25, 26. ἃ Ibid. ver. 27. Cf. Ibid. vi. 4-10, and * 5 sq4.
LECT.
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τω
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the strength of Apostles. 359
the last he may win Christ, if he can do all things through One That strengtheneth him, it is because he is consciously reaching towards or leaning on the arm of a Saviour Who is God as well as Man. And if we, looking onward to the unknown changes and chances of this mortal life, and beyond them, to death, would fain live and die like Christians, we too must see to it that we fold to our inmost souls that central truth of the Christian creed which was the strength and joy of the first servants of Christ. We too must believe and confess, that that Human Friend Whose words enlighten us, Whose Blood cleanses us, Whose Sacraments have renewed and even now sustain us, is in the truth of His Higher Nature none other and no Jess than the Unerring, the All-merciful, the Almighty God.
LECTURE VIL.
THE HOMOOUSION.
Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. TIT. i. 9.
A Great doctrine which claims to rule the thought of men and to leave its mark upon their conduct must of necessity encounter some rude and probing tests of its vitality as it floats along the stream of time. The common speech of mankind, embodying the verdict of man’s experience, lays more emphasis upon the ‘ravages’ than upon the conservative or constructive effects of time :—
‘Tempus edax rerum, tuque invidiosa vetustas,
Omnia destruitis, vitiataque dentibus evi Paulatim lenta consumitis omnia morte 4,’
The destructive force of time is no less observable in the sphere of human ideas and doctrines than in that of material and social facts. Time exposes every doctrine or speculation to the action of causes which, if more disguised and subtle, are not less cer- tainly at work than those which threaten political systems or works of art with decay and dissolution.
A doctrine is liable to suffer with the lapse of time from without and from within. From within it is exposed to the risk of decomposition by analysis. When once it has been launched into the ocean of our public intellectual life, it is forthwith sub- jected, as a condition of its acceptance, to the play and scrutiny of many and variously constituted minds. ‘The several ingre- dients which constitute it, the primary truths to which it appeals
* Ovid, Met. xv. 234, [ LECT.
The vitality of a doctrine, how tested. 361
and upon which it ultimately reposes, are separately and con- stantly examined. It may be that certain elements of the doc- trine, essential toits perfectrepresentation, are rejected altogether. It may be that all its constitutive elements are retained, while the proportions in which they are blended are radically altered. It may be that an impulse is given to some active intellectual sol- vent, hitherto dormant, but from the first latent in the constitu- tion of the doctrine, and likely, according to any ordinary human estimate, to break it up. Or some point of attraction between the doctrine and a threatening philosophy outside it is discovered aud insisted on; and the philosophy, in a patronizing spirit, proposes to meet the doctrine half way, and to ratify one half of it if the other may be abandoned. Or some subtle intellectual poison is injected into the doctrine ; and while men imagine that they are only adapting it to the temper of an age, or to the demands of a line of thought, its glow and beauty are forfeited, or its very life and heart are eaten out. Then for awhile its shell or its skeleton lies neglected by the side of the great highway of thought; until at length some one of those adventurers who in every age devote themselves to the manufacture of eclectic systems assigns to the intellectual fossil a place of honour in his private museum, side by side with the remains of other extinct theories, to which in its lifetime it was fundamentally opposed.
But even if a doctrine be sufficiently compact and strong to resist internal decomposition, it must in any case be prepared to encounter the shock of opposition from without. To no doctrine is it given to be absolutely jnoffensive ; and therefore sooner or later every doctrine is opposed. Every doctrine, however frail and insignificant it may be, provokes attacks by the mere fact of its existence. It challenges a certain measure of attention which is coveted by some other doctrines. It takes up a certain amount of mental room which other doctrines would fain appropriate, if indeed it does not jostle inconveniently against them, or contra- dict them outright. Thus it rouses against itself resentment, or, at any rate, opposition; and this opposition is reinforced by an appetite which is shared in by those who hold the opposed doc- trine no less than by those who oppose it. The craving for novelty is by no means peculiar to quickwitted races like the Athe- nians of the apostolical age or the French of our own day. It is profoundly and universally human; and it enters into our appre- ciation of subject-matters the most various. Novelty confers a charm upon high efforts of thought and enquiry as well as upon ae of art or of imagination, or even upon fashions in amuse- vu
262 ©The vitality of a doctrine, how tested.
ment or in dress. To treat this yearning for novelty as though it were only a vicious frivolity is to overlook its profound signifi- cance. For, even in its lowest and unloveliest forms, it is a living and perpetual witness to the original nobility of the soul of man. It is the restlessness of a desire which One Being alone can satisfy ; it reminds us that the Infinite One has made us for Himself, and that no object, person, or doctrine, that is merely finite and earthly, can take His place in our heart and thought, and bid us finally be still. And therefore as man passes through life on his short and rapid pilgrimage, unless his eye be fixed on that treasure in heaven which ‘neither moth nor rust doth cor- rupt,’ he is of necessity the very slave of novelty. Each candi- date for his admiration wins from him, it may be, a passing glance of approval; but, unsatisfied at heart, he is ever seeking for some new stimulant to his evanescent sympathies. He casts to the winds the faded flower which he had but lately stooped to gather with such eager enthusiasm; he buries beneath the waves the useless pebble which, when his eye first detected it sparkling on the shore, had yielded him a moment of such bright enjoy- ment. Nothing human can insure its life against the attractions of something more recent than itself in point of origin; no doctrine of earthly mould can hope to escape the sentence of superannuation when it is fairly confronted with the intellectual creations of an age later than its own. A human doctrine may live for a few years, or it may live for centuries. Its duration will depend partly upon the amount of absolute truth which it em- bodies, and partly upon the strength of the rivals with which it is brought into competition. But it cannot always satisfy the appetite for novelty ; its day of extinction can only be deferred.
οὐκ ἔχω προσεικάσαι πάντ᾽ ἐπισταθμώμενος, πλὴν Διὸς, εἰ τὸ μάταν ἀπὸ φροντίδος ἄχθος ΄“΄ ’ χρὴ βαλεῖν ἐτητύμως. 35» of ΄ > ΄ οὐδ᾽ ὅστις πάροιθεν ἦν μέγας, / id , παμμάχῳ θράσει βρύων, > a if οὐδὲν ἂν λέξαι πρὶν ὧν, a >” >» ὃς δ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽ ἔφυ, τρια- κτῆρος οἴχεται τυχών,
So it must ever fare with a religious dogma of purely hu- man authorship. In obedience to the lapse of time it must
> AEsch, Ag. 163-171. [ LECT.
Doctrine of Christ’s Divinity, how tested. 363
of necessity be modified, corrupted, revolutionized, and then yield to some stronger successor.
* Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be.’
This is the true voice of human speculation on Divine things, conscious that it is human, conscious of its weakness, and mind- ful of its past and cver-accumulating experience. He only, ‘with Whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning,’ can be the Author of a really unchanging doctrine; and, asa matter of historical fact, ‘ His truth endureth from generation to genera- tion.’
When the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity entered into the world of human thought, it was not screened from the operation of the antagonistic and dissolvent influences which have just been noticed. It was confronted with the passion for novelty beneath the eyes of the Apostles themselves. The passion for novelty at Colossze appears to have combined a licentious fertility of the religious imagination with a taste for such cosmical specu- lations as were current in that age; while in the Galatian Churches it took the form of a return to the discarded cere- monial of the Jewish law. In both cases the novel theory was opposed to the apostolical account of our Lord’s personal dig- nity; and in another generation the wild imaginings of a Basilides or of a Valentinus illustrated the attractive force of a new fashion in Christological speculation still more powerfully. Somewhat later the dialectical habits of the Alexandrian writers subjected the doctrine to a searching analysis, while the neo-Platonic philosophy brought a powerful intellectual sympathy to bear upon it, which, as an absorbing or distorting influence, might well have been fatal to a human dogma. Lastly, the doctrine was directly opposed by a long line of Humanitarian teachers, reaching, with but few intermissions, from the Ebionitic period to the Arian.
In the history of the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity the Arian heresy was the climax of difficulty and of triumph; it tested the doctrine at one and the same time in each of the three modes which have been noticed. Arianism was ostentatiously anxious to appear to be an original speculation, and accordingly it taunted the Nicene fathers with their intellectual poverty; it branded them as ἀφελεῖς καὶ ἰδιῶται because they adhered to the ground of handing on simply what they had received. Its method of eae discussion is traceable to the schools of the Sophists vu
364 Leffects of opposition,
at Antioch; and by this method, as well as by the assumption that certain philosophical placita were granted, Arianism en- deavoured to kill the doctrine from within by a destructive analysis. And it need scarcely be added that Arianism inherited and intensified the direct opposition which had been offered to the doctrine by earlier heresies; Arianism is immortalized, how- ever ingloriously, in those sufferings, in those struggles, in those victories of the great Athanasius, of which its own bitter hostility to our Lord’s Essential Godhead was the immediate cause.
That such a doctrine as our Lord’s Divinity should be thus opposed was not unnatural. It is in itself so startling, so awful ; it endows the man who honestly and intelligently believes it with a conception of the worth and drift of Christianity, so altogether unique; it is so utterly intolerable if you admit a suspicion of its being false; it is so necessarily exacting when once you have recognised it as true; it makes such large and immediate demands, not merely upon the reason and the imagination, but also upon the affections and the will; that a specific opposition to it, as distinct from a professed general opposition to the religion of which it is the very heart and soul, is only what might have been expected. Certainly, such a doc- trine could not at first bring peace on earth; rather it could not but bring division. It could not but divide families, cities, nations, continents; it could not but arm against itself the edge and point of every weapon that might be forged or whetted by the ingenuity of a passionate animosity. It could not but have collapsed utterly and vanished away when confronted with the heat of opposition which it provoked, had it not descended from the Source of Truth, had it not reposed upon an absolute and indestructible basis. The Arian controversy broke upon it as an intellectual storm, the violence of which must have shattered any human theory. But when the storm had spent itself, the doc- trine emerged from the conciliar decisions of the fourth century as luminous and perfect as it had been when it was proclaimed by St. Paul and St.John. Resistance does but strengthen truth which it cannot overthrow: and when the doctrine had defied the craving for novelty, the disintegrating force of hostile analysis, and the vehement onslaught of passionate denunciation, it was seen to be vitally unlike those philosophical speculations which might have been confused with it by a superficial observer. The doctrine was unaltered ; it still involved and excluded pre- cisely what it had excluded and involved from the first. But henceforth it was to be held with a clearer recognition of i real
LECT.
Triumph of the Doctrine. The Homoouston. 365
frontier, and with a stronger sense of the necessity for insisting upon that recognition. In the Homoousion, after such hesitation as found expression at Antioch, the Church felt that she had - lighted upon a symbol practically adapted to tell forth the truth that never had been absent from her heart and mind, and withal, capable of resisting the intellectual solvents which had seemed to threaten that truth with extinction. The Homoousion did not change, it protected the doctrine. It clothed the doctrine in a vesture of language which rendered it intelligible to a new world of thought while preserving its strict unchanging identity. It translated the apostolical symbols of the Image and the Word of God into a Platonic equivalent; and it remains with us to this hour, in the very heart of our Creed, as the complete assertion of Christ’s absolute oneness with the Essence of Deity, as the monument which records the greatest effort and the greatest defeat of its antagonist error, as the guarantee that the victorious truth maintains and will maintain an unshaken empire over the thought of Christendom.
We are all sufficiently familiar with the line of criticism to which such a formula as the Homoousion is exposed in our day and generation. A contrast is depicted and insisted upon with more vehemence than accuracy, between the unfixed popular faith of Christians in the first age of the Church and the keen theological temper of the fourth century. It is said that the Church’s earliest faith was unformed, simple, vague, too full of childlike wonder to analyse itself, too indeterminate to satisfy the requirements of a formalized theology. It is asserted that at Alexandria the Church learned how to fix her creed in precise, rigid, exclusive moulds; that she there gradually crystallized what had once been fluid, and cramped and fettered what had before been free. And it is insinuated that in this process, whereby the fresh faith of the infant Church ‘ was hardened into the creed of the Church of the Councils,’ there was some risk, or more than risk, of an alteration or enlargement of the original faith. ‘How do you know,’ men ask, ‘that the formulary which asserts Christ’s Consubstantiality with the Father is really ex- pressive of the simple faith in which the first Christians lived and died? Do not probabilities point the other way? Is it not likely that when this effort was made to fix the expression of the faith in an unchanging symbol, there was a simultaneous growth, however unsuspected and unrecognised, in the subject- matter of the faith expressed? May not the hopes and feelings of ᾿ passionate devotion, as well as the inferential arguments of vu
366 The worshipofChrista witness to the Flomoousion,
an impetuous logic, have contributed something to fill up the outline and to enhance the significance of the original and re- vealed germ of truth? May not the Creed of Nicza be thus in reality a creed distinct from, if not indeed more extensive than, the creed of the apostolic age?’ Such is the substance of many a whispered question, or of many a confident assertion, which we hear around us; and it is necessary to enquire, whether the admitted difference of form between the apostolic and Nicene statements does really, or only in appearance, involve a deeper difference—a difference in the object of faith.