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 BS 2651 .F4A v. 2' 
 Feine, Paul, 1859-1933. 
 St. Paul as a theologian 
 
Foreign Religious Series 
 
 Edited by 
 R. J. COOKE, D. D. 
 
 Second Series. i6mo. cloth. Each 40 cents, net. 
 
 DO WE NEED CHRIST FOR 
 
 COMMUNION WITH GOD? 
 
 By Professor Ludwig Lemme, of the University 
 of Heidelberg 
 
 ST. PAUL AS A THEOLOGIAN 
 
 (two parts) 
 
 By Professor Paul Peine, of the University of Vienna 
 
 THE NEW MESSAGE IN THE TEACHING 
 
 OF JESUS 
 
 By Professor Philipp Bachmann, of the University 
 
 of Erlangen 
 
 THE PECULIARITY OF THE RELIGION 
 
 , OF THE BIBLE 
 
 By Professor Conrad Von Orelli, of the University 
 of Basle 
 
 OUR LORD 
 
 By Professor K. Miiller, of the University of Erlangen 
 
TWO PARTS 
 PART II 
 
St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 By 
 PAUL^FEINE 
 
 Professor in the University of Vienna 
 
 PART II 
 
 NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
 CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM 
 
Copyright, 1908, by 
 EATON & MAINS, 
 
PART SECOND 
 The Origin of the Pauline Christology 
 
 THE "religious-historical'* UNDERSTAND- 
 ING OF THE PAULINE CHRISTOLOGY 
 
 The question as to the origin of the Paul- 
 ine Christ-picture is of recent date. We owe 
 it to F. Christian Baur and the so-called 
 Tubingen school. Following the points of 
 view which Baur asserted, Holsten has en- 
 deavored above all to show how Paul arrived 
 at his theology. He understands the entire 
 theological ideal world of Paul, including his 
 Christology, as the result of a process which 
 logically effectuated itself in the mind of 
 Paul. The fact of Jesus's death on the cross 
 and his understanding of it as a revelation of 
 the divine purpose of salvation, effected a 
 gradual inner transformation of the elements 
 of his Jewish conception of the world which 
 was opposed to the idea of the world de- 
 manded by his Christian consciousness. 
 Holsten rejects every supernatural factor 
 in this transformation. He knows only im- 
 
 7 
 
8 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 manent, psychological events. The appear- 
 ance of Christ before Damascus was no real 
 objective manifestation, but mainly an inner 
 illumination which showed to Paul that Jesus 
 whom he persecuted was no pseudo-Messiah. 
 But since he was convinced that in this sub- 
 jective vision he had seen the living Christ 
 as a heavenly being surrounded by the 
 brightness of God, he conceived of Christ 
 in accordance with the Jewish-Alexandrian 
 notion of his time, as a heavenly man who 
 was the image of God and of divine nature. 
 In this attempt of Holsten's to explain 
 Paul's conception of Christ there lies a very 
 important idea which theological science 
 must never lose sight of if it would under- 
 stand Paul historically; and he is here dis- 
 tinctly treated as a theological thinker. Hol- 
 sten was earnestly bent on proving how 
 everything had to change in the mind of 
 Paul after he conceived Christ's death on the 
 cross as a divine act of salvation, but his 
 explanation of the change in Paul can never 
 satisfy. Certain it is that psychological 
 points of contact for the understanding of 
 Christ as Messiah already existed in Paul, 
 the Pharisee. It contradicts all probability 
 
Origin of Pauline Christology 9 
 
 that the Christ-vision was a product of the 
 mind of Paul. One is not even required to 
 emphasize that in this case Paul would have 
 been completely mistaken concerning the ex- 
 perience of his conversion. As little as the 
 apostle speaks of it, the elements of the 
 Christian faith had at that time already 
 struggled with his Jewish faith, and the ver- 
 dict must be that the very law of cause and 
 effect which Holsten invokes fails in his 
 hypothesis. 
 
 According to our proof in section 2, the 
 question in the conversion of Paul is, in the 
 main, not the logical understanding of a 
 truth but a new creation, a religious and 
 moral innovation. An episode in his life, 
 which radically transformed the contents of 
 his thought and volition ; an elementary ex- 
 perience for whose description Paul catches 
 at the highest comparison possible, this his 
 mind did not produce. The consciousness 
 of obligation to serve Christ with body and 
 life, with all his thoughts and powers, with 
 giving up his own ego, did not spring from 
 a logical process. The moral ideal of life 
 which he henceforth followed instead of the 
 Pharisaical, as well as his apostolic calling. 
 
lo St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 cannot be intelligently comprehended as the 
 result of his deductions from the Messiahship 
 of Jesus. 
 
 Scientific theology has not fully consented 
 to this part of Holsten's theory. In recent 
 times, however, it celebrates a surprising 
 resurrection by emphasizing that part which 
 Holsten already found necessary in order to 
 explain the grandeur and divinity of the 
 Pauline picture of the Christ. Religious his- 
 torical inquiry of our days connects with the 
 idea of the heavenly man of Paul's day, and 
 from that point seeks to solve the problem. 
 
 The mystery of New Testament Chris- 
 tology is said to be, that predicates are trans- 
 ferred to Jesus which were given to the con- 
 ception of the Christ of that time in general. 
 Derived from the Orient, as we know from 
 Jewish apocalypses, there lived in the Juda- 
 ism of that period the picture of a heavenly 
 Christ who was expected as divine revealer, 
 as heavenly King. Later, Judaism, in oppo- 
 sition to Christianity, has indeed given up 
 the most of this and opposed it vehemently. 
 But for the understanding of the New Testa- 
 ment, we must accept this belief as then 
 living ; for when Jesus appeared in his super- 
 
Origin of Pauline Christology ii 
 
 human grandeur and was known as Christ, 
 his disciples asserted of him the greatest 
 things Judaism could affirm. These foreign 
 religious motives must have crowded into the 
 congregation immediately after the death of 
 Jesus. Minds which were longing for the 
 presence of God needed a Son of God who 
 came down from heaven, and transferred to 
 Jesus the ideals of their heart. 
 
 Such ideas have been especially and re- 
 cently transferred to the Pauline Christol- 
 ogy. This problem must indeed be reckoned 
 with when one thinks that it contains essen- 
 tially new elements in comparison with prim- 
 itive Christian and synoptic Christology. 
 
 To the question: How did the Pauline 
 Christology originate? the present "reli- 
 gious-historical" answer reads : This Christ- 
 picture did not originate from the impression 
 of the personality of Jesus. Pauline the- 
 ology did not determine the life-work nor the 
 biographical portrait of Jesus. This fact can- 
 not be shaken even if Paul had known Jesus 
 intimately, or whether he may have said this 
 or that of Jesus in his missionary preaching. 
 He, whose servant and disciple he wished to 
 be, was, critically speaking, not the historical 
 
12 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 man Jesus at all, but another. The Pauline 
 Christ becomes intelligible only when one 
 supposes that Paul the Pharisee had already 
 a sum of ready ideas concerning a divine 
 Christ which were afterward transferred to 
 the historical Jesus. In the moment of con- 
 version when he imagined he beheld Jesus 
 in a vision in the bright glory of his resur- 
 rection-life he identified him with his Christ, 
 and without further ceremony transferred to 
 Jesus all the ideas which he already had of 
 the heavenly being; that he already existed 
 before the world and took part in its cre- 
 ation. Paul was the first who took the deci- 
 sive step for the new formation and expan- 
 sion of Christology. Intimate disciples of 
 Jesus could not so easily believe that the 
 Man who ate with them at Capernaum, or 
 rode with them on the Galilean Sea, was the 
 Creator of the world; but for Paul, who 
 knew not Jesus, this difficulty did not exist. 
 He could transfer to Christ such lofty predi- 
 cates; but the thought that a divine being 
 left heaven, went about in human form and 
 died in order to ascend again into heaven, 
 was, according to its nature, a mythological 
 conception. 
 
Origin of Pauline Christology 13 
 
 This hypothesis, too, starts from the sup- 
 position that transcendent influences must be 
 excluded for the origin of the Pauline 
 Christ-picture. Precisely similar, as in the 
 case of Holsten, is the following line of 
 thought: What Paul experienced before 
 Damascus was a vision, and visions are 
 events in the human mind and products of 
 the human mind, though the visionary may 
 think otherwise. This event may have had 
 its sufficient causes equally with the visions 
 of those who saw Savonarola alive after his 
 death. Though we can no more accurately 
 point out the causes, they must have been 
 based on the personal character of Paul, on 
 impressions and commotions of his soul. 
 Herein, also, Holsten is the leader of the 
 supposition that the conversion of Paul as 
 to its nature, is to be looked upon as a change 
 of conviction. 
 
 To this hypothesis applies the very 
 same thing which we have just asserted 
 against Holsten; but more strongly than 
 in his case, the law of cause and effect is 
 here also violated, since the Christ-picture of 
 the apostle is said to have been already in 
 his mind before his conversion, and directly 
 
14 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 after his conversion transferred to Jesus, 
 whereas Holsten inserts this identification in 
 the course of the process of thoughts which 
 followed the conversion. In that case the 
 question can be still less, as in the case of 
 Holsten, of a real explanation of the sudden 
 change in the life of Paul and of a new 
 formation which touched the depths of his 
 being and thinking; for in such case Paul 
 would already have had all the elements of 
 the new life in himself, as parts of a theory 
 familiar to him. And where, in the history 
 of the world, did a vision ever have a like 
 effect as with Paul ? Before Damascus Paul 
 became a servant of Christ, he became such 
 a mighty preacher of the gospel that the 
 Grseco-Roman world could not resist his 
 message. Can one really put the "vision'' of 
 this man on a par with the visions of those 
 who imagined they saw Savonarola after his 
 death? 
 
 But following this theory: How could 
 Paul combine the life-picture of a simple man 
 with that of the heavenly King? Must not 
 the simplest veracity have induced him to 
 ask whether this man was entitled to it? 
 How could the happiness of the apostle have 
 
Origin of Pauline Christology 15 
 
 followed from such a combination that he 
 now could consider himself as having really 
 sensibly entered into a world which till then 
 he had merely hoped for? Furthermore: 
 We find indeed in the writings of contem- 
 porary Judaism, in the allegories of the book 
 of Enoch, in the apocalypses of Ezra and 
 Baruch, in the Testaments of the Twelve 
 Patriarchs, descriptions of a heavenly Mes- 
 siah-King, but each of these apocalyptic pic- 
 tures is different. The Messianic dogmatics 
 of the Judaism of that time has something 
 very iridescent, contradictory, changeable, 
 whereas the Christ-picture of Paul has cer- 
 tain firmly outlined characteristics and does 
 not coincide with any of the Jewish Messiah- 
 pictures known to us. Where shall we look 
 for the original which served as a model for 
 the Pauline Christ ? It lies in the dark, and 
 I think it will stay there. 
 
 But we are told the demeanor of the apos- 
 tle toward the preaching of Christ of the 
 primitive church was directly startling. The 
 older apostles would have had a true Christ- 
 picture, whereas that of Paul was an apoca- 
 lyptic, a mind-picture; and yet Paul had 
 the boldness to oppose the Judseo-Christian 
 
1 6 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 preaching ; to curse everyone, even an angel 
 from heaven, who preached another gospel 
 than he preached. Could he express his con- 
 viction that in the main there exists no essen- 
 tial difference between the primitive apostolic 
 preaching and his ? Could he go to Jerusa- 
 lem, to the apostolic council, in the hope of 
 receiving the approbation of his gospel from 
 the primitive church? And could he have 
 really obtained it ? Would he not have been 
 blamed there for decking the historical Jesus 
 with unhistorical claims to majesty, dignity 
 and divinity? 
 
 No, in this way the Pauline Christology 
 can scientifically never be made intelligible. 
 Paul in the struggle with Jewish Christianity 
 came out victorious when his preaching of 
 Christ conquered the world of that time. 
 If almost all epoch-making men in the 
 history of the Christian church received de- 
 cisive impulses from the apostle Paul, the 
 assumption lies near, that the Pauline preach- 
 ing contains the most inalienable truths of 
 our religion, and the preaching of Christ, its 
 kernel, is not false. The Pauline word: 
 "For other foundation can no man lay than 
 that is laid, which is Jesus Christ," that is, 
 
Origin of Pauline Christology 17 
 
 the historical Jesus, and this applies also to 
 the apostle himself. 
 
 Finally, it may also be affirmed that Paul 
 himself forbids entering upon the suggested 
 "religious-historical" way of explaining his 
 Christology. He once expressed himself 
 concerning the Messianic ideas which he had 
 before his conversion: "Wherefore hence- 
 forth know we no man after the flesh : yea, 
 though we have known Christ after the flesh, 
 yet now henceforth know we him no more" 
 (2 Cor. 5. 16) ; Christ is here used appella- 
 tively in the meaning "the Messiah" (as 
 Rom. 10. 6, 7; Gal. 2. 17) ; and the present 
 which the apostle opposes to the past, means 
 here, as in the parallel passage (Gal. i. 10), 
 the entire period of his Christian state. This 
 follows from the reference of the "hence- 
 forth" to the mention of the death of Christ, 
 verses 14, 15. The purpose intended by this 
 death, as verse 15 describes it, comes about 
 according to the apostle's judgment as soon 
 as Christ's death shows its effect on a man. 
 Since his conversion the apostle considers no 
 man of any importance whose merit lies in 
 the fleshly sphere. Even the Christ-picture 
 which he formerly had and which, retro- 
 
;i8 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 specting, lie now perceives is fleshl}^, he laid 
 aside. What he understands by "fleshly" 
 follows from the contrast of the new creature 
 which is given in the following verse, 17: 
 "therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a 
 new creature : old things are passed away ; 
 behold, all things are become new." We 
 have here also the known contrast of the 
 Pauline theology, flesh and Spirit ; and there 
 is no reason to deduct anything in this one 
 passage from the almost dualistic keenness 
 in which these two ideas stand against each 
 other. As Paul otherwise also reckons Juda- 
 ism under the category of flesh and declares 
 it to be overcome and destroyed by Chris- 
 tianity as the religion of the Spirit, so he 
 judges of his ideas of the Messiah which he 
 formerly held, whether they were really more 
 apocalyptical or Pharisaically separistic. 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 19 
 
 II 
 
 Elements of the Pauline Christology 
 
 In the rejected explanation of the Paulhie 
 Christology we nevertheless find an entirely 
 correct idea : that is the reference to the con- 
 temporaneous conditionality of the Pauline 
 Christ-picture. As a matter of course, Paul 
 could only make Christ intelligible to himself 
 by the aid of ideas current in his time. He 
 was a Hellenistic Jew of the first Christian 
 century, and he did not deny this in his 
 Christological thoughts. Hence we find with 
 him numerous contrasts and parallels with 
 the descriptions of the Messianic time and 
 the Messianic picture in the later Jewish 
 writings. The eschatological sphere of ideas 
 of Paul, that is, his view of the last things 
 and the establishment of the kingdom of 
 God on earth through the Messiah, like that 
 of the evangelists, can only be understood in 
 connection with the parallel notions of the 
 Judaism of that time. The prevailing dif- 
 ference that Judaism expected the "advent" 
 of the Messiah, while Christianity looked for 
 
20 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 the "return" of Jesus, is not very great, so 
 much the less since the Christians themselves 
 also spoke of the "advent" and not of the 
 "return" of Christ. 
 
 Eschatological passages in the Pauline 
 Epistles like i Thess. 4. 16, 17; 2 Thess. i. 
 7-12; 2. 3-12; I Cor. 15. 24-28, 51-55; even 
 2 Cor. 5. I- 10, by eliminating from them 
 what is really Christian, could just as well 
 stand in Jewish apocalypses. The Pauline, 
 like the Jewish apocalyptics, knows a Mes- 
 siah whose coming will close the course of 
 the present world and bring in the future. 
 Here, as there, is the belief that the dawn of 
 the Messianic period is immediately at hand. 
 Here, as there, is the idea of the preexistence 
 of the Messiah; here, as there, his appear- 
 ance on earth is described in a kindred man- 
 ner : he destroys the powers of darkness, the 
 ungodly angelic powers; overcomes Satan 
 and destroys all enemies of God ; but his own 
 he fills with righteousness, wisdom and 
 power, and establishes a kingdom of peace. 
 As the judge of the world he comes in the 
 clouds of heaven accompanied by his holy 
 angels, with the sound of the trumpet of 
 judgment. He raises the dead, changes the 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology2i 
 
 living, renews creation. He is endowed with 
 the glory of heaven, the manifestation of 
 God, and enjoys adoration. His kingdom, 
 however, is not of eternal duration, but his 
 dominion is succeeded by the dominion of 
 God which lasts forever. 
 
 It is clear that the most essential ideas of 
 Jewish apocalyptics have been received into 
 the theology of Paul; but this problem be- 
 comes still more complicated by this, that 
 we not only find the same apocalyptic picture 
 among the evangelists, but Jesus himself 
 expressed his coming again in apocalyptic 
 forms of thought. For the Danielle picture 
 of the Son of man which Jesus applied to 
 himself, is essentially apocalyptic. In a sol- 
 emn hour before the high priest our Lord 
 answered the question whether he be the 
 Messiah, with a yea, and added : "hereafter 
 shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the 
 right hand of power, and coming in the 
 clouds of heaven" (Matt. 26. 64). He also 
 thought of his coming again as impending. 
 As Son of man he also claimed for himself 
 the dominion and the judgment of the world 
 (Matt. 25. 31 sqq. ; 16. 2y\ 19. 28 sq.). 
 
 A section of present theological science 
 
22 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 rightly assumes that in the primitive Chris- 
 tian theology more room was given to these 
 eschatological apocalyptic thoughts than was 
 the case with Jesus ; but we shall never suc- 
 ceed in clearly separating these developments 
 from Jesus' self-testimony. In Paul we must 
 in any case acknowledge a twofold influence 
 in this sphere of ideas — that of the apocalyp- 
 tics of his time, and also that of the teaching 
 of Jesus. As Jesus himself, so Paul sees in 
 Jesus the future — and in part already present 
 — King of the kingdom and judge of the 
 world ; and against the entire Jewish apoca- 
 lyptics he agrees with Jesus in this, that he 
 eliminates everything political from the Mes- 
 sianic picture of the future, and delineates it 
 purely religiously, a difference which can 
 only be historically explained from depend- 
 ence of Paul on Jesus. 
 
 But here there is manifested a desire to 
 oppose a prevalent, yea, an almost ruling 
 conception of Paulinism. One meets again 
 and again with efforts to present the eschato- 
 logical expectation as the kernel of Paul's 
 belief in Christ. If this is correct, Paul does 
 indeed not specially surpass his time. The 
 difference between him and the older apos- 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 23 
 
 ties — and the Judaism of that time, was in 
 the main this, that he identified the Messiah 
 expected from heaven with the man Jesus, 
 and that in the Spirit, given already as 
 earnest of the future Messianic blessings, he 
 saw the firm pledge of the speedy coming 
 of the kingdom of God. In that case the 
 main stress of the religious thoughts of Paul 
 would not rest on that which, in the church 
 of that time, was revived with divine powers 
 through the risen and exalted Christ and on 
 that which Jesus has been in his earthly ap- 
 pearance, but on the future, in the consum- 
 mation which Christ shall bring when he 
 comes again. 
 
 But the importance of the historically 
 great lies not in what it has in common w^ith 
 its surroundings and time, but in what it 
 differs, in the new which it brings as leaven 
 into the period of development. In apoca- 
 lyptic thoughts Paul also paid his tribute to 
 his time. How could it be otherwise? No 
 thinker can free himself from the perceptive 
 world and apprehensive material of his time ; 
 but our statement of Paul's Christian belief 
 also shows that the telling effect of his reli- 
 gious life is rather the triumphant conscious- 
 
24 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 ness of having already made a real experi- 
 ence of the divine life, and as having known 
 himself already in possession of redemption. 
 Paul already feels himself as a new creature. 
 He knows that nothing can separate him 
 from the love of God which saved him in 
 Christ Jesus. He is justified; has access 
 already to God; can call him Father; the 
 spirit of joyous trust and gladness quenches 
 all suffering, and again and again obtains in 
 him the upper hand. That which Luther, 
 with the longing of his soul thirsting after 
 salvation learnt from Paul, and that which 
 leads us also again and again to Paul, is the 
 certainty of salvation which hails with 
 shouts of joy from his Epistles. 
 
 Only when this is ascertained can the 
 other side also be rightly estimated, the hope 
 of justification in the final judgment; the 
 anxious expectation of the completion of 
 redemption ; the sincere striving to be wholly 
 united with Christ; the wish to throw off 
 everything which still binds him to this 
 world and to be clothed upon with the 
 heavenly body. Paul is the apostle of faith ; 
 and this faith is the inner connection of 
 the believer with the object of his faith. 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 25 
 
 As the inseparable union of the believer with 
 Christ, he considers the appropriation of that 
 which is Christ's already in the present. The 
 future can only complete what the present 
 has already given to him of the glorious ex- 
 perience of salvation. 
 
 In the degree, however, that this is per- 
 ceived does the unsatisfactory character of 
 the essentially eschatological setting of the 
 Pauline Christology appear. It must also 
 be considered that Paul has not taken over 
 into his ideal world the most important 
 eschatological idea of the preaching of Jesus 
 — that of the Son of man. In addition to 
 the eschatological elements of the apostle's 
 belief in Christ, which in their importance 
 must certainly not be depreciated, one will 
 have to mention others, and they are such 
 which for the apostle constitute for all time 
 the unchanging norm of Christian greatness. 
 
 The first is, that Paul experienced Christ 
 as a real power which entered his life and 
 created him anew. This kind of experience, 
 as we have seen above, was of a person to a 
 person, the self-manifestation of the heavenly 
 Christ to the apostle. As to its content, Paul 
 understood this experience only as divine; 
 
26 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 and here lies the real cause — that he puts 
 Christ not on the side of humanity, but 
 ascribes to him divinity. What he received 
 from Christ no man could give him, but only 
 a being of divine origin and of divine power. 
 
 It belongs to every science to explain facts. 
 Only in the degree that it is successful can 
 we be satisfied with a scientific hypothesis; 
 and he onl}^ can obtain a position relative to 
 the questions concerning the origin of the 
 Christ belief who himself stands within this 
 connection. Whoever will understand the 
 poet, must go to the poet's land. 
 
 From the consciousness that the living 
 Christ has also apprehended us and made us 
 his possession, can we tmderstand the con- 
 viction of the apostle that the new experience 
 in his life was not planted from immanent 
 causes, but by the supernatural Christ. But 
 he, who from the start rejects a Christ who 
 did not remain in death but who rose again 
 and is exalted to God, and from thence makes 
 known to his people his royal power, will 
 never be able to do justice to the apostle. 
 But let not him who occupies that position 
 claim that he alone judges scientifically. 
 The supreme principle of this mode of con- 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 27 
 
 sideratlon is a dogma which is just as good 
 as any other dogma. We refer, in the sense 
 of Paul, to the nature of rehgious experi- 
 ence ; for this rests not on scientific evidence, 
 on reasons which may be demonstrated, but 
 its mighty fortress is that which the mind 
 can now still experience, and what has be- 
 come efficacious is an historical reality. 
 With Paul we can experience the fact that 
 we have a Christ in heaven who is rightly 
 over us. From Paul we can learn what 
 God's revelation is to man : a creative act, 
 a new life, the effective experience of a 
 power surpassing and overcoming this world. 
 This Christ was seen by the apostle in 
 heavenly brightness, in the glory of the 
 manifestation of God. But this heavenly 
 appearance was that of the man Jesus. The 
 Jesus who walked on this earth and the 
 heavenly Lord and King was the same per- 
 son. By submitting to this Christ, Paul 
 entered into connection with the belief of the 
 primitive church; for it were an entirely 
 erroneous opinion should one assert that 
 Paul was the first who affirmed divine predi- 
 cates of Jesus. Even the older apostles only 
 came forth with the preaching of Christ 
 
28 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 after they had experienced the divine power 
 of Jesus. There is no gospel of Christ which 
 did not preach him as the heavenly Lord and 
 King. The same men who sailed with Jesus 
 on the Galilean Sea and ate and drank with 
 Him, had proclaimed with death-defying 
 courage and firm gladness the same Jesus as 
 the Lord who was exalted to the right hand 
 of God, who gave his people divine powers 
 and life and made them sure of heavenly 
 perfection. The addresses of Peter in the 
 first part of the Acts of the Apostles bear 
 eloquent testimony that the primitive apos- 
 tolic Christ-picture was also eclipsed by 
 heavenly splendor. 
 
 But the primitive apostles also did not 
 come to such faith, such preaching of Jesus, 
 by accident. For their wonderful declara- 
 tions they have a very solid basis, as can be 
 ascertained from the Synoptic Gospels. It 
 is not in this that Jesus enjoyed on earth 
 merely an inspired human consciousness. 
 He meant to be more than a hero of 
 humanity. The number of self-testimonies, 
 depositions, prophecies and miraculous deeds 
 can only be explained on the supposition that 
 Jesus intended to manifest by them his divine 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 29 
 
 authority on earth. Already on earth Jesus, 
 with full consciousness over against men, 
 linked himself closely to a union with God 
 and claimed to embody God's revelation to 
 humanity. This is not the place to prove 
 this in detail ; but the most important is to 
 be said. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah 
 sent of God and to fulfill in his person what 
 the Old Testament expected of the appear- 
 ance of God himself at the end of the ages. 
 As Son of man he exercised on earth divine 
 authority in forgiving sin; and of divine 
 power over human disease. He made the 
 lame to walk, the deaf to hear, raised the 
 dead, and they did as he commanded. He 
 declared that to him, as Son of man, be- 
 longed future divine power, dominion and 
 dignity and the judgment of the world. He 
 knew himself as the Son of God in a unique 
 sense; who was exalted over the angels; 
 whose essence no one knew but God, the 
 Father ; who stood in the relation of mutually 
 perfect knowledge with the Father; who 
 through revelation must draw men into his 
 communion with God, if they would have 
 part in it. He appeared as the new lawgiver 
 of his own authority, not like the prophets 
 
30 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 with the word *'thus saith Jehovah," and 
 depreciated and abohshed what in the Old 
 Testament did not answer to the perfect will 
 of God. In the temple he acts as if he were 
 its Lord ; he is more than the temple ; he is 
 Lord also of the Sabbath day. Men shall 
 be judged according to their relation to him ; 
 for he demands belief in his person. True, 
 that he walks through the dark valley of 
 suffering and death, but also toward the 
 resurrection and the heavenly glory. 
 
 These elements were contained in the 
 Christ-belief which Paul, the Pharisee, per- 
 secuted. He oppressed this belief because it 
 seemed to him a falsehood and false testi- 
 mony. But he must have known the Christ- 
 preaching of the primitive church, otherwise 
 he could not have reasonably persecuted it. 
 Yea, the fanatical zeal of the Pharisee can 
 historically only be thus understood, that 
 Paul saw clearer than his contemporaries the 
 incompatibility of this preaching with Jew- 
 ish belief. Before Paul became a Christian 
 he knew that a new principle of salvation 
 had entered the world, that Judaism had 
 received its death-blow if the Christian 
 preaching rested on truth. 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 31 
 
 But from the epistles of the apostle it can 
 also be ascertained that the historical, human 
 person of Jesus stood clearly before the spir- 
 itual eye of Paul. It has been tried to 
 enhance this proof by this, that one imagined 
 to be able to show in the Pauline Epistles the 
 traces of the use of an evangelical tradition 
 already fixed in writing. I cannot consider 
 this effort as successful. Paul knew the gos- 
 pel matter from oral teaching; but his 
 knowledge of it was more comprehensive 
 than appears from a superficial considera- 
 tion. 
 
 New phenomena produce new ideas. Paul 
 employed the term agape, love, to designate 
 the love which only became real in Chris- 
 tianity. The Old Testament indeed knows 
 God's loving disposition toward his cove- 
 nant-people and the demand of man's love 
 for God emanating from it, but not however 
 the personal loving union between God and 
 man, which the experience of salvation in- 
 volves. The spirit of the Greeks knows it 
 not, can know it still less than the Old Tes- 
 tament, much as Plato has deepened the idea 
 of love in the ''Banquet" in the beautiful 
 myth of Eros the son of poverty and of 
 
32 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 riches. Paul, and after him John, comprised 
 in this word what to them was the deepest 
 experience of the Christian state. The apos- 
 tle feels himself apprehended by such an 
 overwhelming love of God in Christ that he 
 feels himself "constrained" by it (2 Cor. 5. 
 14); the meaning is: that he cannot rid 
 himself of the power of this experience; it 
 gives him his life's direction : "Love, I give 
 myself to thee, thine forever, ever thine to 
 be" (Gal. 2. 20). The love of God is shed 
 abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost which 
 is given unto him (Rom. 5. 5). From this 
 love no earthly and no angelic power can 
 separate him (Rom. 8. 35). 
 
 In these and similar statements of Paul 
 the love of Christ and of God in the death 
 of Christ, stands in the foreground of his 
 reflection. The love of Christ as shown in his 
 life is not precluded. On the contrary, this 
 latter has also encircled the heart of the apos- 
 tle. In Ephesians 4. 32 — 5. 2, where Paul en- 
 joins the commandment of love, the elements 
 of the evangelical preaching are clearly his 
 basis. Between the two chapters in which 
 the apostle instructs the Corinthians on the 
 value of the spiritual gifts, we read in the 
 
Elements of Pauline Chrlstology 33 
 
 first Epistle to the Corinthians a chapter 
 which we generally call the Song of Songs 
 of love; it is the thirteenth. It is rather 
 out of the connection because in the whole 
 chapter nothing is said of "love"; and 
 yet the apostle introduces it in a special man- 
 ner. He just said that not all have the same 
 gifts, not all can be apostles, prophets, teach- 
 ers, etc., and then enjoins : "but covet earn- 
 estly the best gifts." But he interrupts him- 
 self and goes on — "and yet shew I unto you 
 a more excellent way," and now he begins 
 that praise of love which has not its equal 
 in the entire literature of the world. Whence 
 did he derive the tunes which touch our 
 heart like the music of the spheres ? Behind 
 everything that he says stands the historical 
 form of the great Son of man. The first 
 verses already contain numerous allusions to 
 words of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels ; then 
 he goes on : "Charity suffereth long, and is 
 kind; charity envieth not, charity vaunteth 
 not itself, is not puffed up ; doth not behave 
 itself unseemly ; seeketh not her own, is not 
 easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth 
 not in Iniquity, but rejoiceth In the truth; 
 beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth 
 
34 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 all things, endureth all things." In every 
 feature we see as a model the life of Jesus. 
 There is no other model for such a descrip- 
 tion; for this charity did not exist in the 
 world before, nor contemporaneously with, 
 Jesus. And when Paul closes the chapter 
 with the words: "And now abideth faith, 
 hope, charity, these three; but the greatest 
 of these is charity," we look again into- the 
 deepest life-experience, the deepest Christ- 
 experience, and the deepest God-experience 
 which he had. Since Christ's appearance in 
 the world, we know that charity is the primi- 
 tive force of God, destined to permeate and 
 to fill the whole world. 
 
 From the proof of love In the life of Christ 
 the apostle derived directly also certain moral 
 principles and supreme maxims (Rom. 15. 
 2 sq. ; Phil. 2. 4 sqq. ; i Cor. 10. 33; 11. i; 
 Phil. 2. 20 sq. ; Gal. 6. 2). 
 
 An important feature in the picture which 
 the apostle had in his heart of the earthly 
 work of Christ, is that of suffering. By this 
 is not meant the Atoning death which Paul 
 certainly also appreciated In Its ethical im- 
 portance, but the fact that In following 
 Christ the thought of suffering was embodied 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 35 
 
 in the Pauline Christianity as an inalienable 
 momentum of the ideal of life. We find this 
 thought with Paul not only in the original 
 phrase, that this suffering is a suffering of 
 Christ himself, or on behalf of Christ, but 
 he clearly also refers in the descriptions of 
 his apostolic sufferings to the pattern of 
 Jesus. Thus i Cor. 4. 8-13, where he pre- 
 sents the commandments of the Sermon on 
 the Mount, to endure persecutions (Matt. 
 5. II, 12), and to bless those that curse 
 (Luke 6. 28), as being fulfilled in his apos- 
 tolic life, and where some other materials 
 from the evangelic tradition are, in his mind, 
 as types. The Lord would not have re- 
 proached Paul with : "thou mindest not the 
 things which are of God, but of men." The 
 precepts which Jesus gave to his disciples 
 after the Messiah-confession near Csesarea 
 Philippi with reference to the sufferings 
 which should follow and what he himself 
 showed in his life, Paul has rightly appre- 
 hended and presented in his life ; and of this 
 element of the Christian life-ideal it may 
 also be said what we said of love, Jesus was 
 the first who taught us to know suffering 
 in its full ethical importance. Like his Mas- 
 
36 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 ter, Paul connects most intimately the obe- 
 dience of suffering with the certainty of vic- 
 tory and the grandeur of glorification. Im- 
 potency and weakness, sufferings and humili- 
 ations are the lot of the Christian, for Christ 
 also was crucified through weakness (2 Cor. 
 13. 4), and yet, what glorious confidence of 
 victory fills the apostle! The power of 
 Christ, who was the same at the time of 
 earthly humiliation and heavenly exaltation, 
 fills him; he knows that it will also lead 
 him to the goal. That the Christian must 
 rejoice in suffering and persecution, the apos- 
 tle shows in the First Epistle to the Thessa- 
 lonlans and especially in the Epistle to the 
 Philippians; hence it is certainly an after- 
 effort of the earthly work of Christ when 
 Paul (i Thess. 5. 16-18) finds the ideal of 
 the Christian life in this, to preserve joyful- 
 ness in all conditions of life ; to always have 
 a prayerful frame of mind and thus have 
 cause to thank God in every station of life; 
 for he says: "This is the will of God in 
 Christ Jesus concerning you." Just this will 
 of God which has become manifest in the life 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 According to 2 Thess. 3. 5, w^e also find 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 2)7 
 
 in Christ^s life the Christian virtue of pa- 
 tience, the rehgious manifestation of power, 
 the perseverance which results from the con- 
 sciousness of overcoming the world. The 
 apostle knows that Christ in his earthly life 
 was meek, gentle and friendly, and he feels 
 the implicit obligation to apply himself to the 
 like mind in following his Lord (2 Cor. 
 
 10. i). 
 
 Paul wishes to be considered by his con- 
 gregations as a model of moral conduct ( i 
 Thess. 2. 10; 2 Thess. 3. 7, 9; Phil. 3. 17). 
 He knows the deep effect and the conquering 
 power of love devoted to the service of his 
 fellow man. He knows that this is the surest 
 proof of the divine truth of Christianity; 
 hence, he also says (i Thess. i. 6; i Cor. 
 
 11. i) that in this he only follows Christ. 
 How was this possible unless he had a very 
 concrete picture of the earthly work of Jesus ? 
 Also the description of his apostolic office 
 (2 Cor. 6) is only an image of the earthly 
 work of Jesus. From himself or from reli- 
 gious abstractions Paul had found neither 
 this ideal nor the power of its realization. 
 
 The character of the entire life of Jesus 
 impressed Paul as Christian, as being divine. 
 
38 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 not as Pharisee, for this life-ideal is different 
 from that of Pharisaism. And how before 
 his conversion could he have been able to 
 see in the life of Jesus a divine nature since 
 the surest principle of his religious thinking 
 was that of the divinity of the Jewish law, 
 and he could not think of considering its 
 Pharisaic conception as ungodly, as Jesus 
 did. But when Paul, as Christian, wishes to 
 educate his congregations for a truly godly 
 character, he points to the model, Christ. 
 Very beautifully is this done (i Thess. 4. 
 1-3, 7). The object of the Christian state 
 is holiness, the opposite of uncleanness ; for 
 this God has called, who himself is holy. To 
 such character Paul exhorts them *'by the 
 Lord Jesus" ; he gave them commandments 
 "by the Lord Jesus." It would mean much 
 too little should one think here only of the 
 teaching of Jesus, perhaps of the Sermon on 
 the Mount. "To exhort by the Lord Jesus" 
 means, to exhort from the life-communion 
 with Jesus, and the commandments which 
 Paul gave through the agency of the Lord 
 Jesus are such, which in the person of Jesus 
 had been a living reality. The same refers to 
 the "tradition which ye received of us" (2 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 39 
 
 Thess. ^. 6;2. 15). These are the evangelic 
 traditions and the moral injunctions result- 
 ing therefrom. In Jesus the apostle met with 
 divine perfection and divine holiness; for 
 says he, in another place — not under the 
 influence of the Jewish Messianic dogmatics, 
 but under the impression of his new creation 
 through the historical Christ — that Jesus 
 knew no sin (2 Cor. 5. 21). We notice in 
 the sublime picture of Christ which lived in 
 the apostle, that a full share belongs also to 
 the humanity of Christ. The religious con- 
 viction of Paul of the divinity of Christ, rests 
 also on the life of the earthly Jesus. 
 
 All the different constituent parts men- 
 tioned before, Paul gathered up in a uniform 
 picture of Christ. The coloring of the de- 
 scriptions of the second coming is for the 
 most part borrowed from the apocalyptics, in 
 a lesser degree it refers back to Jesus him- 
 self. The Davidic sonship of Jesus is for 
 Paul, as well as for the Judaism of his time, 
 a postulate of the Messianic dogmatics. The 
 comprehension of Christ as the last Adam 
 betrays the Jewish scheme of thought ; Alex- 
 andrian typology Is found in this that he sees 
 the preexistent Christ in the spiritual work 
 
40 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 which followed in the wilderness. Analogies 
 in the religious ideas of his time induced 
 him to consider Christ as the mediator of 
 reconciliation, also of the entire cosmos, as 
 the power which is destined to permeate all 
 beings, be they in heaven, on earth or under 
 the earth. The conception also of Christ as 
 being preexistent with God before his ap- 
 pearance on earth, has certain analogies in 
 ancient contemporaneous thinking. 
 
 In later Jewish theology the idea of the 
 heavenly preexistence of the Messiah is not 
 unknown, but it plays no particular part. It 
 meets us in the allegories of the Book of 
 Enoch and the apocalypse of Ezra, and then 
 again in the appendix to the Pesitka Rabbati, 
 in the seventh or eighth century. In Enoch 
 and in 4 Ezra, the Messiah as "Son of Man" 
 is preexistent. The name of the Son of man 
 is mentioned before the Lord of the Spirits, 
 ere the sun and the signs of the zodiac were 
 made (Enoch 48. 3). Since the idea of the 
 Son of man was of little importance for 
 Paul, he can hardly have been influenced 
 therewith. 
 
 The Synoptic Gospels contain no state- 
 ments of Jesus concerning his preexistence, 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 41 
 
 but in the Gospel of John ; words Hke "Before 
 Abraham was, I am" (John 8. 58) cannot be 
 invented. Jesus must have said this ; but we 
 cannot prove that Paul referred to self-testi- 
 monies of Christ concerning his preexist- 
 ence. 
 
 Also the following reflection cannot be 
 proved from Paul: the Christian who ex- 
 perienced the divinity of Christ must con- 
 clude that this Christ is radically different 
 from us, and did not first begin to exist as 
 man. If he is of divine nature, he existed 
 ere he became man. One does not become 
 a God, one is God, or is not God. 
 
 But as Son of God Christ was preexistent, 
 for he came down from heaven and ascended 
 again. This idea may in our days be con- 
 sidered as a myth ; indeed with higher con- 
 tents than the known myths of the Greek and 
 Oriental sons of the gods ; but one finds that 
 it must be positively judged after the anal- 
 ogy of the narratives. Paul is said to owe 
 in good part the success of his Christian 
 preaching in the Grseco-Roman world to the 
 circumstance that he proclaimed Christ in a 
 manner intelligible also to the Greeks as the 
 Son of God. 
 
42 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 The formal analogy with Greek and Ori- 
 ental myths can be denied as little as the 
 dependence of Paul on ancient cosmology 
 which appears in this idea. But Paul him- 
 self would have been the first to resist being 
 put under this scheme of contemplation with 
 his doctrine of the divine Sonship of Jesus. 
 He himself would have pointed out the 
 fundamental difference that there we have 
 embodiments" of human thoughts and wants ; 
 whereas God himself came to men in his Son 
 Christ, and manifested himself to them. In 
 all passages in which Paul speaks of Christ 
 as the Son of God, even where reference is 
 made to preexistence, the emphasis rests on 
 the carrying out of God's work of salvation 
 by this his Son, on the historical agency of 
 the earthly Christ, who was afterward ex- 
 alted to God. 
 
 For this reason the Pauline understanding 
 of Jesus, the Son of God, refers in the main 
 to Jesus's own conception of his divine Son- 
 ship, as it can be elicited from the Synoptic 
 Gospels, especially Matt. ii. 2j\ Luke lo. 
 22 ; only that Paul put a theological dress on 
 that which was with Jesus an immediate 
 consciousness. 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 43 
 
 The ancient cosmology of a spatial heaven 
 stretching over the earth we have no more, 
 but we also lift our eyes upward to God, 
 from whom comes our help, and sing of 
 Christ : 
 
 "Thou hast taken thy course earthward 
 And gone again heavenward." 
 
 Even the modern man can do no other 
 than seek God in Christ, this Christ of his- 
 tory who is in heaven above us. 
 
 On the other hand, under the influence of 
 contemporary philosophical and religious 
 thoughts of Christ as Creator of the world, 
 this understanding is not based on the world 
 of salvation of Christ, but it was natural in 
 comparison with definitions of the world, like 
 the Philonean or Gnostic-Oriental specula- 
 tions, in which such mediators between God 
 and the world were pushed in, to assign 
 Christ a parallel position. In such state- 
 ments Paul goes indeed beyond the line of 
 primitive Christian preaching. In that, how- 
 ever, as concerns the description of the work 
 of salvation and power of Christ, the differ- 
 ence between Paul and the older apostles con- 
 sists in this, that Paul brings out more vivid- 
 
44 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 ly what already existed in reality, or, that the 
 personal Christ experience of the apostle 
 Paul was larger every way and more intense 
 than that of Christians before him. 
 
 In the experience of salvation founded on 
 the person of Christ, the apostle comprised 
 also certain theological, doctrinal views, the 
 most important of which we now must brief- 
 ly sketch. They relate to the doctrines of 
 redemption, reconciliation, and justification 
 by faith. If they concerned only the per- 
 sonal experience of the apostle in his conver- 
 sion, the heavenly Christ, who drew the 
 apostle into his communion and endowed 
 him with his Spirit, Christ who rose again 
 would be the cardinal point of PauFs theol- 
 ogy, but, as a Jew, the apostle stood within 
 a history of divine revelation. He believed 
 in a God who manifests himself in the world ; 
 whose will must be known from his historical 
 deeds. The Messiah on the cross was a blas- 
 phemous idea to Paul, the Jew, but when he 
 perceived that the Son of God did indeed die 
 on the cross, he could only see in this a new, 
 indeed an unheard of, revealing act of God. 
 Hence the cross of Christ became the decisive 
 historical manifestation of God in his the- 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 45 
 
 ological thinking. In his theology the two 
 by no means homogeneous principal facts of 
 the salvation-work of Christ, the death on 
 the cross and the resurrection, interlaced in 
 a wonderful manner. 
 
 redemption 
 
 For a successful theological understanding 
 of Paul we must take a retrograde way in 
 the real doctrine of redemption as well as in 
 the Christology, starting from his Christian 
 experience. One must free himself from the 
 method of dogmatics which still rule the 
 statements of Paulinism: bondage of sin, 
 redemption, freedom. From the act of God 
 alone in giving his Son to the cross, Paul 
 fully perceived the guilt of humanity before 
 God. He perceived this also because he felt 
 himself transferred by Christ into the new 
 sphere of freedom, divine adoption, and a 
 life filled with the Spirit. Only as a new 
 man did he rightly understand his former 
 condition. The present experience of the 
 Christian is by no means different. No un- 
 redeemed man knows the depth of human 
 sin; he only knows who is renewed by 
 Christ. 
 
46 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 These thoughts come out strongest in 
 Rom. 8. I sqq. The keenness of the antago- 
 nism between flesh and spirit which runs 
 through the theology and anthropology of 
 Paul does not rest on a dualistic philosophy, 
 but it was thus formed by the life-experience 
 of the apostle and his Judaico-historical esti- 
 mate of the death of the flesh of the Messiah 
 on the cross. 
 
 The Son of God put on the same sinful 
 flesh as other humanity. As Messiah he is 
 the second Adam, the representative of entire 
 humanity. What happens to him is effica- 
 cious for the entire humanity standing be- 
 hind him. God, by making the bearer of the 
 sinful flesh die on the cross, delivered him 
 up as a sin-offering, and pronounced thereby 
 the sentence of destruction on the sinful flesh 
 of humanity. Now the Spirit rules in those 
 who belong to Christ. Through the power 
 of the Spirit the emotions of the flesh are 
 kept down. The Spirit dwelling in us will 
 sometime also be the power of our resurrec- 
 tion. That the real in the life of the indi- 
 vidual and of the churches remains far be- 
 hind this ideal by no means troubles the 
 apostle. Here we see the power of his divine 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 47 
 
 faith. God has acted in the death of the flesh 
 of Christ and shown whither his will tends. 
 This will he will carry out with sovereign 
 power. He planted the new life in Chris- 
 tians, who already feel that the transcendent 
 Spirit lives and works in them. How should 
 God leave unfinished the work which he 
 began ? 
 
 But this doctrine contains another, that of 
 the general absolute sinfulness of the human 
 soul. This also is not a result of philosophy 
 nor of a dualistic conception of the world. 
 A real dualism is for Paul not to be thought 
 of, considering the liveliness and depth of 
 his divine faith. He knows no second princi- 
 ple of the world which could seriously oppose 
 the power of God. The apostle frequently 
 even claims Satan as a power whose work is 
 included in God's government of the world 
 (i Cor. 5. 5; 2 Cor. 12. 7; i Thess. 2. 18). 
 Man when he came forth from the hand of 
 God was good. Sin is not in man as an 
 essential element of the flesh, but is a power 
 which subsequently entered history. Adam 
 brought it into the world and ever since it 
 has obtained sovereignty over the entire 
 human race. God received it into his plan 
 
48 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 of salvation. But he punished it by inflicting 
 death on Adam and the entire human race ; 
 but in the death of Christ he prepared salva- 
 tion which abolished the first sentence, and 
 through Christ he appointed life as the sove- 
 reign power over humanity (Rom. 5. 17 
 sqq. ) . Thus the effect of the death of Jesus 
 as the head of humanity and of his transition 
 to heavenly life is this, that before the bar 
 of God's judgment those also who belong to 
 Christ have suffered death and entered into 
 heavenly life (Eph. 2. 5 sq.). 
 
 Just as we were redeemed from the power 
 of the flesh, so are we also redeemed through 
 the death of Christ from the curse of the 
 law (Gal. 3. 13). In a vicarious manner 
 Christ, on the other hand, has offered him- 
 self for us. The Old Testament passage 
 (Deut. 21. 22 sq.) : "and if a man have com- 
 mitted a sin worthy of death, and he shall 
 be put to death, and thou hang him on a 
 tree, his body shall not remain all night upon 
 the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him 
 that day; for he that is hanged is accursed 
 of God/' he saw fulfilled in Christ. After 
 Christ hath borne for us the curse, this law 
 has no more any claim on us. We died 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 49 
 
 according to the sentence of the law and for 
 the law (Gal. 2. 19). Christ delivered us 
 also from the power of darkness (Col. i. 
 13) ; from this present evil world (Gal. i. 
 4) ; he spoiled the angelic powers in whose 
 power is the law (Col. 2. 15 ; Gal. 4. 3), that 
 ruled over this present world (i Cor. 2. 8) ; 
 but nowhere in these passages is there any 
 lack of the conviction that Christ, his Spirit, 
 his life, has now become powerful in us, or 
 that we are transferred into his kingdom. 
 
 From what has been said it follows that 
 redemption cannot be thought of as being 
 limited to Judaism. If the death of Christ 
 is conceived of as the fundamental destruc- 
 tion of the sinful flesh, humanity is the 
 object of redemption. The gospel is univer- 
 sal. But God's purpose of salvation is also 
 universal. God willed that the entire human- 
 ity, Jew and Gentile, should be saved, those 
 also who are still in unbelief (Rom. 11. 25 
 sqq. ; i Tim. 2. 4). In the end, nothing but 
 the will of God is to rule the world. This 
 thought also finds its application to the 
 angelic powers which according to Paul and 
 the notion of that time in general riile in the 
 world. These are already deprived of their 
 
50 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 • 
 
 power through Christ, as we have seen 
 above; their final overthrow is the task of 
 Christ at his second coming (i Cor. 15. 24 
 sq.). No anti-godly influence shall remain 
 in the cosmos. But if redemption concerns 
 the entire former territory of these powers, 
 nature also has a part in it. According to 
 Rom. 8. 19 sqq., irrational nature for Adam's 
 sake has through God become subject to the 
 curse of vanity, under which it groaneth and 
 travaileth in pain like man ; but it shall also 
 be delivered from this bondage to the glori- 
 ous liberty of the children of God. The 
 glory of God shall then be the nature of man, 
 of angels and of the creation. Thus the 
 Pauline doctrine of redemption, like the 
 Christology, ends with the central and uni- 
 versal significance of Christ. Christ, as the 
 Creator, is also the Redeemer of the univer- 
 sal cosmos. 
 
 RECONCILIATION 
 
 In various intricate relations with the doc- 
 trine of the redemption and parallel to it we 
 meet in Paul the conviction of reconciliation 
 effected through Christ. But this sphere of 
 ideas differs from that of the redemption in 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 51 
 
 this, that it overwhehningly characterizes the 
 work of God for man's salvation under a 
 special point of view, and suggests correct 
 principles of conduct, while in the doctrine 
 of redemption the feeling of deliverance 
 from an anti-godly state, that is, the human 
 side of the consideration, comes out more 
 strongly. Paul's theistic conception of the 
 world of Paul appears fully in the thought 
 of reconciliation. 
 
 According to our usage, reconciliation de- 
 notes the abolishment of an enmity existing 
 between persons or parties, an arrangement 
 by which both hitherto hostile parts agree 
 and a state of peace is brought about. This 
 idea cannot be applied, as a matter of course, 
 to the Pauline doctrine of reconciliation. 
 True, Paul speaks of God's wrath which 
 rests upon the pre- and extra-Christian 
 world, a world brought into the bondage of 
 sin and a life of vice with all abominations 
 resulting therefrom (Rom. i. 18 sqq., also i 
 Thess. 2. 16). Paul speaks of this wrath 
 in a sense that man before his reconciliation 
 is hated of God (Rom. 11. 28; 5. 10). Man 
 also shows enmity against God (Rom. 8. 7), 
 which is ever stirred up anew because of his 
 
52 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 inability to fulfill the law of commandments 
 (Eph. 2. 14, 15). If one followed up these 
 statements it would appear that the reconcili- 
 ation is a change in God as well as in men. 
 God would perhaps restrain his wrath on 
 account of the expiatory act of Christ which 
 satisfies him ; and on the part of men every- 
 thing would appear as being removed by the 
 death of Christ, everything that led them in 
 enmity against God : sin, law, flesh. 
 
 But this is not the thought of the apostle. 
 Paul does not consider Christ as the third 
 party, who mediates between two enemies 
 and makes peace. The reconciling work of 
 Christ is not something absolute, independ- 
 ent of God, to which God had to submit after 
 it had been done. And just as little does 
 Paul consider humanity as an equally entitled 
 party, beside God, who had the liberty of 
 taking a friendly or hostile attitude toward 
 God. In the Pauline doctrine of reconcilia- 
 tion God acts entirely free; God, and he 
 alone, undertakes the work of reconciliation ; 
 it is he who sent Christ to bring about recon- 
 ciliation, and love toward the world is the 
 motive which moved him (Rom. 5. 8 sqq.). 
 The question cannot be of a change in God ; 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 53 
 
 that a wrathful God became gracious. But 
 God produced a relation between himself and 
 humanity in which he could show himself 
 merciful to them. On this account the term 
 "reconciliation" is inadequate, and like the 
 "wrath of God" expresses something anthro- 
 pathic. In PauFs ideas of reconciliation the 
 very eminence and free grace of God over 
 against the creature is beautifully expressed. 
 To be sure, God's attitude toward humani- 
 ty prior to reconciliation is different from 
 that after reconciliation. Before, God in his 
 long-suffering allowed transgressions to pass 
 on or he revealed his wrath because of 
 human sin. As a righteous God, who must 
 hate and punish sin as an anti-godly thing, 
 this attitude toward humanity was not final. 
 In the death of Christ, in making him to be 
 sin for us, who knew no sin (2 Cor. 5. 21), 
 God showed that he had destroyed sin in 
 Christ. Therefore on this account the cross 
 of Christ stood visibly and publicly as the 
 means of propitiation established by God for 
 humanity (Rom. 3. 25). God's judicial 
 righteousness was satisfied by the death of 
 Christ. In his Son he showed that the moral 
 constitution of the world must be satisfied; 
 
54 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 but the Son of God did not succumb in this 
 judgment, he came forth victor. Whoever, 
 with reference to this divine judgment itself, 
 now feels himself subject to like sentence, 
 unto him God for Christ's sake counts not 
 sin; but regards him as if he died with 
 Christ the death of sinners. 
 
 The apostolic office is, therefore, called the 
 "ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5. 18). 
 To humanity the call is issued "to be recon- 
 ciled to God/' that is, to accept what God 
 offers and to enter into a state of peace with 
 God. Humanity has nothing else to do than 
 to submit to this new order of God; and 
 where this is the case there is peace between 
 God and humanity (Rom. 5. 10, 11). Be- 
 fore God man stands holy, unblamable, un- 
 reprovable (Col. i. 22), and is in possession 
 of the sure expectancy of the completion of 
 salvation in the life to come (Rom. 5. 11). 
 
 The range of the work of reconciliation is 
 as luiiversally conceived of by the apostle as 
 that of redemption, because reconciliation 
 also rests on the blessing of the death of 
 Christ. In Christ God reconciled "the 
 world" unto himself (2 Cor. 5. 19). The 
 heathen, like the Jews, have part in the 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 55 
 
 reconciling work of Christ who, in his own 
 body, reconciled both parts of humanity on 
 the cross ; made them a new humanity and 
 in one Spirit obtained for them access to 
 God (Eph. 2. 14 sqq.). In like manner also 
 the angelic powers, standing behind all earth- 
 ly things, ruling the cosmos, are reconciled 
 through the blood of the cross of Christ. 
 Peace has been made in heaven as well as 
 upon earth (Col. i. 20). 
 
 JUSTIFICATION AND FAITH 
 
 Under the influence of the Lutheran 
 Reformation Paul's doctrine of justification 
 is still considered as the real coinage of the 
 Pauline doctrine of salvation. The being 
 "justified by faith only," personal experi- 
 ence, the war-cry and victorious banner of 
 Luther fighting against Roman perversion 
 of the gospel, is regarded as the preaching 
 by which Paul also subdued the world of 
 his time for Christianity. And yet the idea 
 of justification is only one of the different 
 forms in which the Christian faith of the 
 apostle clothed itself. In so far as justifica- 
 tion concerns an act of God, the doctrine is 
 parallel to reconciliation, redemption, salva- 
 
56 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 tion. As far as the religious experience of 
 man is considered, the same content is found 
 in forgiveness of sin, reception of life, regen- 
 eration, divine adoption. But as little as in 
 the alleged parallels shall we find a real 
 systematic doctrine in the thought of justi- 
 fication as taught by Paul. We shall soon 
 see that this sphere of ideas of Paul does 
 not contain firmly united, systematically 
 arranged, thought-connections. There is 
 rather a loose construction of religious 
 thoughts which are applied once this way, 
 then another way; then joined to already 
 given ideas and finally leading to a recast, 
 yea, to a breaking up of the old material. 
 Only in an accomodatiye way can one speak 
 of a doctrine of justification by Paul. 
 
 The proposition of justification by faith 
 was formed by Paul in polemics. It is the 
 Christian antithesis to the Jewish perversion 
 of the fundamental relation of a man to God. 
 In no other proposition does the fundamen- 
 tal difference of Christianity and Judaism be- 
 come so significantly obvious as in the asser- 
 tion that man is justified by faith and not 
 by works. Since Luther had to oppose a like 
 perversion of religion in theCatholic Church, 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 57 
 
 he put this PauHne proposition in the center 
 of his teaching and made it the material-prin- 
 ciple of Protestantism. 
 
 The Greek term for our "to justify" be- 
 longs not alone to biblical language ; it de- 
 notes generally "to judge favorably/' "to 
 deem righteous," "to treat as righteous," and 
 this IS in consequence of a formal examina- 
 tion or judicial decision. In the Old Testa- 
 ment and post-canonical Judaism, this word 
 is referred to the religious sphere of life, and 
 generally denotes the sentence which God 
 passes in the Messianic final term, or at the 
 close, or, also in the course of life, upon man 
 and his acts. Justification expresses, then, 
 the acknowledgment of actual righteousness, 
 whether it be perfect or not. The Jew, he 
 who belongs to the covenant-people, who in 
 the main has done what God required of him, 
 may expect from God a verdict of justifica- 
 tion. Solomon prayed (i Kings 8. 32, 
 LXX) : "Judge thy people Israel, that the 
 wicked be declared wicked, and justifying 
 the righteous, to give him according to his 
 righteousness." In this sense of acknowl- 
 edging the actual righteousness of man 
 through God, occurs the term "to justify" 
 
58 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 (Jas. 2. 21, 24, 25)', which represents the 
 Jewish doctrine of justification, also by Paul, 
 Rom. 2. 13; 3. 20; Gal. 2. 16; also i Tim. 
 3. 16. 
 
 But the Judaism of that time no longer 
 stood on the height of belief in the gracious 
 God as he appears in the Prophets and in 
 the Psalms, ready to forgive sins and to 
 cover up guilt. Judaism understood the rela- 
 tion of man to God as a mutual covenant- 
 relation from a judicial point of view. God 
 gave his people the law and ritual, now it 
 depended on man whether he would live 
 according to the ordinances of God or not. 
 God, it was thought, kept an account of every 
 man according to the state of the debit and 
 credit we should expect in the course of life, 
 and at its close God gave his decree which 
 would either condemn man or reward his 
 righteousness. 
 
 Here Paul stepped in with a new under- 
 standing of justification. This view ren- 
 dered to God what belonged to him ; directed 
 man to perfect subordination under God; 
 excluded every wrong relation of religion 
 and morality, and delivered man from the 
 torment of perpetual uncertainty of salva- 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 59 
 
 tion. Paul, too, uses the term "to justify" in 
 a forensic sense, that is, it is borrowed from 
 legal language. He also conceives it as the 
 principal concern of the godly to obtain 
 the justifying judgment of God; but in 
 harshest opposition to Jewish legal views, to 
 all human legal practice, even against God's 
 own legal rules — "keep thee far from a false 
 matter; and the innocent and righteous stay 
 not, for I will not justify the wicked" (Exod. 
 2^. 7) — Paul demands belief in God who 
 justifieth the ungodly (Rom. 4. 5). This 
 demand stands in connection with the new 
 idea of righteousness which Paul obtained as 
 a Christian. For it must be insisted that 
 the Greek expression "to justify" is not con- 
 nected with right but with righteousness, and 
 "to declare as righteous" denotes "to judge 
 as righteous." But the fact also exists, that 
 Paul put into that term its opposite; and 
 thus cancelled the original idea. 
 
 Paul had to learn that aspiration after 
 one's own righteousness is vain, and that 
 man must receive everything, even his right- 
 eousness, from God. His particular under- 
 standing of justification is also traced back 
 to his experience before Damascus. When 
 
6o St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 this is imderstood the exaggerations of the 
 eschatological conception of justification 
 which one must read again and again in bib- 
 lical theologies and dissertations on justifica- 
 tion fall to pieces. But the statistical record 
 of his statements should teach something bet- 
 ter. Paul speaks of future justification, set- 
 ting aside those passages in which he moves 
 on the ground of the Jewish doctrine of justi- 
 fication, in Gal. 5. 4-6; Rom. 3. 30, and 4. 
 24; 5. 19 ; I Cor. 4. 4 sq. ; but of the present 
 already: Gal. 2. 16, 17; 3. 8, 24; Rom. 3. 24, 
 26, 28 ; 4. 5 ; 8. 33 ; and even in the past the 
 apostle imagines it as having taken place: 
 I Cor. 6. II ; Rom. 5. i, 9; also 8. 30. The 
 ministry of the New Covenant is the minis- 
 try of righteousness (2 Cor. 3. 9), that is, a 
 ministry which works and diffuses righteous- 
 ness in the present. The righteousness of 
 God which works faith and comes from faith 
 is a revealed one (Rom. i. 17; 3. 21) ; it is 
 a reality in the world ; the Christian preach- 
 ing makes it indigenous in humanity and 
 accessible for all (i Cor. i. 30; 2 Cor. 5. 21 ; 
 Rom. 5. 17; 10. 4 sqq., 10). 
 
 In the doctrine of justification as in other 
 spheres of the Pauline conception of salva- 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 6i 
 
 tion, the eschatological mode of considera- 
 tion is of unmistakable importance, because 
 Paul expects the full enjoyment of salvation 
 only in the future. But that which gives the 
 peculiar stamp to his preaching is here not 
 eschatology but the consciousness of enjoy- 
 ing blessedness already in the present; the 
 overwhelming feeling of happiness in being 
 already free from judgment and of experi- 
 encing God's justification. God called him, 
 the worker, to the kingdom of his Son. This 
 took place not because Paul, as a pious Jew, 
 took the law of God as the guide of his life, 
 but in stern opposition to his legal endeavor. 
 For this life-experience the Pauline antithe- 
 sis is already explained as "not by works of 
 the law." Paul had to assert this with all 
 emphasis when the gospel of grace which he 
 preached was opposed, and one demanded 
 as a second principle of salvation the doing 
 of the law in the name of Christianity in 
 addition to the grace of God. With all em- 
 phasis and without yielding the breadth of a 
 finger, Paul maintains here the proposition 
 against Judaism and Jewish Christianity: 
 "we are justified freely by the grace of God" 
 (Rom. 3. 24; Titus 3. 7). 
 
62 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 To the question: Whence comes man's 
 righteousness? Paul has only one answer: 
 From God! He is righteous to whom God 
 gives his righteousness. This righteousness 
 in general cannot be obtained in any other 
 way than by God himself, by passing his sen- 
 tence on man : I regard thee as righteous. 
 
 Without any secondary qualification, Paul 
 can trace the entire course of human salva- 
 tion to the act of God : "For whom he did 
 foreknow, he also did predestinate to be con- 
 formed to the image of his Son, that he 
 might be the firstborn among many brethren. 
 Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them 
 he also called : and whom he called, them he 
 also justified : and whom he justified, them 
 he also glorified'' (Rom. 8. 29, 30). All 
 these divisions lie in the part God has ren- 
 dered them. His counsel in favor of glorify- 
 ing humanity is unchangeable; thus every- 
 thing, though not yet fulfilled in reality, is 
 absolutely certain. God's salvation-decree 
 entered into historical manifestation which 
 includes the justification of man, in Christ, 
 his Son. God made him to be sin that we 
 might be made the righteousness of God in 
 him (2 Cor. 5. 21). Here the question is 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 63 
 
 not of a doing of men ; God alone acts. In 
 the death on the cross he put the whole 
 human sin on his Son, that as judge he could 
 transfer to us his own righteousness which 
 was incarnated in his Son ; and we, who for- 
 merly were all sin, now wholly become in 
 Christ the righteousness of God. In like 
 manner the apostle speaks (Rom. 5. 16, 18) 
 of the bringing about of God's purpose of 
 salvation in humanity, without assigning any 
 part to man in the realization. Over against 
 God's sentence of condemnation on entire 
 humanity because of the transgression of the 
 one, stands the sentence of justification 
 which leads to life, after the second head of 
 humanity has rendered the decisive act of 
 obedience on the cross. According to Rom. 
 5. 9, men are now being justified in like man- 
 ner **by the blood" of Christ, that is, in con- 
 sequence of the expiatory death of Christ, 
 God passed the decree of righteousness on 
 humanity. The strange phrase, Rom 4. 25 : 
 Christ "was raised again for our justifica- 
 tion" means nothing else. The raising again 
 of Christ IS presented as a consequence of 
 God's sentence of acquittal and justification 
 on men because of the atoning work of 
 
64 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 Christ. Finally the death and raising again 
 of Jesus (Rom. 8. 33) are also a cause of 
 God's justification on humanity conceived of 
 as lasting ; and here also we read nothing of 
 man's attitude. 
 
 From the passages referred to we obtain 
 the qualification of justification. This takes 
 place *'in Christ" (2 Cor. 5. 21), and "by 
 his blood" (Rom. 5. 9) ; according to Gal. 
 2. 17, it is also the effort of the Christian to 
 be justified *'by Christ" ; for those who live 
 in Christ Jesus need fear no condemnation 
 (Rom. 8. i). The justification of man takes 
 place "in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ 
 and by the Spirit of our God" (i Cor. 6. 
 11) ; and in i Cor. i. 30 Christ himself is 
 called our righteousness. As the basis of 
 God's justifixation, Paul mentions once the 
 sacrificial work of Christ, oftener however 
 the fact of being in Christ. The being in 
 Christ he puts in opposition (Gal. 5. 4; 3. 
 1 1 ) to the power of the law. He evidently 
 means that justification takes place every- 
 where, where Christ is with his power, his 
 work, his life. 
 
 It means nothing else when Paul speaks 
 of "justification by faith" (Gal. 2. t6; 3. 8, 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 65 
 
 24; Rom. 3. 30; 5. i) ; or "by faith" (Rom. 
 3. 30; Gal. 2. 16) ; or, "in virtue of faith" 
 (Rom. 3. 28). Faith has with Paul various 
 modifications of meaning, but he puts the 
 most pregnant meaning into this idea where 
 he makes it the content of his Christian ex- 
 perience of salvation. This idea of faith is 
 found everywhere, where Paul puts justifica- 
 tion in reference to faith. There faith is a 
 joining together of man with Christ in an 
 indissoluble unit. One would say much too 
 little should he take this Pauline salvation- 
 belief as a personal disposition, as confidence 
 or trust. No, it is the apprehension of and 
 the adhering to Christ with all that he has 
 included in his gifts of salvation. It is such 
 a close union of man with Christ that he 
 can no more be thought of as being separated 
 from him. Where man is, there also is 
 Christ. When God regards and judges the 
 believing man, it is as if Christ were in- 
 cluded also. 
 
 With justification the whole of salvation 
 is given to sinful man: Hence justification 
 enters into an inner relation to other ideas 
 in which Paul also presents the thought of 
 redemption. Justification and reconciliation 
 
66 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 stand parallel (Rom. 5. 9 sqq.), and assure 
 safe redemption. Paul can well say: "he 
 who is justified, shall be saved"; as also: 
 "he who is reconciled, shall be saved." Sal- 
 vation, however, he explains as an entrance 
 into the life of God (Titus 3. 5, 7). The 
 divine acts of saving and justifying are 
 identical, they are an emanation of the grace 
 of God and have for their end that we be- 
 come heirs of God and obtain the hope of 
 eternal life. According to 2 Cor. 5. 20 sq., 
 man who, in the death of Christ, accepts the 
 offered reconciliation, receives the righteous- 
 ness of God in life-communion with Christ. 
 In Rom. 10. 9 sq. the ideas of justification 
 and salvation promiscuously change. The 
 gospel brings salvation to every believer be- 
 cause the righteousness of God is revealed in 
 him (Rom. i. 16, 17). The idea of redemp- 
 tion is also connected (Rom. 3. 24) with 
 justification ; justification takes place through 
 the mediation of the redemption existing in 
 Christ. 
 
 The justification of man consists in the 
 forgiveness of sins. In a classical manner 
 Paul demonstrated this (Rom. 4. 5 sqq.). 
 Unto the man who relies not on works but 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology dy 
 
 believes in God, who justifies the wicked, 
 this beHef is imputed as righteousness. This 
 declaration the apostle corroborates by an 
 Old Testament quotation from Psa. 32. 1,2: 
 "Blessed is he whose transgression is for- 
 given, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the 
 man unto whom the Lord imputeth not 
 iniquity." From this quotation Paul infers 
 that God imputeth righteousness unto him 
 who is thus pronounced as blessed. The for- 
 giveness of sins is accordingly not only 
 something negative but it includes also the 
 imputation of the positive saving effect of 
 righteousness. But righteousness stands for 
 the apostle in just as inseparable a relation 
 to "life," that is, to divine life, as sin does 
 to death (Rom. 5. 12 sqq.). Where right- 
 eousness is, there also is life and blessed- 
 ness. The ministration of the New Testa- 
 ment is called (2 Cor. 3. 9) the ministry of 
 righteousness; in the preceding verse the 
 ministration of the Spirit; but according to 
 verse 6, the Spirit giveth life. Thus : where 
 righteousness is, there is Spirit ; where Spirit 
 is, life is. In Col. 2. 13 also, the apostle has 
 perceived the giving of life to Christians in 
 communion with Christ in this, that God 
 
68 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 has forgiven them all transgression and blot- 
 ted out the handwriting of ordinances that 
 were against them. In i Cor. 15. 54-57 the 
 apostle rejoices that with the removal of sin 
 through Jesus Christ, that is, in God's 
 declaration of justification resting on the 
 death of Christ, victory over death and life 
 immortal has been given to humanity. In 
 Gal. 3. 8 sqq. the fundamental thought of the 
 discussion is this, that in justification the 
 entire blessing is included ; hence the apostle 
 puts also baptism, the act of incorporating 
 the believer into the Christian Church, in 
 inner relation to justification. In i Cor. 6. 
 II, he adds in a parallel that the Christians 
 were washed, that is, that they were bap- 
 tized; that they were sanctified, and justi- 
 fied; accordingly, baptism, sanctification, 
 and justification appertain to one another. 
 Also the act of regeneration, that is, the 
 renewal of man by the Holy Spirit, Paul 
 identifies (Titus 3. 5-7) with the act of jus- 
 tification and conceives of both divine acts 
 as having taken place in baptism.^ 
 
 ^The author here interprets Paul in harmony with the 
 teaching of the Lutheran Church, but for a clear expo- 
 sition of the Apostolic teaching see Dr. Whedon's note on 
 Titus 3. 5-7 in Whedon's Commentary. — Editor. 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 69 
 
 Having shown the main thoughts of the 
 PauHne teaching of justification we may 
 now obtain a number of results for an esti- 
 mate of the CathoHc and evangeHcal con- 
 ception of justification, as "well as for ques- 
 tions which our present dogmatical science 
 connects with the doctrine of justification. 
 
 According to its nature, justification is 
 a declarative act of God. He declares he 
 regards man as righteous because of the 
 atoning death of Christ, which blotted out 
 the sin of humanity. Neither the Catholic 
 understanding as "infusion" of grace, nor 
 that of the so-called biblical school of Beck 
 as a communication of active righteousness, 
 can be considered as correct. Man who is 
 justified by God is rather still a sinner in the 
 sense of Paul, after this declaration has been 
 made. With a general intuition Luther 
 touched the view of the apostle when he 
 says in the vSmalcald articles (13), that God 
 "for the sake of Christ, our Mediator, will 
 consider and does consider us as wholly 
 righteous and holy. Though the sin in the 
 flesh has not yet entirely disappeared and is 
 dead, yet he will not avenge nor know it."^ 
 
 * See Miley, Systematic Theology. — Editor. 
 
70 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 The wrong understanding of Paul in the 
 CathoHc Church is connected with the un- 
 PauHne notion of faith which prevails there. 
 According to Roman Catholic teaching, 
 faith is the ground and condition of divine 
 justification. Faith appropriates righteous- 
 ness by that alone, that it is not confined to 
 knowledge but also fashions the will and 
 works fear of God's righteousness, hope in 
 his mercy, beginning of love, contrition and 
 repentance. Only when, by the grace of 
 God, faith becomes operative in the will does 
 it obtain, according to Catholic teaching, the 
 grace of justification. But by this notion 
 justification has been molded into a dog- 
 matic doctrine, which is not so with Paul. 
 What the apostle expresses in different man- 
 ner is squeezed into a fixed form ; and what 
 Paul understands by justifying faith, is 
 turned into its opposite, for faith becomes 
 again a work. 
 
 We have seen that Paul described justi- 
 fication as an act of God without considering 
 the conduct of man. He can put the sen- 
 tence of justification into the past, present 
 and future. He can connect it with baptism 
 and regeneration. He does not present quite 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 71 
 
 formally the relation of faith to justification. 
 Faith is for him a presupposition, a means ; 
 once also (Rom. 3. 28) ground of justifica- 
 tion. And yet it is a perversion of the true 
 meaning of the apostle to present faith as the 
 beginning of salvation. In his polemics 
 against Judaism he used that term "in vir- 
 tue of faith," which caused such a great 
 misconception. Paul means there also 
 nothing more than this, that where there 
 is faith, comes God's declaration of justifica- 
 tion, not where works are; but, of course, 
 not the faith which is an act of man — as 
 the Roman teaching describes it — but the 
 faith which is wrought by God in man and 
 constrains man to withdraw wholly from 
 himself and to apprehend Christ, to put him 
 on, and thus appear well-pleasing before 
 God. When Paul once calls such faith the 
 ground of justification, the connection makes 
 it very clear how the apostle wishes to be 
 understood. 
 
 But the opinion that God is satisfied with 
 faith or good will as a lesser performance 
 instead of actual obedience, bitterly wrongs 
 the apostle. Saving faith for the apostle is 
 never a somewhat valuable performance, but 
 
72 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 is always the opposite of all performance. 
 It is connection with the person of Christ. 
 With this meaning also nothing is gained; 
 for the foundation of our salvation would 
 be yet a "work"; besides a "work" which 
 man could produce still less by his own 
 strength than by active obedience. 
 
 In pursuance of this understanding of jus- 
 tification by faith, according to the Pauline 
 view, it gains further importance as Luther 
 rightly apprehended and expressly asserted. 
 
 The justification of Paul contains more 
 than the mere declaration of God, that for 
 Christ's sake he regards the sinner as right- 
 eous. God laid our sins upon Christ that in 
 communion with Christ we might be made 
 the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5. 21). 
 This is not to be understood in the sense of 
 imputation only, but also as active righteous- 
 ness ; for a life-communion with Christ can 
 be interpreted in no other way than that it 
 is followed by a new existence and a corre- 
 sponding activity. When Paul says : "Christ 
 lives in us," he means Christ pervades us 
 with all his powers. When Paul (2 Cor. 3. 9) 
 calls the ministration of the New Covenant 
 the ministration of righteousness, active 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 73 
 
 righteousness is also included because this 
 ministration is conceived of as the ministra- 
 tion of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3. 6). Says Paul 
 (Rom. I. 17) that God's righteousness is 
 revealed in the gospel according to his own 
 words, it is the argument of the statement 
 that the gospel is the power of God; but 
 this is something active which replenishes 
 man. If Christ is called (i Cor. i. 30) "our 
 righteousness," a limitation to imputed right- 
 eousness is inadmissible. Even in Rom. 5.12 
 sqq. the contrast of the righteousness of 
 the second Adam and the sin of the first 
 Adam is suitable only when the righteous- 
 ness of Christ transferred to us is also con- 
 ceived of as active. 
 
 But this consideration finds also its con- 
 firmation from the idea of the Pauline be- 
 lief. For the pithy words of the Pauline 
 faith is this that in life communion with 
 Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth 
 anything, nor uncircumcision ; but faith 
 which worketh by love (Gal. 5. 6). Here 
 the Catholics, in order tO' maintain their 
 doctrine of justification, must translate the 
 Greek verb passively: "the faith, which by 
 love became efficient," whereas the respective 
 
74 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 verb is never used passively in the New Tes- 
 tament. Paul acknowledges here as the true 
 inner disposition of the Christian a faith 
 which shows his life's strength in works of 
 love. This faith, because it brings Christ 
 into our hearts, "kills the old Adam, makes 
 entirely new men and brings the Holy Spirit. 
 Faith is a living, active, busy, mighty thing, 
 that it is impossible not to do good without 
 ceasing" (Luther, in his Preface to the Epis- 
 tle to the Romans). 
 
 The idea of justification appears much 
 contrasted in the ancient church where re- 
 ception into the church was taken as a justi- 
 fication-act. True, it is Pauline to closely 
 connect baptism and justification, as well as 
 faith and baptism ; but the Pauline collective 
 view of justification is, as we have seen, 
 much richer. 
 
 On the other hand, Luther enlarged the 
 doctrine of justification in so far as he in- 
 cluded in it the daily forgiveness of sins. 
 Herein lies the correct thought that God's 
 declaration of justification is unchangeable 
 and is not confused by the daily sin of the 
 Christian ; but Paul himself has not drawn 
 this conclusion. True, he proves in the Epis- 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology 75 
 
 tie to the Galatians that with justification all 
 blessing is given (chapter 3. 8 sqq.), and 
 that aspiration after justification by the law 
 separates Christians from Christ (chapter 5. 
 4 sqq. ) . He therefore considers justification 
 as effectual for the whole life of the Chris- 
 tian; but he stated this not directly and 
 still less did he put forward daily forgiveness 
 of sins as given in justification. Where he 
 saw sin in the church he referred to God's 
 faithfulness, who will perform the work 
 which he hath once begun, and will also 
 strengthen the moral power (i Cor. i. 8, 9; 
 2 Thess. 3. 3-5 ; Phil. i. 6-1 1 ). Justification 
 is a declaration passed by God on man under 
 the view-point of eternity without regard to 
 the fluctuations of the Christian life. 
 
 Our present dogmatical science searches 
 into the psychological conditions under 
 which faith originates and grows. To the 
 problems which belong to it, belong also 
 how faith and justification are related to one 
 another. Every progress in the knowledge 
 of the psychological events of the religious 
 life IS certainly to be welcomed thankfully. 
 Such researches are necessary ; but we must 
 not forget the difference between our present 
 
76 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 reflection, our present dogmatical ideas, and 
 those teachings of the New Testament. One 
 should be careful not to torment the apostle 
 Paul with psychological queries for the solu- 
 tion of these problems. The question. When 
 and how, for what presuppositions and per- 
 sonal attitude does God's justification set in 
 over the individual ? Paul did not ask him- 
 self at all. The present justification of man 
 can be defined as the awakening of the belief 
 in acquittal at the final judgment. One may 
 say, that the fact of faith is somewhere in- 
 cluded in the justifying act of God, but in 
 this, modern dogmatical definitions rather 
 than the thoughts of Paul are given. The 
 apostle was no psychologist in the modern 
 sense. His interest was toward God and 
 objective salvation historically directed to 
 acts in which God clearly and perceptibly 
 speaks to humanity. Man is in the hand of 
 God like the clay in the hands of the potter. 
 Man has importance only in so far as he sub- 
 mits to the act of God and freely accepts 
 what will lead him to communion with God ; 
 but for this very reason we owe to the apostle 
 the masterly descriptions of the unredeemed 
 and redeemed man (Rom. 7. and 8.; Gal. 
 
Elements of Pauline Christology "jj 
 
 5. 16 sqq. ; Phil. 3. 4 sqq.)- What was in 
 him as a Christian and how this inner pos- 
 session reformed him and worked in him, he 
 represented in a manner overhelming to 
 the modern man. 
 
78 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 III 
 
 Jesus and Paul 
 
 I. Paul himself is the most public witness 
 for the fact that he stands not in a relation 
 of coordination but, at a far distance, in the 
 most absolute dependence on Jesus. Jesus 
 the Lord, Paul the servant. Jesus laid claim 
 to be the revelation of God to humanity, to 
 embody the will of God in humanity. The 
 prophets, as servants and instruments of 
 God, executed God's commands, but beyond 
 this, according to their inner quality, they 
 did not surpass mankind. Jesus, however, 
 according to his person and his nature, was 
 of a different kind than we sinful men. His 
 life and work can only be understood as a 
 phenomenon of divine life and of divine 
 essence. This the apostle learned in the 
 decisive hour in that crisis in his life before 
 Damascus. Ever after one object inspired 
 him : the reception of the life of Christ into 
 his own life; to be pervaded and tried by 
 the power of Christ till he himself became 
 nothing else than "Christ." 
 
Jesus and Paul 79 
 
 2. Hence Paul apprehends the demand of 
 Jesus, the Christian Hfe-ideal in full purity. 
 Yea, it may be said, that in the history of 
 the Christian Church there is none other who 
 so deeply and purely experienced the renew- 
 ing life-and-love power of Jesus as the apos- 
 tle Paul. Paul learned of Jesus that not the 
 assertion of one's ego, not one's righteous- 
 ness, not any other earthly good is the object 
 of the God-intended human effort, but min- 
 istering love, humility, unselfishness, obedi- 
 ence, receptivity to God's gifts — these are 
 the loftiest desires. "And now abideth faith, 
 hope, charity, these three; but the greatest 
 of these is charity." "The fruit of the Spirit 
 is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, 
 goodness, meekness, temperance." He who 
 coined these words and endeavored to realize 
 them in his life has rightly understood Jesus. 
 
 3. Jesus brought his message from God, 
 his heavenly Father, concerning the king- 
 dom of God in which God's will of love and 
 omnipotence should be perfected, concerning 
 the call of man to moral perfection in God, 
 concerning his task as the Son of man and 
 the Son of God, to remove the obstacles op- 
 posing the coming of the kingdom of God, 
 
8o St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 that he may become Head and King in this 
 kingdom. He did not do this in the form of 
 theological statements, but from the depth 
 of his united consciousness with God, almost 
 as from immediate view, unreflected, guided 
 by continuous divine revelation in his own 
 official work. True, he gathered disciples 
 around himself and tried to educate them for 
 the understanding of the revelation of the 
 divine will manifested in him ; but he organ- 
 ized them not as a congregation or church, 
 but left the seed to develop and form a body. 
 When after his death the apostles felt them- 
 selves commissioned to come forth with the 
 Christian preaching, that which was personal 
 life and immediate view in Jesus had to be 
 cast into the form of theological ideas and 
 statements ; a congregation had to be organ- 
 ized. In this work Paul had a considerable 
 share, since he was the greatest theologian 
 as well as the greatest organizer of the primi- 
 tive Christian Church. But it cannot fail 
 that, in such a coining of Christian doctrine 
 as well as of ecclesiastical order, much was 
 adopted which was individual and contem- 
 poraneous. 
 
 4. Jesus lived as the true son of his peo- 
 
Jesus and Paul 8i 
 
 pie. He kept the law of his fathers and ad- 
 vised those whom he healed to fulfill the stat- 
 utes of this law. He selected twelve disci- 
 ples, to whom he promised that they should 
 sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve 
 tribes of Israel. He will fulfill the hope of 
 Israel and bring about the completion of the 
 Old Testament revelation of God and clothe 
 his historical mission in the idea of Jewish 
 Messianism. And yet, this Jewish cover 
 falls from him or becomes an illumined veil 
 as soon as we come in contact with him. He 
 had nothing at all in his nature of the tradi- 
 tional narrowness of Judaism as it so often 
 expressed itself in this people in passionate 
 violence, in narrow-mindedness, in love, in 
 hatred, in a certain conception of the world 
 and history. His demand concerns not only 
 the Jew, nor a certain time, it concerns man 
 in general. In the Jew who is addressed 
 man is intended. In the Sermon on the 
 Mount Jesus recognizes Jewish scribism and 
 the Pharisaic perversion of the Old Testa- 
 ment commandments, and yet almost every 
 word IS so that He could speak it to us today. 
 In reading the Beatitudes, the conditions for 
 entering into the kingdom of God, or the 
 
82 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 parables of the kingdom of heaven, it seems 
 to us as if he described our own wants and 
 needs, the object of our hope, and everlasting 
 laws of our genesis and growth. 
 
 None of the apostles perceived so clearly 
 and keenly as Paul did that Jesus overcame 
 Judaism and brought in a new religion of 
 humanity. It was he who, in victorious 
 struggle as a true follower of the Lord, com- 
 pelled recognition of the universal character 
 of Christianity and banished Jewish cere- 
 monies from Christianity. He brought the 
 religion of Jesus to the Greeks and Romans. 
 His Jesus Christ, who addressed all men, 
 who wished to make all children of God, who 
 is rich unto all in heavenly goods and gifts, 
 was not a self-made Christ but the historical 
 Christ. 
 
 In the preaching of Paul he embraced the 
 ancient world and apprehended us of today 
 also with such overwhelming power that we 
 can never permit the elimination of the Epis- 
 tles of the apostle Paul from our Bible. And 
 yet Paul was never wholly able to throw off 
 Jewish limitations. As apostle he remained 
 a Jew. In him there was nothing Hellenic. 
 Greek wisdom and Greek culture, though hot 
 
Jesus and Paul 83 
 
 uninfluenced by it, seemed to him foolishness 
 beside the gospel. He did not foster it. He 
 held to the Jewish view of the world, of his- 
 tory, of man. To him the history of humani- 
 ty is the history of the Jewish people with the 
 principal types, Adam, Abraham, Moses and 
 Christ. The Jewish law was on the whole 
 and from principle also binding for the 
 heathen world. The ideas which wxre ex- 
 pressed in the preaching of Paul belonged 
 to Old Testament and Jewish theology, and 
 were therefore partly unintelligible to Greeks. 
 Such, for example, as Christ, gospel. Spirit 
 and flesh, sin and grace, law, righteousness 
 of God, faith in the Pauline sense. The 
 forms in which Paul expected the coming 
 down of the kingdom of God from heaven 
 upon earth and the coming of the Messiah, 
 belong also to Jewish theology. Paul's doc- 
 trine of righteousness cannot deny its Jewish 
 origin. The Christian idea of salvation in 
 it is directly embraced in a Jewish scheme. 
 True, he breaks this scheme and states the 
 opposite of that, just what righteousness 
 really means. The doctrine of God (Rom. 
 9-1 1 ) contains elements which conflicted 
 with the philosophical thinking of an edu- 
 
84 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 cated Greek and could only be explained 
 from a residue of Jewish thinking. Paul 
 could never wholly overcome his strong tem- 
 perament which adhered to him as an in- 
 heritance of his people; indeed, it was a 
 most wonderful fact that God chose a former 
 Pharisee as his instrument to preach to the 
 heathen; wonderful that such a world-his- 
 torical success was assigned to this very 
 Jew. 
 
 5. The life of Jesus stands before us in 
 unity and closeness. It shows no rents, 
 no cracks or breaks, no other course at differ- 
 ent times. Jesus lived his life in continual, 
 undisturbed communion with God. Paul, 
 however, experienced in his life a deep 
 change which affected the innermost part of 
 his being. His theology is that of one who 
 is broken. From his undisturbed commun- 
 ion with God Jesus perceived as none other 
 did the weakness of human nature. Already 
 at his baptism, in the beginning of his Mes- 
 sianic ministry, he entered into the sin of the 
 people and by his baptism manifested that 
 he considered the object of his calling to be 
 the deliverance of the people from sin and 
 guilt. He saw the hidden connection be- 
 
Jesus and Paul 85 
 
 tween sin and disease. He knew that the 
 human race is evil; he taught his disciples 
 to pray daily for the forgiveness of their 
 guilt; he established in the Lord's Supper 
 a continual memorial of the forgiveness of 
 sins; took upon himself a cruel death to 
 atone for his people, and yet he sketched no 
 dark picture of the world. As in the Old 
 Testament he finds God's will expressed in 
 like perfection to that which he has in his 
 heart, he regarded the world as God's crea- 
 tion in the light of perfection, which would 
 be realized in it by the power that was in 
 himself. He knew himself called to make 
 the world anew, to make it what it was orig- 
 inally destined by God to be. He knew with 
 absolute certainty that God's will intended 
 this, and now already he saw the image of 
 God shine forth even where present condi- 
 tions suggested failure. Quietly and safely 
 he described the ideal, unconcerned whether 
 the distance from it were ever so great in 
 the present reality. 
 
 Paul always bore in his body the marks of 
 the struggle he passed through in his experi- 
 ence of Christ. In his conception and for- 
 mulating of Christian salvation, we see clear- 
 
86 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 ly in the apostle traces of the conversion of 
 the Jew to Christianity. Jesus had no con- 
 sciousness of difference in his attitude 
 toward the Old Testament as God's revela- 
 tion and the Old Testament law as the dis- 
 position of God's will, because everywhere 
 in the Old Testament he found himself and 
 his task pointed out and found the Word of 
 God and the Will of God with his own 
 communion with God, suitably also ex- 
 pressed in the Old Testament, even when 
 he depreciated some Old Testament enact- 
 ments. For Paul, even as a Christian, that 
 also seems true. The Old Testament reli- 
 gion which met him as such in Pharisaism 
 was abolished and laid aside for him through 
 Christ ; the Old Testament appeared to him 
 as the ministration of death and condemna- 
 tion; nevertheless, the Scripture stands for 
 him immovable as the highest authority. A 
 more certain proof than all arguments and 
 loyal considerations is, for him, "It is writ- 
 ten." With Scripture-proof every question 
 is settled. In like manner the law is abol- 
 ished for him through Christ — Christ is the 
 end of the law as he is also the expression of 
 the eternal, unchangeable will of God. From 
 
Jesus and Paul 87 
 
 this seeming contradictory position he did 
 not swerve. Moreover, in consequence of 
 the break experienced in his conversion, the 
 apostle's conception of the world is thor- 
 oughly pessimistic. He sees the great dis- 
 tance from the goal before his eyes the world 
 lies in a state of deepest sin and corruption. 
 Not only heathenism but Judaism also, be- 
 cause of its wickedness, is under the wrath 
 of God. Since Adam sin has had its sway 
 in humanity; the law enhanced sin, yea, it 
 was given that transgression might abound. 
 Before and besides Christ there is no salva- 
 tion. Only where Christ is operative with 
 his power does he see God's seed grow upon 
 earth. The necessary outcome of this con- 
 ception of the world seemed to be asceticism 
 and dualism; nevertheless the same liberty 
 and the same idealism got also the upper 
 hand in him which were in the character of 
 Christ. It is Paul's conviction of faith also, 
 that the world and all that is therein, is of 
 God; that man can use everything which 
 it offers with thanksgiving to God; that 
 dietary laws and outward limitations, as 
 Judaism established and which Jesus himself 
 had not yet annulled, are opposed to the 
 
88 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 creative will of God. What inner liberty 
 is expressed in words like these: "Whether 
 therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye 
 do, do all to the glory of God" (i Cor. lo. 
 31). "For all things are yours; whether 
 Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, 
 or life, or death, or things present, or things 
 to come; all are yours" (i Cor. 3. 21, 22). 
 And this liberty Christ gave to him. 
 
 6. The preaching of the earthly Jesus was 
 essentially the preaching of the kingdom of 
 God; but in the apostle's preaching, this 
 idea plays no considerable part. The con- 
 tents of his gospel is Christ. At the first 
 glance this seems to be a contraction, but 
 in reality it is only a concentration. Paul 
 stated himself in 2 Cor. i. 20 why he 
 made Christ the center : "For all the prom- 
 ises of God in him are yea." Jesus himself 
 also saw the realization of the kingdom of 
 God united with his person. Where he was, 
 there was the kingdom ; for he had ip him- 
 self the energies of the kingdom and planted 
 them in humanity. His earthly teaching 
 and educational activity had for its task the 
 education of his disciples as instruments and 
 coworkers of the kingdom. His ministry 
 
Jesus and Paul 89 
 
 of teaching revealed in him the divine pow- 
 ers of a Redeemer. It was only after the 
 complete fulfillment of his Messianic work 
 upon earth — which means, in the sense of 
 Paul, only after his death on the cross and 
 his resurrection — after Jesus had been ex- 
 alted by God to heavenly power and glory, 
 that he could manifest his Messianic power 
 in its fullness. Thus the preaching of the 
 kingdom is the veiling of the personal task 
 of the work of Jesus ; the preaching of the 
 exalted Christ is the necessary unveiling of 
 his central significance following the comple- 
 tion of his work. Hence in the putting aside 
 of the original idea of the kingdom of God 
 we have not a breaking away from the gos- 
 pel but the certain knowledge that since the 
 exaltation of Christ as Lord the kingdom 
 of God is equivalent to service for Christ 
 (Rom. 14. 17, 18). Christians know them- 
 selves translated by God into the kingdom 
 of his dear Son (Col. i. 13). 
 
 7. Paul's theology is redemption theology. 
 In the center of his theological thought 
 stands the cross of Christ. In his congre- 
 gations he knew nothing except Jesus Christ 
 the crucified. Here is the point where the 
 
90 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 perfection and the supposed imperfection of 
 the PauHne Christ-beHef becomes most obvi- 
 ous. The PauHne Christ, in order to become 
 a historical phenomenon, full of vigor, must 
 be supplemented by the synoptic Son of man 
 and the Johannean Son of God; for the 
 object of our faith can be no less and no 
 more than the whole Christ. We could not 
 understand Christ, not subordinate to him 
 as our Saviour and allow him to show us 
 the way to our heavenly Father, unless in his 
 preaching* and in his work he won our hearts, 
 and unless we heard God himself speaking 
 to us in him. The one deed, his expiatory 
 sacrifice on the cross, were too little. Now 
 Paul himself, as we have shown, had the 
 strongest impression of the personality and 
 the divine conversation of Jesus, but in 
 his preaching the life-picture of Jesus has 
 not been brought out in such a way as 
 our religious feeling demanded. In order 
 to establish his gospel, Paul goes back to 
 his own apostolic judgment or to the 
 Old Testament even, where it was easier to 
 refer to the historical work of Jesus. No- 
 where in his Epistles did he sketch a por- 
 trait of Jesus or describe his lovely and 
 
Jesus and Paul 91 
 
 gracious manner, his grandeur and purity, 
 the divine authorization of his doing, in 
 concrete, historical events of his life. The 
 description of the humble and obedient con- 
 duct of Jesus (Phil. 2. 7 sq.) would cer- 
 tainly read otherwise had it been given by 
 one of his disciples who stood in earthly 
 life-communion with Jesus. We would then, 
 no doubt, read not only of his earthly ap- 
 pearance, "that he was obedient untO' death, 
 even the death of the cross." Paul also 
 nowhere indicates that Jesus himself had 
 first to learn what God had willed to break 
 the impenitent mind of the people and to 
 purge humanity ; that only by looking back 
 Jesus perceived which way to go was the 
 decree of God. 
 
 The apostle puts the death of Jesus under 
 different points of view ; thus under that of 
 the act of love for his own, of the obedience 
 of calling of the covenant, but in the center 
 of his contemplation of Jesus Christ the death 
 stands as the atonement for humanity. It 
 is indeed incorrect to state that he was the 
 first to conceive the death of Jesus as an 
 atonement. In pre-Pauline Christendom this 
 understanding was already alive; for Paul 
 
92 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 writes to the Corinthians (i Cor. 15. 3): 
 "For I dehvered unto you first of all that 
 which I also received ; how that Christ died 
 for our sins according to the Scriptures," 
 and before Peter, according to Gal. 2. 16, 
 he asserted at Antioch the theological state- 
 ment which Peter also recognized as correct : 
 "we are justified by the faith of Christ, and 
 not by the works of the law." This faith, 
 however, also in the sense of Peter, has its 
 foundation in nothing else than in the expi- 
 atory death of Christ. But in two words 
 even of the synoptic tradition, Jesus himself, 
 both times in allusion to the suffering serv- 
 ant of God (Isa. 53), represented his death 
 and suffering as an atonement. "The Son of 
 man came to minister, and to give up his life 
 a ransom for many" (Matt. 20. 28) ; and in 
 the words of the invitation of the Lord's 
 Supper. But one cannot say that this under- 
 standing of the death of Jesus by the Synop- 
 tists surpassed the other interpretations. 
 Jesus most frequently mentions his death as 
 that of Son of man. In the quite pre- 
 dominant emphasis of the idea of atonement 
 by Paul, there is no doubt a contraction. 
 When a Pharisee, Paul took decisive offence 
 
Jesus and Paul 93 
 
 in the death of the Messiah on the cross, 
 but this death afterward became the firm 
 foundation of his doctrine of redemption 
 and reconciHation. 
 
 And yet, the merit of Paul cannot be 
 regarded too highly in that he distinctly 
 regarded the death of Jesus as an atone- 
 ment, for only thus is the character of Chris- 
 tianity securely established as the religion 
 of redemption in the full sense. To be sure, 
 Jesus is not only the Redeemer in his death, 
 but also in his earthly work. But Jesus's 
 death on the cross Is and will remain the 
 decisive judgment of God upon the sin of 
 the world ; and the crucified and risen Christ 
 is the only and full assurance that we have 
 a gracious God. Here the reasoning of Paul is 
 one joined together in itself and is irrefuta- 
 ble from the standpoint of theism. If Christ 
 died, he died according to the will of God. 
 His death is therefore necessary for our 
 salvation. If Christ died, he died not for 
 his own sake, but for our sakes. Did Christ, 
 the sinless Son of God, suffer death ? Then 
 this death is a divine judgment upon hu- 
 manity. There is no salvation except in the 
 appropriation of the saving power of this 
 
94 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 death. If Christ, who died and rose again, 
 made his divine power operative in his peo- 
 ple, if he gave them of his Spirit, if he 
 drew them into his Hfe-communion, and 
 makes us children of God who call "Abba, 
 Father," then man cannot otherwise come 
 to God than by leaving himself out of the 
 question and taking everything from Christ's 
 grace. Before God we stand as sinners, but 
 he pardons us for Christ's sake, and by that 
 which Christ gives us, we become accepta- 
 ble in his eyes. Hence the Christian feels 
 himself as a miracle of divine grace; all 
 that he is, he is from God, through Christ 
 his redeemer and friend. 
 
 This is also the powerful religious cer- 
 tainty which through the instrumentality of 
 Paul has ever and ever beamed in the great 
 men of the history of the Church. This is 
 the Christian faith which Luther restored to 
 us. It is a vain endeavor to represent Paul 
 as the second founder of Christianity. Paul 
 will remain what he was ordained to be, 
 the apostle and servant of Christ. The con- 
 tents of his preaching is the life-power and 
 the power of redemption of the historical 
 Christ. 
 
Jesus and Paul 95 
 
 conclusion 
 
 The importance of Paul is, however, not 
 exhausted in what he, as a disciple of Jesus 
 who understood his Master, has been and 
 still is within the history of the Christian 
 religion; to him belongs also a place in the 
 intellectual history of humanity. 
 
 The Greek world sought a knowledge of 
 the cosmos. The world and its laws, its nat- 
 ural uniform causes, were the problems 
 which it followed. Its ideal of life was an 
 artificial additional building of the beauty 
 and harmony of the universe in the ethico- 
 historical world. According to Plato, the 
 reason of man is conscious of its homogene- 
 ousness with the divine by plunging into this 
 harmony of the cosmos and the pleasurable 
 contemplation of its beauty. In such en- 
 deavor Greek philosophy, however, after a 
 development of serious inquiry comprising 
 some centuries, ended in skepticism, in the 
 conclusion that proof of the reality of phe- 
 nomena is impossible ; that the knowledge of 
 the objective basis of human knowledge is 
 unattainable. This was a declaration of 
 the bankruptcy of Greek philosophy. The 
 
96 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 science of the human mind having arrived at 
 this point, it could only be led along the way 
 of a certain theory of knowledge, that is, if 
 one distinguished the world outside us from 
 the reality given in the inner life of man. 
 
 After the decay of the Greek city-states 
 within which the individual had found a 
 footing, practical results, respect, riches, per- 
 sonal satisfaction, individualism in philoso- 
 phy had indeed come to a certain recognition 
 in the Stoic and Epicurean systems ; but for 
 Greek science the knowledge remained hid- 
 den that in the self-consciousness of man a 
 firm starting point is given from which man 
 can comprehend himself in the world outside 
 him. Socrates had already inquired into the 
 criterion of the ideas of knowledge and 
 moral consciousness, but he failed to dis- 
 cover that a powerful reality is given in 
 conscious experience, the only one of which 
 we are certain. 
 
 The first in whom experience and the 
 metaphysical are met with in Paul. His self- 
 consciousness felt perfectly sure of the facts 
 of the inner religious life. In this conviction 
 of the undeniable reality of the contents of 
 the personal experience and in the geniality 
 
Jesus and Paul 97 
 
 of his personal sense of life, rests the sur- 
 passing greatness of the apostle over his 
 time and the mighty influence he exerted, 
 though his interest was confined to religion. 
 Paul was no philosopher and never intended 
 to be. He was not concerned about a the- 
 oretical definition of the world; but in his 
 religious experience, and from this point, 
 he transforms his views of God and the 
 world. He gives no statement of religious 
 experience proven in a knowably theoretical 
 way, and yet he has a place in the historical 
 progress of metaphysics as to the theory of 
 knowledge. In him we find the beginnings 
 of a psychological self-reflection and analy- 
 sis of the events of the inner life which are 
 the supposition for this, that the contents 
 of the inner life are expressed in ideas. 
 Augustine showed in bolder outlines all this 
 which is met with in Paul in its first elements 
 and in an undeveloped form, and on this 
 account he denotes further progress in the 
 knowledge of the meaning of reality given 
 in self-consciousness. Augustine did not 
 subject the facts of consciousness to a co- 
 herent construction of parts, and hence he 
 failed to arrive at a contemplation of the 
 
98 St. Paul as a Theologian 
 
 world which surpassed the limits of ancient 
 philosophy. But he perceived the importance 
 of Greek skepticism in ancient science and 
 in a settlement with it found in Christian 
 experience the point from which a new 
 arrangement of the elements of a philosophy 
 of the world must take place. In this man- 
 ner he prepared the way for modern critical 
 philosophy. 
 
 Finis 
 
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