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PAULINI8M:
% €antnhnimn io i^n
HISTORY OF PRIMITIYE CHRISTIAN
THEOLOGY. BY
OTTO PFLEIDEEEE,
DOCTOR AHD PROFESSOR OE IHEOLOQr AT JENA, ETC.

TRANSLATED BY EDWARD PETERS,
LATE OP THE MADRAS OrVTL SERVICE.

VOL. L
EXPOSITION OF PAUL'S DOCTRINE.

WILLIAMS AND NOEGATE,
li, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON;
And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURttH.
1877.

LONDON :
PRINTED BY 0. OBEEN AND SOlf,
178, STRAND.

PREFACE.

This work is intended as a contribution to the history of the
primitive Christian theology, a portion of the history of early
Christian dogma, not a biography of Paul, nor a critical intro
duction to Pauline literature, which forms the principal subject-
matter of Baur's "Paul." The criticism of the Epistles is
throughout presupposed, and is only treated of here where it is
affected by questions of dogma. And the critical consideration
of the Acts of the Apostles cannot, on this plan, be made the
starting-point, but must be introduced at the conclusion ; since
J this document can in nowise serve as the source of the Pauline
theology, but rather as a test of the correctness of the view taken
of the development of Pauline doctrine after the time of Paul.
Much has been done in late years to elucidate Pauline theo
logy, especially by the able investigations of Dr. Holsten, which
have been of the greatest assistance to me in this work, and
indeed first set me upon it. It was his brilliant idea of starting
from Raul's conversion and thC' psychological presuppositions
and inferences eonnected with it, in order to grasp the kernel of
his gospel in its peculiarity, that suggested to me the task of
endeavouring to understand how, .from this nucleus of Paul's
faith in Christ, on the one hand, and the presuppositions of his
Jewish theology, on the other, the Pauline doctrine as a whole

IV PREFAGE.
came into existence ; and what is the particular significance of
each portion. The solution of this problem has been attempted
in the first Part of the present work. The second Part then
traces, by the same genetic method, the gradual transformation
of the original Pauline doctrine through the changing influence
of new theoretical and practical factors, until it was resolved
into the common consciousness of the Eoman Catholic Church.
In this way I have attempted to write a portion of the history
of early Christian dogma, as I think the history of dogma should
always be treated — ^not as a herbarium of dead forms, but as the
history of the development of li"ving religious ideas, in their
birth, growth and change, as the creations of real religious life,
acted upon by the surrounding world and acting on it in its
turn. It is evident that this is not so easy a task as the simple
disinterment of the several doctrines of an Apostle or of an
early Christian literature. It has seldom been attempj;ed,
still less has it been anywhere satisfactorily accomplished.
Nay, it almost appears to me that the main direction of the
scientific exegesis of the day (and that "without distinction of
the lines taken by different parties) rather tends from than
towards this goal. If an attempt was made some time ago
to transfer the representations of the Bible into too imme
diate proximity to modern thought, by which means they were
changed in a rationalistic sense and stripped of their histori
cal significance, there is now great danger of falling into the
other extreme, by confining these representations, taken just as
they stand, to their literal historical sense, and never inquiring
how it comes to pass, if there is nothing more in them than thus
meets the eye, that the writers of the Bible so often lighted on
ideas strangely attractive to us, and whether the religious im-

PEEFACE. V
pulse that prompted them may not, perhaps, be a religious idea
natural to the religious spirit, and therefore still living in our
own time. This external mode of treatment may, no doubt, be
advantageously used as a help to ascertain the exact meaning of
single passages, and has been so used in many instances of late ;
but by such means the understanding of the religious world of
thought as a whole cannot be promoted, nor can the object of
all Biblical theology be thus attained; for this, after all, can
only be to unlock the treasures of the Bible, and make them
fruitful for the religious life of the present. Whither we should
ultimately be led by this one-sided formalism in Biblical theology,
has just been strikingly shown by the astonishing announcement
of a hypercritical theologian, who roundly declares that Scientific
Theology and the Christian Church are irreconcilable opponents,
for whom the only possible modus vivendi is for each to ignore
the other ! As if Christianity, that power which has been so
eminently a maker of history, had to shun the light of history !
As if Theology, the self-consciousness of the Christian Church,
could ever tear itself away from its own soul ! No ; it can be no
sound theology which leads to such a fatal end, but rather its
morbid ossification in a scholasticism (no matter whether it be
orthodox or critical) which forgets the spirit in the letter, the
matter in the form, and the reality and permanence of the
spiritual idea in the contingency and transitoriness of the his
torical clothing. To such a poor and narrow view, whose
admitted unfruitfulness betrays its abortive nature, the words of
Mephistopheles are still applicable :
" He who'd know and describe some li"raig thing.
First drives out the soul that dwells therein :
With the severed parts before him spread,
He lacks hut the spirit-bond that's fled."

VI 5 "- PREFACE.

In opposing to this scholastic direction of the study of the
Bible at the present day, the genetic development of doctrine
from the religious impulse as the fundamental requisite for a
really scientific Biblical Theology, I am aware that I am likely
enough to be assailed "with the old reproach of " constructing;"
but I must here candidly confess that this always moves me
with a slight sense of the ridiculous, for it too forcibly reminds
me of the fable of the fox and the sour grapes. It cannot be
denied that one is more liable to make mistakes in what the
literalists call " constructing " (which is in fact nothing but the
genetic method of synthesis common to every true scientific pro
duction), than in the common empirical description of something
that is given ; but does it follow from the difficulty of solving a
problem, that one can or ought to evade it 1 It may be pleasant
to do so, but whether it is particularly reasonable is another
question. With regard, then, to this particular work, I am quite
aware that many parts of it will be found to contain error, and
require correction ; nevertheless, I entertain the firm con"viction,
and will venture boldly to express it, that the method here
pursued is the right one, and the only way in which the science
of Biblical Theology can be advanced to a satisfactory position.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
Inteoduction ... ... 1
Paet I.
STATEMENT OF THE DOCTEINE OF PAUL.
CHAPTER I.
Sin and the Law ..... 35
Sin as the PrLaciple of the Pre-Christian or Natural
Man ....... 36
The Flesh ...... 47
The Law. ...... 68
CHAPTER II.
Ebdbmption bt the Death of Cheist . . . 91
The Death of Christ as a Sacrifice for Sin . . 92
The Death of Christ as Liberation from the Power of Sin 109
The Eesurrection of Christ . . . . 118
CHAPTER III.
The Pbeson op Jesus Cheist. . . . .123
" The Son of David and the Son of God . . 125
Christ in Heaven ..... 131
The Appearance of Christ in the Flesh . . 146
CHAPTER IV.
Justification bt Eaith . . . . .160
Faith  161
Justification . . . • • .171
Sonship ....•• 186

CONTENTS.CHAPTER V.

PAGE

192

Living in the Spieit . . . • •
The Begummg of the New Life - ¦ • ^^^
The Development of the New Life— Sanctification . 215
CHAPTER VI.
The Christian Communitt . • • • 229
Gifts and Offices in the Community . . .230
The Lord's Supper ..... 238
The Calling of the Community according to the Election
of Favour . , . . . . . 244
CHAPTER VII.
The Completion op the Woek op Salvation . . 259
The Second Coming of Christ . . . .259
The End of the World .... 271

INTRODUCTION.

Ho"W are we to conceive the genesis of the Pauline doctrine ?
From what root did it spring ? It is more necessary that such
questions should be answered with regard to this than to any
other doctiine contained in the New Testament. For not only
was Paul no immediate disciple of Jesus, but he did not even
derive his peculiar teaching from the Apostles who were disci
ples. The Apostle himself has a most lively consciousness of
this peculiarity and independence of his gospel ; he repeatedly
brings it strongly forward, especially against his Judaizing adver
saries.^ And the truth of this assertion of his is plainly enough
attested by the actual facts. For in reality we find but few
traces of acquaintance with the particulars of the life or teaching
of Jesus in Paul's" enunciation of his doctrine; only the most
prominent events of the institution of the Lord's Supper, the
death of Christ, and his appearance after the resurrection,^ were
received by him from without as historical data ; his death, no
doubt, together with the dogmatic justification of it, that it was
a death for our sins, according to the Scriptures; this was a
1 Cf. Gal. i. 11 f. with i. 6, 'irEpov cvayy.: ii. 2, 7, ro tuayy. rng aKpofivtrriaQ: Rom.
ii. 16, ro ivayy'sKiov jiov : Rom. xvi. 25 ; 2 Cor. iv. 3, rb eiayy. niiSrv : 2 Cor. xi. 4,
ivayy. sVepoj/, SiXKov 'lijaovv 'ov ovk iKjjpwJa/jei/.
" The Lord's Supper, 1 Cor. xi. 23. Christ's death and appearance, 1 Cor.
XV. 3 f. Again, 1 Gor. ix. 14 is most likely an allusion to Luke x. 7, and 1 Cor.
vii. 10 probably refers to Matt. v. 32. Whether, and to what extent, the esohato-
logioal description in 1 Thess. iv. is to be directly referred to the words of Jesus (cf.
Matt, xxiv.) it is difficult to determine, beoause the genuineness of that speech of
Jesus' is as doubtful on the one hand, as it is certain on the other that those esohato-
logical views were common to the whole community of early Christians.
B

2 INTRODUCTION.
matter of course, because the disciples could never speak of the
death of Jesus the Messiah without at once giving to this awk
ward-looking fact the aspect of an expiation, by showing that the
Scripture itself declared (e.g. Is. liii.) that the Messiah was to
die for the sins of mankind. But then how thoroughly original
was the system of doctrine that grew up under the hands of Paul
from those few elements of historical tradition ! How widely
did it deviate, in the view of Christ which was its basis, and the
scheme of Christian doctrine and life raised thereon, from all
that had hitherto been the established faith and practice of the
Jewish Christian community ! Well might the Apostle speak of
" his gospel" in contradistinction to the " other" gospel which the
Judaizers sought to introduce in Corinth and Galatia; and so
great appeared to him the antagonism of the two systems, that
he saw in the latter quite another Christ than the one whom he
preached, a fleshly Christ whom he knew not ; while his Christ
was in like manner concealed from them, because they had not
that light shining in the heart to mamfest the glory of Christ as
the image of God which had been imparted to him through the
revelation of Christ himself.^
Now whence came this doctrinal system of the Apostle Paul,
with its deviation from that of the more ancient type ? He him
self gives us this short and plain answer : " I was taught it by
the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. i. 12) ; which he then pro
ceeds to explain more fully, and to corroborate by the historical
narrative of his conversion and the events that followed it, laying
special emphasis on his intentional retirement from Jerusalem
for the first three years, and further on the fact that on his first
visit he met none of the Apostles except Peter and James. This
last circumstantial and solemnly asseverated narrative serves to
corroborate the negative assertion, " I neither received nor was
taught of man the gospel which I preached." And in the same
connection with the historical narrative of his conversion, the
' Cf. 2 Cor. xi. 4 with v. 16 and iv. 3—6.

INTRODUCTION. 3
positive assertion, "I have received it through revelation of
Jesus Christ," is also taken up again and illustrated in the sen
tence, " As it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, that I might
preach him among the heathen." It is to be noted here how his
caUing to be an Apostle of the heathen is placed in such close
and marked connection with the revelation of the Son of God at
his conversion, that an intimate relation between them is neces
sarily suggested to our minds. The peculiar character of the
revelation of Christ made to him must, one would think, have
consisted precisely in this, that the right and duty of the mission
to the heathen followed with logical necessity from it. But the
right and duty of the mission to the heathen, as Paul first, and
for a long time alone, understood and practised it, was nothing
but the clear and simple practical consequence of the fundamen
tal idea that in the Christian community the law peculiar to the
Jews was abrogated. From this con"viction followed immediately
the consequence that the heathen had an equal right with the
Jews to Christian salvation, and therefore that the gospel was
to be imparted to them, not merely incidentally, but by express
appointment ; as, on the contrary, the opposite con"viction of the
permanent validity of the Jewish law involved the practical
consequence of confining the mission of the gospel to Israel, as
is clearly proved by the example of the original Apostles. If,
then, the revelation of Christ made to Paul at his conversion
contained within itself, as its immediate consequence, the task
of converting the heathen, we may thence plainly see that Paul's
faith in Christ, as regards its distinguishing characteristics,
namely, its antinomianism and universality, really dated from
his conversion, and had the same root with it.
And here the science of history has to face the' problem of
seeking for such a psychological explanation of the conversion
of Paul as may contain at the same time the germ of his peculiar _^
doctrine. As we have here to deal with inward processes of the
religious spirit, of which we hate no immediate knowledge, it is
self-evident that scientific investigation can never arrive at exact
B 2

4 INTRODUCTION.
demonstrative knowledge, but only at hypotheses. In fact, hypo
theses have constantly been set up about the psychological con
ditions which preceded Paul's conversion; only these were of
little value so long as there was no canon by means of which
their probability could be tested. But we have now found one,
in that we require the psychological antecedents of the conver
sion to exhibit at the same time the root of his peculiar gospel.
For by this means we obviously obtain this canon, that the
hypothetical attempts to explain the conversion of Paul acquire
probability (which is all that science can here aspire to) in pro
portion as they are capable of explainiag at the same time the
genesis of the Pauline gospel with reference to its distinguishing
characteristics. Tested by this canon, the assumption which used to be gene
rally accepted, and is to. this day the most popular one regarding
. the psychological antecedents of the conversion of Paul, is de
cidedly unsatisfactory. Even before his conversion, it is said,^
Paul had deeply felt the inadequacy of the righteousness of the
law, the impossibility of man's attaining to the complete fulfil
ment of the law: herein was contained not only the negative
jpreparation for his conversion, but also the germ of his later
antithesis of the righteousness of faith and the righteousness of
the law. But let us reflect for a moment on the vast difference
between the subjective feeling of one's own imperfect righteous
ness according to the law, and the objective conviction that such
righteousness is altogether impossible. A Jew might be pene
trated with the most Hvely feeling that he fell far short of the
requirements of the holy will of God revealed in the law ; but he
could by no possibility from this premise arrive, at, the conclusion
that the law, this undoubted revelation of God, was absClutely
incapable of placing a man in a state of righteousness before
God, and was not intended for that purpose, consequently that
it was not the right way of salvation. He would undoubtedly
^ See, for instance, Beysohlag, Theol. St. and Kr., 1864, p. 249 f.

INTRODUCTION. 5
be much more inclined to seek the cause of the subjective want
of righteousness in himself, in the insufiiciency of his past efforts
to attain to higher morality, than in the imperfection of what
was fixed in his mind a priori as the absolute truth of God.
And e"ven if, from his own and other men's experience, he had
arrived at the conviction that man, as we find him, could never
remain quite free from guilt before the law, which guilt would
require an expiation, and that a full and perfect one, Uke the
expiatory sacrifices of the Old Testament, he might certainly be
led by this con-viction to regard the expiatory death of Christ as
a necessary completion of the law, but never as an abrogation of
it, and a substitution in its place of an entirely new scheme of
salvation. This and no other must have been the "view taken of the matter
by the Jewish Christians; they also believed that the law alone
was not sufficient for the -Messianic salvation, otherwise there
could have been no inducement for them to become believers in
Christ instead of remaining Jews ; they saw also in the death of
the Messiah on the cross the means of expiation ordained by
God, which was to cancel the guUt of sin in God's people more
powerfuUy than the expiatory sacrifices of the Old Testament,
and so fill up what was defective in their righteousness before
the law. But so far from concluding hence that this new expia
tory institution was opposed to the old institution of the law and
abrogated it, and that faith in Christ was now to tahe the place of
works of the law, the Jewish Christians saw rather, in this con
sequence deduced by Paul, a downright falsification of the word
of God, by which Christ was changed into a promoter of sin
rather than of righteousness (Gal. ii. 17 : for details see ch. viii.).
The canceUing of guilt through the expiatory death of the Mes
siah was to them rather the "restitutio in integrum" whereby
the law for the first time properly attained to its rights, whereby
consequently its authority was not only not to be abrogated, but
was for the first time to be properly established ; according to
them, therefore, the true beUever in Christ could not only not

6 INTRODUCTION.
become an Svo/ios and &iiapr<o\6?, as the heathen were, but he
must, on^the contrary, even more than before, and more than the
unbeUeving Jews, be a fT^Acori^s vo>ov (Acts xxi. 20, p-vpiaBe? «o-lv
'IovUlwv tZv ;re7r6o-TevK<5TO)V, Kal Trdvres ^TjAtor^t tov vo>v VTrdpxova-iv.
Cf. James " the Just").
Now to this iUogical combination of the works of the law and
, faith in Christ, which contained no principle, Paul opposed his
, sharply defined and logical alternative of either the one or the
• other (Gal. ii. 21, v. 4; Eom. xi. 6); and this fundamental dif-
• ference presupposes also a different poiut of departure for his
• dogmatic views. This cannot be sought in the feeling of the
imperfection of his own righteousness before the law, for this was
shared more or less by the Jewish Christians, who, however,
could only infer from it the half-truth of the completion of the law
by Christ. And it is important to observe that in the principal
dogmatic passages ia which Paul treats of the relativity of the
efficacy of the law and its abrogation in Christ, he does not
ground these doctrines on the inadequacy of the natural works
of the law. It would be vain to argue from Gal. iii. and iv., and
Eom. iv. and v., that it was on this ground that he based his
degradation of the law. One would certainly have thought this
the simplest and most obvious ground ; but in fact he proves his
thesis by somewhat far-fetched and not always very forcible
exegetical arguments, which, one may very plainly see, are
calculated only to give an external support to that which the
Apostle has other and internal grounds for believing.
But he himself leaves us in no doubt whatever as to what was
the conclusive ground of his whole doctrine regarding the law.
He speaks it out boldly in Gal. ii. 21 : h 8ia vo>ov SiKaioa-vvi],
apa X/)io-TOS Soipeav aTreOavev — the death of Christ would have
been barren ahd aimless, if the law were to remain, after it as
before, the way of righteousness. Now, as we cannot conceive
the death of the Messiah on the cross to have beem aimless, it
must have been designed by God as the essential means of Mes- ,
sianic righteousness and the Messianic salvation connected with

INTRODUCTION. 7
it ; but if the death of Christ upon the cross is once admitted to
be the means of righteousness ordained by God, it follows by
reasoning back from this conclusion, that the law is no longer
this means ; the death of the Messiah on the cross thus becomes the
end of the law. No doubt the death of Christ was to the Juda
izing Christian too an expiatory means of cancelUng guilt, but
yet it was to him in nowise the essential means of establishing
the entire and positive righteousness of the Messianic people ;
on the contrary, righteousness was in his eyes still an essentially
human achievement, the conformity of the actions of man with ¦
the will of God contained in the law ; and he regarded the can
celling of guilt granted by God through the expiatory death of
Christ as a mere completion of this human perfojananse, and of
quite secondary importance. In the system of the Jewish Chris
tians, then, this death had by no means a central significance,
with consequences affecting the principle of the law. . In the
eyes of Paul, on the contrary, the crucifixion of Christ occupied \
from the first: the central place ; he caUed his gospel the " preach
ing of the cross," 1 Cor. i. 18 ; he preached " Christ crucified,
unto the Jews a stumbUng-block, and to the Greeks foolishness,"
i, 23 ; he knows and glories in nothing save Jesus Christ the cru
cified, ii. 2, Gal. vi. 14. But the crucifixion of Christ, thus placed
in the centre of his religious contemplation, had necessarily
quite other consequences for him than for the Jewish Christians
 it became the lever with which he lifted the law out of its
difficulties. As an institution of divine grace, the expiatory
death was the means of creating a completely new righteousness,
which is no longer in any respect a human achievement, but
solely and entirely a gift of God, which is not obtained by
works of the law, but by faith in the new divine scheme of
salvation by the death and resurrection of Christ. Thus the ^
pecuUar gospel of Paul was the development of the central idea
of the expiatory death of Christ.
The problem which presented itself to us, as stated above,
was to find a common source in which an explanation might be

8 INTRODUCTION.
found, both of the psychological process of the conversion of
Paul, and of the genesis of his pecuUar gospel. The question,
therefore, now is, whether we can conceive the idea of the cruci
fied Messiah to be also the starting-point of the psychological
process which prepared the conversion. Let us consider the
position of Paul the Pharisee with regard to the announcement
of a crucified Messiah. History confirms Paul's testimony that
the cross of Christ was a chief offence to the Jews. And this is
also exactly what we should expect. For in this idea was con
tained beyond. doubt the negation of aU that a Jew regarded as
most sacred in the hopes and aspirations connected with his
national theocracy. Further, as the Pharisees were the most
vehement representatives of this side of Judaism, it was very
natural that the offence of the cross of Christ should have been
repugnant to them above aU others, and that they should there
fore most violently have hated and persecuted the proclaimers
of it.i They had here to do, not with some merely theoretical
1 The statement of Beysohlag (ut supra, p. 245 f.), that the chief point of dispute
between the Pharisees and Christians lay in the question of the true righteousness, is
erroneous. Righteousness was never the highest or ultimate end to the Pharisees, but
only the means for the advent of the Messiah's kiugdom as they understood it ; nor
was it the deeper morality of Jesus that most repelled them ; indeed, this had many
points of contact with that of the better Pharisees, such as Hillel. But the real stum
bling-block was, that Jesus assumed to be the Messiah, and yet was the opposite of
that which they expected and wished the Messiah to be. Thia is proved by their ques
tions as to his authority (as Messiah), their requiring a sign (of the Messiah), their
tempting him with a penny (which tumed entirely on the popular expectation of a
Messiah in opposition to the Roman sovereignty). That this opposition to the Messiah-
ship of Jesus must have become much more violent after the crucifixion is obvious.
This death itself must have appeared to the Pharisees to be a judgment of God upon
Jesus the false Messiah, and the preaching by his disciples of the Messiabship of him
who had been crucified, must have appeared to them only so much the more criminal.
But their assertion that he who had been crucified was risen, must have seemed a
gross deception, worse than the first, beoause the truth of this assertion must have
changed the judgment of God against Jesus into a judgment against his murderers.
Everything, therefore, must have turned on the question, "Was he who was crucified after
all the Messiah, proved to be such by the resurrection which followed ? This burning
question, in which dogma and fact were in immediate contact, was the turning-point
of the whole attack on the one side, and of the defence on the other — this, and by no
means the purely theoretical question of true righteousness. In addition to this, let
us reflect whether it is psychologically conceivable, and not rather contradictory iu
itself, that Paul should so violently have persecuted the Christians on account of their

INTRODUCTION. 9
. question of dispute, but with absolute right and absolute wrong,
with the divine sanction or rejection of the whole of their inner
Ufe and its aspirations. For, according to outward appearances,
the crucifixion of Jesus had been a judgment of God against his
pretension to be the Messiah, consequently a judgment of God
in justification of the Pharisees who had rejected such a Messiah
as Jesus had been. According to the assertion of the disciples,
on the contrary, that God had raised from the dead that Jesus
whom the Jews had crucified, and by this stupendous miracle
acknowledged his Messiabship and established him in his Mes
sianic kingdom, the Pharisees, by taking part in the death of
Jesus, had incurred the guilt of the greatest sin it was possible
to commit against God, and the curse had recoiled from Jesus
upon the head of his murderers. Thus the question of the
Messiabship of Jesus grew into a question of Ufe or death for v
the Pharisees; no wonder, then, that so zealous a Pharisee as
Paul should not be able to rest, but should see in the persecu
tion of the disciples a sacred duty. But it was this very perse
cution that brought him into closer contact with the Christians.
He would be certain to fight against them, not only with external
force, but also with those weapons of argument which he was
ever ready to employ. In this way he must of necessity have
Ustened to the proofs brought forward by the Christians in their
defence. Foremost among these would be the appeal to the
appearance of him who had been crucified, in which the disciples
doctrine of a better righteousness, while he was at the same time (according to
Beyschlag's own statement) penetrated with the deepest feeling of the inadequacy of
the righteousness of the law. How is this possible ? "Would not this consciousness
of the weakness of his position have restrained him from the first from attacking those
who held out the prospect of a better righteousness, and inclined him rather in favour
of the Christian doctrine than against it ? Thus the violence of his persecuting zeal
proves that the turning-point of the contest was a very different question, — one,
namely, in which Paul, in consistency with his whole past life as a Pharisee, must
have regarded his own side as absolutely and unconditionally in the right, and his
adversaries as not only theoretically in the wrong, but as deceivers hateful in God's
sight. Precisely such a question was that of the significance of the crucifixion of Jesus.
"Was it the penal death of a criminal, or the expiatory death of a Messiah ? The set
tlement of this question depended, for Paul, on the truth of the resurrection.

10 INTRODUCTION.
could see nothing but a proof of the miraculous raising to life.
again of the crucified Jesus by the almighty power of God. But,
in the next place, they would try to prove from the Scriptures
that suffering and death was in no way inconsistent with the
Messiabship ; nay, rather, that according to the prediction of the
prophets, notably Isaiah, ch. Uii., the Messiah must have suffered,
partly for the purpose of his own glorification, partly as a pro
pitiation for the sins of the people. This last idea was clearly
enough contained in the words of the prophet, "The chastisement
that gave us peace lay upon him, and with his stripes we are
healed;" it was moreover symbolically foreshadowed in the
expiatory sacrifices and the Passover of the Jewish worship;
and the application of this idea of sacrifice to the blood of Christ
as the (paschal) "lamb slain" (Eev. v. 6, 12, xiu. 8, &c.), had
become familiar to the Christian community through the insti
tution of the Lord's Supper. They would not, therefore, have
omitted to make use of it on this occasion, in their defence of
the crucified Messiah. At all events, it is certain that Paul had ¦
heard this scriptural proof from the disciples; for among the few
things which he had received from external tradition he expressly
mentions this, "that Jesus died for our sins according to the
Scriptures" (1 Cor. xv. 3).
Now what had Paul the Pharisee to oppose to this two-fold
defence grounded on the appearance of him who had been raised
from the dead, and on the proofs from Scripture ? He could
1 neither deny the possibility of the one nor the cogency of the
other, in the abstract : not the former, because the resurrection
-was one of the dogmas of the Pharisees ; nor the latter, because
that proof from Scripture agreed so "weU with the fundamental
principles of the typical exegesis of his school, that it could not
have failed to impress him. But the less he was able to combat
the arguments ofthe Christians objectively, the more powerfully
would the subjective feeling of the Jew and the Pharisee rise
against the idea that Jesus the crucified should turn out to be
the promised Messiah ! — he on whom the curse of the law lighted

INTRODUCTION. 11
through his ignominious death (Gal. iu. 13) be the bringer of
the Messianic salvation, consequently also of the Messianic
righteousness ! That could not possibly be a righteousness
according to the law, which was brought by one who was
accursed by the law ; it could only be an entirely new righteous
ness, without any relation to the law (xw/ow vo/iou). Thus just
that which was the pride of a Pharisee, to be righteous accord
ing to the law, would become whoUy worthless on the supposi
tion of a Messiah who had been subject to the curse of the law.
All the prejudices and prerogatives of the Jews which depended
on the law would come to naught, the whole reUgious world of
the Jews must vanish under such a Messiah and give place to a
new one ! So the contradiction between a crucified Messiah and
the sentiments of the Jewish nation would have been intensified
for the subjective consciousness of Paul the Pharisee, in propor
tion as he was the less able to meet the arguments of the Chris
tians "with counter arguments. Whilst the reUgious interest of
the immediate disciples of Jesus, from the moment of their
Master's death, lay in extenuating as far as possible the para
doxical nature of this catastrophe and reconcUing it to a Jewish
consciousness, in order to assist themselves and others as quickly
and easily as possible to get over the " offence of the cross," the
interest of Paul the Pharisee, on the contrary, lay in thinking
out to its extreme limits the contradiction between the crucified
Messiah and the presuppositions of the Jews ; for the more
decided was this contradiction, the more he felt himself justified
in the hatred to Christ which he evinced by his acts as weU as
his convictions. We may thus quite naturally explain how
Paul, even before he became a Christian, realized much more
distinctly than any of the elder disciples before him the essen
tial incompatibility of faith in the crucified and the old religion
of the law ; it was simply the old hatred of the Pharisee for the
suffering Messiah that enabled him to see so clearly aU that was
involved in the new faith in the crucified one.
But, it may be asked, wUl not the conversion itself be aU the

12 INTRODUCTION.
more 'inexplicable under the circumstances here supposed ? If
we turn our attention to two other points, perhaps we shaU see
that it is not. The first point is this :— however paradoxical to
the consciousness of a Jew and mortifying to the pride of a
Pharisee might be the idea of a new righteousness, brought
about, without any relation to' the law, by the expia,tory death of
the Messiah,. yet in one respect it exactly satisfied one of the
Pharisaic postulates. The Pharisees believed in the immediate
approach of the Messianic salvation ; but i1^ postulated for its
actual coming a oHghteous people. Now as the people were not
righteous in point of fact, nor was there, any prospect of their
ever becoming so in the Pharisaic sense, hei;e "was, e"videht^y an
unsolved antinomy. "What if perchance the Messianic righteffiis- '
ness, which the Pharisee postulated as a condition of the Mes--
slab's kingdom, were not to be understood in the ordinary sense
of the fulfilment ofthe law by man, but was really a gift of God,
which might be procured through this very means, now newly
proclaimed, of salvation by the expiatory death of the Messiah ?
In this way the antinomy, which was eternaUy insoluble, accord
ing to the judgment of man; in the old way of the law, was solved
in the simplest way by an ordinance of God, and henceforth
nothing would stand in the way of the reception of the Messianic
salvation on the part of sinful man ; he had only, sinful as he
was, to beUeve and to lay hold of this free gift of righteous
ness, and he would be already in possession of the salvation
itself. When once a reflection of this kind had impressed itself
on the mind of Paul the Pharisee (and it was certainly not far
to seek for such a keen inteUect as his), it would be a heavy
weight in the scale in favour of the persecuted faith. But to
this was added the second point to which we have referred. The
aUeged objective fact of the resurrection was opposed to the sub
jective' conviction of Paul as a difficulty which to a tender con
science must ever have become more alarming. That nothing
was to be said against the possibUity of such a miracle in the
abstract from the Pharisaic point of "view, has been already

INTRODUCTION. 13
observed ; but the Pharisee would of course at the commence
ment have violently protested against its truth in this concrete
instance ; it could not be true, for in that case he who had been
crucified and was by the law accursed would have been declared
to be the Messiah by God himself. Consequently the disciples,
who professed to have seen Jesus after he had risen, Ued in
making this assertion, as he must have been compeUed to think
from his point of view ; for according to the psychology of that
tiaie there was no middle term between the objective truth of
the resurrection and conscious deception. But was this possible ?
Did the Christians who aUowed themselves to be put to death
for their faith look like UarS ? Is" it likely that .the dying Ste-
phen^who, when in the hands of his murderers, saw the heavens
open and him who had risen ' sitting on the right hand of God,
would have conveyed the impression of his being a hypocrite ?
On the contrary, it is certain that the truth-loving spirit of Paul
could not, on witnessing this and many simUar scenes, have
resisted the impression that the conviction of the Christians,
that the crucified Jesus had risen from the dead, was genuine
and unalterable. What had he then-4.o oppose to such a convic
tion of a decisive objective fact 1 Nothing but subjective feel
ing ; and that is a bad state of things for a truth-lo"ving spirit,
doubly fatal when, on the ground of such subjective feeUng, one
has to act, to persecute, and to put to death ! This we may con
clude to have been Paul's state of mind on his way to Damascus,
on his way to a renewed persecution of the beUevers in Christ,
aU the while uncertain on the fundamental question, whether
after aU this were not the true faith, and whether the crucified
one whom he was persecuting were not the ardently longed-for
Messiah. On the one hand, we can hear the^passionate "No ! it
cannot- be tha,t the crucified' Jesus was declared by the resurrec
tion to be the Messiah ; for a crucified Messiah would put an
end to the law, whose curse would lie on him;" on the other
hand, and this would" ever be gro"wingdouder," Yes! but it can
.be, for it agrees with the. Scripture, and the truthfulness of the

14 INTRODUCTION.
first witnesses of it is being placed beyond a doubt by the joyful
death of the believers."
That is a situation which it was simply impossible for a sensi
tive spirit to endure long. It would press with irresistible
urgency for a solution ; what this solution would be, must
depend in every case on indi"vidual character. In the present
instance, that the objective truth ofthe Christian idea should
¦ prevail over the subjective prejudices and antagonistic feelings
of the Pharisee, is exactly what we should expect in a character
like that of Paul ; but that the decision arrived at within his
mind should take the form of a sensuous experience, quite agrees
with what happened on similar occasions in his Ufe, and we
must therefore in aU of them alike seek the cause in his peculiar
temperament. We need only here caU to mind the numerous
revelations and visions related to us by the Apostle himself, and
in the Acts of the Apostles, to see that the analogy they present
to the incident on the road to Damascus is so complete as to
leave no doubt of the essential similarity of the psychological
phenomenon in every instance. The accompanying external
circumstances agree with the description given by Paul of
another vision (2 Cor. xii), for instance, the falUng down, the.
.ecstatic seeing and hearing (in which he knows not whether he
is in the body or out of the body, and we therefore see that the
ordinary control of the organs of sense by self-consciousness is
suspended), and the great weakness and paralytic affection that
foUowed. Nor is this aU ; but it is especially to be observed in
every instance, that at a momentous crisis the decisive resolu
tion, after previous strong inward excitement, assumes the form
of external revelation ; see Gal. ii. 2 ; Acts xvL 9. The fact that
this form is different in the different cases — at one time hearing a
voice, at another seeing and hearing, then being carried into
heaven, and again the appearance of a being from hea,ven — ^is so
Uttle to be wondered at, that the truth is, it could not be other
wise from the nature of such visions. The very thing that moves
the feelings presents itself to the ecstatic consciousness as an

INTRODUCTION. 15
object of sensuous perception ; that which had previously lain
buried in the depths of the consciousness comes forth without a
mental effort into the view of the imagination, and connects
itself with real affections of the nerves of sense, in consequence
of which the appearance of external objectivity and corporeal
reality presents itself to him who sees the vision. It can only
be asked, therefore, whether the image of Christ, glorified and
raised to heaven, could already have been an object of conscious
ness to Paul before his conversion ; and after careful reflection
upon the situation, we shall be so far from denying the possi
bility of it, that we shall be forced to the conclusion that it
must have been the case. How could he have heard the perse
cuted Christians, the dying Stephen for instance, speak of their
Master as glorified and raised to heaven, without reproducing on
his side this mental image ? That he did not of course attribute
any truth to it at first, does not affect the question ; for the con
tent of a representation remains, as is weU known, precisely
the same, whether I attribute or deny existence to it in my judg
ment. Now that Paul would not merely have taken momenta-
rUy into his consciousness the representation of him who had
risen from the dead, but that it must again and again have
occurred to him as the very point on which the decision der
pended in the mental struggles which preceded his conversion,
follows of necessity from the way in which we have supposed
the conversion to have been psychologically brought about. The
whole question turned on whether the crucified Jesus was really,
as his disciples said, declared by the resurrection to be the Mes
siah, and his death thus proved to be the expiatory death of the
Messiah, and a new means of salvation ; or whether he had
remained among the dead, and was therefore no Messiah, his
death no expiatory sacrifice, but the death of a malefactor. The
decision depended on Paul's being able or unable to convince
himself of the truth, of the alleged resurrection ; and are we to
believe that this cardinal point did not fiU and excite the very
depths of his consciousness ? How could he have turned over

16 INTRODUCTION.
and over in his mind the debateable possibUity of the resurrec
tion, without forming an image of the risen one ? But when he
had once formed this image, if it were only mentally to reject it
at first, nothing is more natural than that the decisive tum of
his convictions should clothe itself in the form of the sudden
appearance before him, as an objective reaUty, and in the over
powering brightness of heavenly majesty, of that image of the
risen Jesus, which he had so vehemently struggled against, and
each time more vainly endeavoured to reject. Upon this the
struggle was decided, every doubt was vanquished ; and Paul
the persecutor had attained to the same certainty founded on
experience as the first disciples, that the crucified one was the
Messiah. But then he was the Messiah, not only, as they said,
in spite of the cross, but precisely because of the cross ; his cruci-
fij^ion was the turning-point of his work as Messiah, the end of
the old, the beginning of a new covenant, an offence to the Jews,
, and to the Greeks foolishness, but the power of God and the
wisdom of God to those who are caUed, both Jews and GentUes,
to beUeve in him (1 Cor. i. 23 £).
Looked at in this way, the conversion of Paul was certainly at
the commencement an intellectual process, a dialectical struggle
of religious thought, as it could not but be where he had to deal
with the truth or falsehood of objective ideas, and with convic
tions relating to dogma bound up with history. And we cannot
faU to see unmistakable traces of this theoretical point of
departure in his system of doctrine ; his scheme of faith cer
tainly always has for basis the inteUectual element of a judg?
ment as to truth of conviction, and in the structure raised thereon
the objective truths of the resurrection and the expiatory death
of Christ stand first. And yet this is but one side. The ques
tion with which he had to deal at the time of his conversion was
undoubtedly no merely inteUectual one, concerned only with
the apprehension of knowledge by the understanding, but it
comprehended the highest interests of the reUgious feeUngs.
The whole reUgious world in which Paul the Pharisee Uved, in

INTRODUCTION. 17
¦which he had taken root with aU the fibres of his soul, with his
thought, feeUngs and wffl, his whole being as it had existed up
to that day was at stake if the faith in Christ prevailed. The
process of his conversion, therefore, was anything but a cold
calculation of thought; it was, on the contrary', the deeply moral
act of obedience of a tender conscience to the higher truth which
irresistibly forced itself upon him (hence faith is to "him a
wra/coiy), an act of splendid self-denial, the gi"viQg up of the old
man and his whole religious world to death, so that henceforth
he should not " glory," nay, he should not live, save in Christ"
the crucified. This is in truth the key-note of which we may
hear the sound in all the Apostle's letters, in which he is con-""
stantly depicting his personal relation to the cross of Christ ; it
is never a mere relation of objective theory, but always, at the
same time and essentiaily, the relation of the subjective union
of the inmost feelings with the crucified, a mystic communion
with the death on the cross and .with the life of Christ risen.
With his death upon the cross; for by placing there aU that-
had hitherto been his pride, giving himself to Christ for his own
by faith, and seeking in his cross his only " glory," the world is
crucified to him, and he to the world (Gal. "vi. 14) ; by letting
go all that had hitherto made his religious Ufe, especiaUy the
law, he is crucified with Christ (Gal. u. 19); and that is true not
only of him, but of aU who are Christ's, for " as one died for all,
so are all dead " (2 Cor. v. 14). But as Christ is not only dead,
but also risen, to Uve henceforth unto God (Eom. vi. 10), so faith
is likewise not only communion with the death, but also "with
the new life of Christ. In the passing away of the old, every
thing has at the same time become new (2 Cor. v. 17) ; in the
crucifixion of the old man with Christ, a new creature has come
into being (ibid, and Gal. vi. 15). And that new life consists
primarily in this, that those for whom Christ died are to show
their gratitude for this by living henceforth for Christ, and
devoting their Uves to him and his interests, or, as he himself
did, to God (2 Cor. V. 15; Gal. ii 19; Eom. xiv. 8). And
0

18 INTRODUCTION.
further, the Ufe of Christians is not only devoted to Christ, but
consists also in communion with him ; it is a a-v^rjv, (rjv a/m a-vv
Xjoio-Tw, a KoivoiVM Xpia-rov (1 Thess. V. 10 ; Eom. vi. 4 — 8 ; 1 Cor.
i. 9 ; 2 Cor. xiii. 4) ; nay, this communion is in its nature so
intimate, that the Apostle loves to describe it as a mutual
indwelling, as the being and living of the man iv Xpicrrcf, and of
Christ iv ip,oi (Gal. ii. 20), so that the man's own life is com
pletely absorbed and taken up into the Ufe of Christ in him
(ifioi TO ^rjv XptcTTOs, Phil. i. 21).
But now, out of this idea of the mystical communion of the
faithful with Christ, which again was but a consequence of the
conversion, of this painful dying and becoming a new creature,
there grows a second branch of the doctrinal system of Paul,
which became as important for its positive formation and further
construction, as the consequence of the expiatory death was
decisive in forming the negative part of the Pauline Gospel in
opposition to the Jews or the Jewish Christians. The life of
the risen Jesus, with which the faithful enter into communion,
belongs to that heavenly world on the other side of the grave,
whose element is not earthly substance, not the weak, transitory
and unclean o-dp^, but the higher substance of the ¦n-vevp,a, to
which belong life and strength, incorruptibUity and purity, and
which shines forth as radiant light (SS^a). As Christ himseK,
through his resurrection, has entered into the sphere of pure
spirit, he has absolutely become spirit (2 Cor. uL 18); which,
however, does not exclude the a-Sifia Trvevp.aTiKov or crcSjua ttjs
Sd^ijs (Phil. iu. 21), in which we are told he actually ap
peared to Paul himself. But Christ does not only become a
Uving spirit himself, he is also a life-giving principle, TrveC/xa
((aoTToiovv (1 Cor. XV. 45), to those who unite themselves to him
in faith. And this primarily in the transcendent-physical or-
eschatological sense of the " eternal heavenly Ufe," though
secondarily in the most comprehensive sense of the word " life."
It is in the former sense that, just as we bear, as natural men,
the image of the first earthly Adam, so shall we, as Christians,

INTRODUCTION. 19
bear the image of the second heavenly Adam (1 Cor. xv. 49) ; as
in Adam aU die, so in Christ shall aU be made alive (ib. ver. 22) ;
or,, as we have grown into oneness with Christ through imita
tion of his death (in baptism), so shall we also through the
imitation of his resurrection ; if we have died with Christ, so we
beUeve that we shaU Uve with him (Eom. vi. 5 — 8). In all
these passages, the immediate sense of the word "live" is
primarUy eschatological. Only it inevitably foUowed from the
way in which this whole view originated, that the transcendent
eschatological idea became of necessity an immanent ethical one.
For as our future participation in his resurrection-life depends
on our having died with him in baptism, and on our being
iv Xpia-Tif in believing, consequently on our present mystical
communion with Christ, so our participation in his Trveij/ia-life
cannot be only future, but must also be already present. Hence
at the very moment when we entered into mystical communion
with Christ (when we, through ivSva-aa-Oai, Xpia-rbv, became
iv Xpi(7T<f ovT«), that is to say, at our baptism, we must have
received at tlie same instant the ¦Kvevp,a, of Christ, as an immediate
commencement and earnest of our future complete conformity
with his TTveij/ia-Ufe. Thus baptism, as the moment of ivSva-aa-Oai,
TOV Xpia-Tov, is at the same time the beginning of a Katvdrijs fw^s,
namely, of the fto^ iv xve-u/tart (Gal. iu. 27 ; Eom. vi. 4, vii. 6),
which is essentiaUy identical with the ftojj dtdJvtos and CTovpavtos
of the risen Jesus and of our o"wn resurrection — as it were, the
present inward anticipation of the future heavenly state, under
the veil of the earthly corporeaUty of the ardp^.
We have here a turn of Christian thought which has bearings
of immeasurable importance. WhUst the direction of the primi
tive Christian consciousness was predominantly, one may almost
say exclusively, eschatological, and the Ufe of a Christian on
earth appeared for this reason to be stUl an expectation, not yet
a completion; the old that perishes, not the new that endures
(dt&iv owos, not dioiv /.leAAeov), Paul makes the " newness of life "
to begin not with that completion on the other side of the grave,
c2

20 INTRODUCTION.
but with the Ufe of faith on earth of the Messiah's community.
And this change in the time of its commencement immediately
leads to a transformation of the idea itself ; the Messianic fco^^
by commencing at once in the Ufe of faith on earth, is stripped
of its one-sided, supernatural, apocalyptic character, and becomes
the new Ufe of Christians in the truly spiritual, in the ethical
sense of the word, the renewal of the yovs, the self that thinks,
feels and wUls. Not, indeed, that the eschatological sense of
the Christian fw^ is eUminated'; on the contrary, in the chief
passages bearing on the point, this forms, as has been already
remarked, so essential an element, that no unbiassed commen
tator can avoid regarding it as the primitive sense, which under-
Ues the whole development. But it is just the development by
Paul of the immanent ethical out of the transcendent eschato
logical idea that was so original and so fruitful for Christian
dogma ;^ and for this we are ultimately indebted to that deeply
religious mysticism of faith, by which Paul knew himself to be '
already one with " the Son of God who loved him and gave him
seK for him."
As the idea of the Messianic fuij was changed when regarded
from the standpoint of Pauline mysticism, so Ukewise was that
of the Messianic ¦n-vivjj.a,. That man obtained the Messianic
irvevfjta in baptism, wa^ taught by Paul in accordance with the
universal opinion of primitive Christianity. But by this Trve^[ia
was understood a " donum superadditum" peculiar to the Mes
sianic time, which manifested itseK as a purely supernatural
1 If we add to the foregoing consideration, that the other fundamental idea npon
which Paul's system of salvation rested — namely, justification — also originated in the
eschatological representation of the Messianic judgment, and if we remember further
that precisely in the same manner the decisive words in the Gospel message of Jesus
himself, " The kingdom of heaven is among you," sprang from the simple anticipation
of the future and external kingdom of the Messiah, in the present and internal con
sciousness of the community, we thus come by a purely empirical method on the
traces of one of the deepest laws of development of the history of religion  namely,
that the religious spirit loves to conceal its deepest mysteries and its most fruitful
germs in the calyx of richly coloured apocalyptic imagery, in order that they may
grow and gain strength under the .protection of that covering, until they are capable of
flourishing alone and defying both storm and cold by their own strength.

INTRODUCTION. 21
force by extraordinary miracles. Now with Paul, this notion,
again, of the wonder-working spirit is by no means eUminated
(cf. 1 Cor. xii), but it is stripped of its one-sided supernatu
ral character, and completed on the truly spiritual, ethical side.
The Messianic ¦Kvevp.a. thus no longer remains as something
which transcends humanity, and only works upon men in an
extraordinary and abrupt manner, but it enters into the Christian
himself, and becomes his own ever- working principle of life, the
principle of the /catvos avOpayn-o's. This Messianic -irvivjjia is here
no other than the share of man in that Trvevfm which Christ
himself has as the essence of his life. Now as the faithful have
their life in Christ, and the Ufe of Christ in themselves, so also
wUl the TTvevfia of Christ fuse itseK with the wvevp.a of the
Christian into the essence of one Kaivf) ktUtvs. In fact, in many
passages all distinction between the 7rveop,a of Christ and that
of the Christian is done away with, whereas in others these two
are again opposed to each other as active'- and passive principle.
It is clear in any case, that by means of this new doctrine of the
Christian ;rveC/xa which proceeded from the mysticism of Paul,
the foundation is laid for the immanent ethical view of Chris
tianity. Paul himself had already drawn a direct inference from this
doctrine of the irvevpux,, and used it for the foundation of Christian
morality. This point was all the more important on account of
the ease with which the PauUne doctrine of the abrogation of
the law by grace could be misunderstood in an immoral and
Ubertine sense, and was in fact so misunderstood both by friends
and enemies. Paul refuted this apparent consequence of his
doctrine concerning the law, by the true consequence of his
doctrine of the irvevjm. As the Christian has entered by baptism
into community with the crucified and risen Christ, so is the
old man, whose principle was the a-dp^, crucified with Christ, and
a new man, whose principle of Ufe is the irvevp.a, has risen.
Now since the -n-vevfia is the pure ^element of the heavenly

22 INTRODUCTION.
world, that which proceeds from it in the sphere of morality can
only be good, and the Christian has only to give himself up to
the natural desire of this -spirit which dweUs in him, in order
to do good ; good is therefore the truly natural for him, so far as
he has the spirit. If, on the contrary, he does evU, then he
follows the lusts of the flesh, the impure nature of which can
only bring forth evil fruit in the sphere of morality, as the pure
nature of the spirit brings forth only good fruit (Gal. v. 19 — 23).
But as this sinful flesh was only the principle of the old man
who died with Christ, it has no further claim on the new man
who Uves with Christ ; it cannot and dare not have the mastery
over him ; he cannot and dare not any longer be under an pbU-
gation to compUance with it (Eom. vUi. 12, vi 14). Thus evU
is for the Christian as such that which is contrary to his nature ;
the power and domination of sin is necessarily abrogated for the
Christian, together with the law that was its provocation. The
requirement, therefore, to keep from e"vn and to do good, is for
the Christian the self-evident consequence of his new nature ;
he has only to exhibit in action that which he already isHn fact, a
spiritual man. (" If we Uve in the spirit, let us also walk in
the spirit ! Walk in the spirit, and ye shaU not fulfil the. lusts
of the flesh." Gal. v. 25, 15).
Thus the Apostle made his doctrine of irveviia the principle of
an entirely new ethical system, which completely overcomes as
' well the mere constraint of a slavish obedience to law, as the
mere license of a lawless freedom (that is to say, the Jewish as
weU as the heathen morality), and elevates them to a freedom
which is a law to itself, and to a law which first makes man
truly free. " The law of the spirit of life in Christ hath made
me free from the law of sin and death. Where the spirit of the
Lord is, there is freedom" (Eom. viu. 2; 2 Cor. ui. 17). This
new ethical principle is no less a landmark in the history .of
morality, than justification by faith is in the history of religion.
And how close is the connection between them is shown by

INTRODUCTION. 23
the whole course of our exposition, inasmuch as it is precisely
the mysticism of Paul's faith in Christ which has led to his
doctrine of the Trv€vp,a, and hence to the new ethical principle.
But now it is in exact accordance with the Apostle's method
of dogmatizing to fix the connection between the ethical conse
quence and its reUgious foundation also in an immediate and
objective fashion, without reference to the subjective psycho
logical process by which it is brought about. . That which com
pletes itself in the belief in the crucified one, by means of an
inward moral process, namely, the dying of the old man or of
the flesh, as the principle of Ufe which rules the natural man, is
connected by the Apostle with the crucifixion of Christ, as if it
had actuaUy happened here, once for aU, as an objective fact ;
Christ himself has through his death died to sin (is placed out of
aU relation to it) ; sin (thought of as an objective power) has
been put to death on the cross (Eom. vi 10, viu. 3). The death
of Christ now obtains, therefore, a new significance; it is not
merely an expiatory death for cancelling guUt and bringing
ideal imputed righteousness, but it is also the destruction of the
adp^, or of the real principle of sin ; it is therefore not only a
' means of reconcUiation, but also of the real moral renovation of
humanity — ^not only of their justification, but also of their sanc
tification. This is undoubtedly a most important extension of
Paul's doctrine of the redeeming death of Christ; for by this
means the moral element of the Christian idea of redemption is
brought into the most immediate connection with its religious
element (reconciUation), and represented as equaUy essential.
Only we must not understand by this that the moral side of
Paul's doctrine of redemption is the chief thing, and the true
spiritual essence of his dogma. The proposition that the bodUy
death of Christ has destroyed the power of sin, is, when ex
pressed in this unqualified manner, just as unspiritual and
incomplete as the other, that he has canceUed the guilt of sin by
taking the place of the sinner. Both propositions require in
equal measure to be quaUfied by Paul's fundamental idea of the

24 INTRODUCTION.
mystical communion of the beUever with Christ, by which hig
death is no longer an isolated historical event apprehended by
the senses, but a manifestation and a "visible type of the Chris
tian principle of salvation, and is only a cause of salvation just
so far as faith perceives and lays hold, iu it, of the true spiritual
principle of salvation. Thus regarded, the death of Christ is
expiatory, because faith perceives in it the reconciling love of
God (2 Cor. v. 19 ; Eom. v. 8, vui. 32) ; and it is a conquest of
the power of sin, because faith from that reconciUation draws at
the same time the power of moral renovation. But the reconci
liation stUl remains in the Apostle's mind, from the beginning to
the end, the foundation and the main element of his scheme of
redemption ; nor ought this to appear strange to any one who
reflects that Christianity is in the first place and above aU things
a religion, and only in the second place a system of moraUfy.
However, there is no need to depend on this train of thought,
grounded on the philosophy of religion, since Paul's writings
themselves speak plainly enough. The doctrine of the expiatory
death of Christ pervades in perfectly equal proportions aU the
letters of Paul, and is everywhere the point on which hinge his
doctrines of righteousness before God and of the abrogation of
the law ; nay, more, on this turns his dominant religious tone of
trusting, grateful love. The doctrine of the destraction of the
flesh and of sin by the death of Christ, on the contrary, appears
for the first time in Eom. ±vi. 8, and precisely stated only in the
two verses, vi. 10 and viU. 3. Its roots, indeed, pervade aU the
other letters, and are to be found in aU those passages in which
the Apostle describes the entering into the possession of Christ
by faith, and baptism as dying with Christ, as a crucifying of
the world and of self, of the flesh with its lusts ; thus especiaUy
in Gal. ii 19, vi. 14, v. 24; 2 Cor. v. 14 f. But in these pas
sages, this "crucifying of the flesh" still appears as what it
reaUy is, as an ethical process in a subject who feels his coming
to believe as a dying and being born again (just as Paul felt his
conversion). And the " progress " made in Eom. vi. — vui. con-

INTRODUCTION. 25
sists accordingly in nothing else than in a more definite dogmatic
fixing,. but at the same time also an externalizing of that ruUng
idea of Paul's system of faith, which is so far from being incon
sistent with justifying faith in the atoning death of Christ, that,
on the contrary, the latter is precisely that out of which it
sprang. And so we find in the last' letter of Paul, PhU. iU. 9 f.,
justification through faith, and the mystic communion with
Christ in faith, woven together in indissoluble unity.
Moreover, the doctrine contained in the Epistle to the Eomans,
of the mortification of the flesh through the death of Christ, is
closely connected with the fact that the ethical conception of a-dp^
is in this very passage (ch. vi. — ^vUi.) for the first time employed by
the Apostle for a dogmatic purpose. He had, indeed, previously
introduced it in Gal. v., but there only for the purpose of moral
exhortation. That Paul, neither in the Epistle to the Galatians
nor in Eom. i. — v., used this conception for the basis of his
fundamental doctrine of the impossibUity of righteousness ac
cording to the law, is an unmistakable proof that it did not
at that time form part of the foundation of his system (as is
generaUy stated). But "without doubt this moral conception of
a-dp^ first came into his mind as an analogy and consequence of
the corresponding conception of ¦n-vevf.ia. We saw above how the
original transcendent-physical conception of 7rvevp,a acquired an
ethical appUcation under the influence of Paul's mystic faith.
From this it was no violent transition to give a corresponding
ethical application to the physical conception of o-dp^, forming in
the Hebraic scheme the standing antithesis to the transcendent-
physical conception of :rv£i5y«a — at least where it is opposed to
irvaSjxa in the sphere of ethics : for elsewhere the o-dp^ is to
Paul simply ^the weak and transient element of the earthly
existence of created beings. In brief, then, the actual (moraUy
intensified) duaUsm of trdp^ and 7rvevp,a is not an element of
the philosophical anthropology of Paul, nor a presupposition of
his dogmatic teaching, but a secondary product of his Christian
speculation ; it is the psychological reflex of his dogmatical anti-

26 INTRODUCTION.
thesis of sin and favawr?- The case is precisely the same "with
the so-caUed "dualism" of John. This is the reason why in
both cases the appUcation of phUosophical categories, or refer
ence to the metaphysical duaUsm of phUosophical systems, is
decidedly inadmissible, and produces nothing but error and
confusion. The antithesis of sin and favour, which dominates Paul's
thinking, first presented itself to us under the reUgious cate
gories of law and righteousness by faith ; and, secondly, in the
sphere of ethical psychology under the categories of flesh and
spirit. Finally, it acquires its most pregnant and comprehen
sive expression in the contrast of the historical types Adam and
Christ, or the first and second Adam. Viewed by the Apostle
from the height of his Christian philosophy of history, the
development of humanity divides itseK into two periods of
opposite reUgious aud moral character. The first period, which
dates from and is represented by the first Adam, was under
the dominion of sin, the flesh, death, and the law (as taskmaster
of those under the bondage of sin, and a provocation to the
sinful action of the flesh). Adam, therefore, represents the
principle of sin, of death, and of bondage. Christ, on the con
trary, was the second Adam, because he was the founder of a new
reUgious and moral development of humanity, which is no
longer under the law, but under favour ; no longer under the
dominion of the flesh, but under that of the spirit ; no longer in
a state of bondage, but of sonship to God ; no longer subject to
death, but in possession of (eternal) life. But in both instances
Paul sees in the founder of a race the personification of the
"type of the race, or of its ruUng principle. Thus Christ, as the
founder of a humamty in the condition of sonship to^God, becomes
in his eyes the personified principle of divine sonship, the abso
lute ideal of the very Son of God. But in consequence of this

^ The translator has ventured to substitute for the technical term "grace," in
which the original notion is almost entirely obscured by theological accretions, the
word " favour," by which that notion is always expressed in ordinary English.

INTRODUCTION. 27
identification of the historical person with the absolute principle,
the former is snatched from the limit of the finite, his course is |
transferred to heaven and eternity ; Christ becomes the pre
existing heavenly man who is sent hither from heaven in the
fulness of time, to take upon him our sinful flesh, by the death \
of which he is to cancel the guilt and power of sin, but by his '
resurrection to become a quickening spirit to humanity, that we
also through the communion of his spirit may be changed into
spiritual men and children of God, after the image orthe " first
born among many brethren." ^^ —
Thus Paul's Christology comprehends the fundamental ideas^
of his gospel, and reflects it truly in strict accordance with its '
origin; for his Christology, Uke his whole doctrinal system,
is neither derived from tradition, nor the result of abstract
speculation or extraneous phUosophic dicta, but is derived from
reflection on the blessings of salvation granted in the death and
resurrection of Christ, as these presented themselves to the
faith of Paul as facts of his inward experience. Paul was con- /
scions of having himself become a new man through faith in
him who was crucified and raised from the dead, of having pain
fuUy worked his way out of the bondage of the flesh and of the
law into the freedom of the spirit of sonship : this consciousness,
when he -extended it to the whole company of believers, natu
rally led him to apply to the cause of this change the concep
tion of " the second Adam," of the " life-giving Spirit," of " the
first-born Son of God," the "prototype of the spiritual or hea
venly man" (1 Cor. XV. ; Eom. viu. 29). Thus ,^^haye before
us^Ae^^^^^ dogm/Cdic.jGJwistolpgy, i.,e..,„a,„dogtrine about Christ
which is in reality an exposition of the Christian consciousness
oFthe community in the form^of_ declarations respecting the
person of its Founder. As a free (specidative) expression of the
Christian idea, it has an ideal height and breadth which constitute
it the common point of departure for aU further Christian specu
lation ; but the uniting of the idea with the historical person of
the Founder, and especiaUy with his greatest moral act, the sacrifice

28 INTRODUCTION.
of his death upon the cross, adds to the ideal thought the real
power of religious pathos and of heartfelt sympathy ; and in so
doing creates that mysticism of feeling, which we find every
where in the history of reUgion to be the most genuine and
fruitful source of religious life and thought. Indeed, this mys
ticism leads directly to speculation ; for whUe the pious subject
through sympathy feels himself as one with his object, the limits
of indi-vidual life and the separation of indi"vidual from indi
vidual are by this act done away, the particular is elevated to
the universal, and thus that is accomplished in the immediate
form of feeling which speculation does in the mediated form
of thought.* Thus, the deepest speculations of Paul concerning
a second Adam, the spiritual man, &c., do in fact issue only
from the depth of his religious feeUng. This should be taken
more into account than has commonly been done in recent
treatises,^ which, ever looking only on the dialectical side of
Paul's character, are on the point of turning him into a hair
splitting schoolman, of whom it is impossible to conceive how
he became the great Apostle of the GentUes, who knew how to
bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ
(2 Cor X. 5).
It remains, in conclusion, to raise the question, whether Paul's
system of doctrine, as it has here been sketched, can be set forth
at all as a completed whole, or whether it passed through changes
and developments by which our statement must be modified.
Now the answer to this question depends of course essentiaUy
on the critical judgment respecting the genuineness or spurious-
ness of certain letters which have come down to us under the
^ The only decided exception in this respect is the treatise of Reuss, Histoire de
la Thgol. Chret. au Sifecle Apostolique, which indeed requires to be supplemented
again on the other side, as it gives less than its just weight to the Judaizing form of
Paul's dogmatic teaching.
* The reader who is not familiar with the technical terms of German philosophy
¦will derive much enlightenment as to the meaning of these aud some of the other nn-
English terms, which it has been impossible altogether to exclude from this transla
tion, by consulting the Vocabulary given in the Prolegomena to Mr. "Wallace's Hegel.
(The Logic of Hegel, &c., with Prolegomena, by -William WaUace. Oxford, 1874.)

INTRODUCTION. 29
name of Paul. Since the thorough investigation of critical
questions does not faU within the plan of this work (for criti
cism concerns us here only in so far as it is affected by the
dogmatic teaching which wUl occupy us in the course of the
book), I can here only briefly express my critical views for the
information of the reader.
In addition, then, to the four undisputed Epistles, I hold to be
genuine the first to the Tbessalonians, the Epistle to PhUemon,
and that to the Philippians ; as unqualifiedly spurious, that to the
Ephesians and the three pastoral Epistles; as spwrious unth
qualificoAions, the second to the Tbessalonians, and that to the
Colossians. In these two, and especiaUy in the last, it appears
to me as impossible to conceive that they are genuine in every
part as that they are in every part spurious ; and since this is so,
scarcely any other conclusion remains for us than the view ela
borated by Holtzmann in the most recent work oh the Epistle
to the Colossians and the Ephesians, that the Epistle to the Colos
sians which we have is founded on a genuine letter of Paul re
touched by a later hand. But I cannot agree with Holtzmann in
thinking that the hand is that of the author of the Epistle to the
Ephesians. I rather hold it to be that of an Alexandrian follower
of Paul holding similar views with the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews. As regards the separation of the genuine from the
spurious parts, whUst fuUy recognizing the ability displayed in
Holtzmann's attempt, I am yet on several points unable to agree
with him, and have no confidence in my abUity to make an exact
separation and a complete reconstruction of the original letter.
But since in any case the peculiarities of the letter proceed from
the later hand, its real use is as a monument of a development of
Paul's doctrine after the time of Paul. With the Epistle to the
Hebrews and that to Barnabas, it marks the first phase of this
development, determined chiefly by Alexandrian influence. The
second phase of it is mainly represented by the Epistle to the
'Ephesians, the tendency of which towards church union has
abeady been foreshadowed in the first Epistle of Clement and

30 ¦INTRODUCTION.
the first of Peter. Th.& third phase represented by the pastoral
and pseudo-Ignatian letters, exhibits Paul's doctrine after it had
passed over into the faith of the universal (cathoUc) Church.
Lastly, we shaU have to show from the Acts of the Apostles,
how the original system of Paul and its historical struggles were
reflected in a subdued light in the system as catholicized.
Part II. of this book wiU be occupied with these phases of
Paul's doctrine after the time of Paul. But the original system
as it is to be extracted from the genuine letters forms the subject
of Part I. In these there occur, it is true, differences of such a
kind as show an advance in the dogmatic thought of the Apostle ;
but this consists here, not in a transformation, but simply in a
more precise development and articulation of the dogma. Hence
there is no good reason, in my opinion, for arranging the exposi
tion of the whole in phases of development following each other
in order of time ; on the contrary, nothing but an exposition of
the entire system as one wUl correspond to the essential unity of
the fundamental views undeniably presented to us in the original
letters. Due notice wUl, however, be taken, in every instance
in which they occur, of shades of difference in the earlier and
later letters. In considering these we must not faU to observe
that local circumstances had their share in producing these differ
ences. Thus we find in the first Epistle to the Tbessalonians
no mention of the doctrine of justification, and this doctrine is
also thrown very much into the background in the Epistles to
the Corinthians ; in both cases doubtless for the same ob"vious
reason, that there was no need to explain the doctrine of justifi
cation to a purely GentUe community in that precise form into
which it was thrown by the categories , of Jewish thought ;
though the nucleus of this doctrine, namely, the idea of the
favour of God through Christ, is by no means absent from these
letters. It is more reasonable to suppose that the absence
of the notion of o-d/o^ in 1 Tbessalonians is an indication that
this conception in its precise dualistic significance was not
worked out by Paul tUl a later period, since the opportunity of

INTRODUCTION. 31
applying it was not wanting in the Epistle to the Tbessalonians.
But as regards the Epistle to the PhUippians, my conviction is
that it is no further removed from that to the Eomans, with
reference both to questions of dogma and relations of party, than
this latter is from the Epistle to the Galatians; whereas we find
in it no trace of any of the peculiar characteristics of the Epis
tles to the Colossians and Ephesians. I therefore consider the
grouping together of these three Epistles under a common title,
which has now become the fashion in both the opposing camps ^
of New Testament theology, to be a decided error, and I believe
that they will soon be again separated. If we examine each
of these letters attentively by itself, we find, in the first place,
that no one of them has the same general purpose as either
of the others, so that they ought at aU events to be expounded
separately and not together; and, secondly, that the Epistles
to the Colosssians and the Ephesians are closely related, and
that both of them deviate "widely from the original doctrine of
Paul, but that the Epistle to the PhUippians, on the contrary, has
as little in common with these two as it has much in common
with the older and undoubtedly original letters; and that its
peculiar character exactly corresponds with the personality of
Paul in general, and in particular with his personal relations to
^ The defenders of the genuineness of these three letters (Weiss, R. Schmidt,
Sabatier), who nevertheless separate them from the older letters and present them
all three together, under the heading "Letters of the Imprisonment," are in the
awkward position of being bound to explain how it happened that the Apostle during
his imprisonment suddenly entered on a new method of teaching. Could the short
interval that elapsed between the composition of the letter to the Eomans and his
imprisonment, have sufficed to account for so radical a difference between that letter
and those to the Colossians and Ephesians ? And even on this most improbable
supposition, how can it, in the next place, be explained that the supposed last of the
three "Letters of the Imprisonment," the Epistle to the Philippians, is precisely the
one which exhibits the least of these radical changes in the Apostle's dogma, or rather
does not show them at all, but again closely resembles the Epistle to the Romans ?
Are we here again to suppose a retrogression in the dogmatic thought of Paul ? Surely
we cannot imagine the Apostle Paul to have been so exceedingly changeable ! (See
the apt remarks of Holtzmann, ut supra, p. 230). Until these difficulties, which tell
strongly against the half-critical view of "The Letters of the Imprij?onment,"are more
satisfactorily solved than they have hitherto been, the assertion ai Weiss (Neutest.
Theol., 2nd. ed. p. 203, foot-note) that the "Letters of the Imprisonment" must
stand or fall together will remain an assertion and nothing more.

32 INTRODUCTION.
this community at the time of its composition, while it would
be exceedingly difficult to account for exactly this individual
colouring in any other "writer.^
FinaUy, with regard to the exposition of Paul's original system,
the question may be asked, whether the genetic process, as it
has been briefly sketched in this Introduction, should not have
been made the foundation. The special object of this book,
namely, to deUneate the organic process of development of the
Christian dogma in its commencement in Paul, might seem to
require this. But the carrying out of this principle would, in
the first place, have led us into far too much repetition ; and,
secondly, it would have made it much more difficult to survey
the foundation of the several dogmas by Paul. For this reason
I have preferred first to give in the form of an introductory
sketch the organic development of Paul's thought as deduced
from its single root, but in the remainder of the work to arrange
my materials pretty much under the usual heads, whUe at the
same time I have striven to have regard as much as possible to
the position of each dogma in the progressive teaching of Paul.
As the result, therefore, of a kind of compromise between these
two considerations, the foUowing order was adopted: Sin and
the Law, Eedemption through the Death of Christ, the Person
of Christ, Justification through Faith, Spiritual Life, Commu
nion in Christ, the Completion of Salvation. The transition to
the further history of the development and transformation of
Paul's system must be made by setting forth the original relation
between it and the tendencies of Jewish thought, in the course
of which it wUl be necessary to describe the relations of parties,
as they appear' in various forms in the Epistles to the Galatians,
to the Corinthians, and to the Eomans and PhUippians.
-I
• On the authorslip of the Philippians, cf. Hilgenf eld's essays in the Z. f. w. Th.,
1871, Part. iii. p. 309 f., and 1873, Part ii. p. 178 f . : on 1 Thess., cf. the same
Review for 1862, Psjrt iii., and 1866, Part iii. It is to be hoped that some competent
hand will soon give fas a handbook of early Christian literature, or introduction to the
New Testament, coJitaining the established results of modern criticism well sifted.
This is a want muci felt in works like the present, which, though not directly critical,
must presuppose criticism, and therefore need standard critical works to refer to.

^art Jfxrst.

STATEMENT OF THE DOCTRINE OF PAUL.

CHAPTEE I.
SIN AND THE LAW.

In making the doctrine of sin the point from which we start
in our statement of his doctrinal system, we are following the
systematic logical order observed by the Apostle himseK in the
Epistle to the Eomans, where he (Eom. i. 18 — iu. 20) prepares
the way for his thesis of righteousness by faith, and supports it
negatively by proving the actual universality of sin, both among
Jews and Gentiles. An appeal Uke this to actual experience
forms a most suitable point of departure for an exposition which
was to bring home the pecuUar teaching of the Apostle to the
consciousness of the reader by connecting it with universaUy
admitted truths of experience. But an inductive proof of this
kind drawn from experience could neither in itself, nor for the dog
matic consciousness of the Apostle, be the underlying and funda
mental principle of the whoUy original idea of righteousness by
faith ; and for this simple reason, that such an inductive judgment
of complete universality, drawn from the frequency of a pheno
menon, only produces an impression of relative truth, or proba
bUity, not the absolute certainty of a dogmatic principle. In
this instance especially, the facts of experience on which the
proof rests consist from the nature of the case of gross acts of sin
which are at once suggested by the survey of general states of
morality, and are certainly also indicative of the average charac
ter of a mass, of a people, of a generation, and the like, but which
are far from justifying the inference of a similar corruption in
D 2

36 SIN AND THE LAW.
every individual. On the contrary, the same experience which
proves the average moral corruption of the mass, nevertheless
always exhibits individual exceptions, or at aU events the greatest
differences in degree of better and worse, — facts which in them
selves may perfectly weU be used as negative instances against
the inductive inference of the universality of sin, and have in
fact often been so used. Thus much at aU events is clear, that
a proof from experience, as adduced in Eom. i 18 — Ui 20, to
show the universality of sin, can only have a suppwting force for
a theory which has been already estabUshed without this proof,
and rests on a much deeper foundation.
This theory is discussed by Paul principally in two other
passages (Eom. v. 12 f. and vii), both times in connection with,
or on the occasion of, a dogmatic explanation of the relation of
the saving work of Christ to the law, or to the old pre-Christian
economy ; from which it is perfectly clear that the real ground
and point of support for the dogmatic theory of sin was found
by the Apostle in his doctrine of redemption.
Sin as the Principle of the Pre-Cheistlan or Natural
Man.
The well-known passage which is the authority on this sub
ject, Eom. V. 12^ — 21, can only be rightly understood by starting
from the point of view that the Apostle is not seeking here to
establish a doctrine of sin, but rather to support his doctrine of
justification, by fitting it into a glorious frame-work of history'
viewed in the light of the philosophy of religion. The paradox
ical notion of an objective righteousness (granted by God to maUj
without regard to the subjective nature of his life, and solely for'
Christ's sake), which is supported in detaU in iii 21 f., is noW
in conclusion to be made acceptable, and stripped of its appa
rently extraordinary and arbitrary character, by a parallel drawn
from the philosophy of religion. Its counterpart or anti-type,
corresponding exactly in form, though opposite in content, .;,is

SIN THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PRE-CHRISTIAN MAN. .37
found in an equaUy objective dominion of sin and death, decreed
against all through Adam without regard to the subjective nature
of their lives. That this is the intention of the parallel which
opens with the word wa-jrep at ver 12, becomes clear from vers.
18, 19, 21, in which the comparison of Adam and Christ, which
had been interrupted by the insertion of the points of difference
in vers. 15 — 17, is carried out in the formal resemblance of the
effects thejr produced. The theme of the preceding section is,
that through the obedience of one, namely Christ, many (faithful)
have righteousness imputed to them (are enabled to stand in the
position of righteous men), or that the favour of God, through the
mediation of Jesus Christ, exercises a dominion to eternal life
by means of righteousness. This had before (i. 17) been given
out as the main theme of the letter, and this he here means in
conclusion (for ch. vi. passes on to other thoughts) to recapitulate,
and at the same time to confirm it by the parallel with sin.
It is df importance for the right understanding of ver. 12, with
which the comparison commences, that the object of it, as sho-wn
in ver. 21, which concludes it, should be clearly perceived. Here
we see, placed in opposition to one another, the dominion of sin,
which it exercises through death (being proved to be the power
which causes the death of man), and the dominion of grace hy
means of righteousness unto eternal life : eternal life is the final
object wrought out by the dominion of grace, but righteousness
is the intermediate cause of this end, and the immediate effect of
grace. The chief force of the entire chain of thought lies in the
fact of righteousness being the immediate proof of grace, in which
the sovereign power of grace first manifests itself. This relation
of righteousness to Ufe corresponds with that of sin to death on
the other side of the parallel. The main point here is, that sin
exercises a sovereign dominion, to which all are subject through
Adam's one act of sin (ipaa-tXeva-ev i) &p,apria, ver. 21 ; a.fiapTioXbi,
KaTea-rdOrja-av ol iroXXot, ver. 19). And sin possesses this sovereign
power in consequence of a divine act of justice (Kpcp,a, KaTdKpi.p,a,
vers. 16, 18), as, on the other hand, righteousness and life have

38 SIN AND THE LA W.
as their ultimate cause a divine act of grace {-^dpio-fm). And as
in the one case life appears as the final object of grace, attained
by means of righteousness as the intermediate cause, so in the
other death is exhibited as the final effect of Kpijj.a, and the im
mediate effect of dfiaprta, which precisely herein manifests its
despotic power. Now although the subject of the preceding
verses (14 — 17) is only the dominion of death in consequence of
Adam's sin, we can see plainly from vers. 19 and 21 that the
main point throughout this section is not this, but the dominion
of sin, which is related to the dominion of death as the real cause
to the external working and manifestation. But just because
the dominion of sin is manifested by the dominion of death, the
latter, as that which is immediately given in experience, serves
as the ground of our knowledge of the former ; and the dominion
of death as the ground of our knowledge must necessarUy go
first in the logical argument; it being, however, always presup
posed that as death in general has sin as its real cause, so like
wise the dominion of death from the time of Adam has as its
real cause the dominion of sin which proceeded from the sin of
Adam. ' If we proceed, bearing in mind these conclusions drawn from
the context, and especiaUy from the end of the section, to vers.
12 — 14, which directly concern us here, it is abundantly clear
that 77 ap.apria (vcr. 12) does not indicate a single act of sin, but
sin as a universal thing, which can be the subject of predicates,
such as /3aa-iXeveiv (ver. 21), Kvpieveiv (vi 14), iTriOvfi'iav KaTepyd^ecrOai
(vii 8), which is condemned (viii. 3), under which man is sold
(vii. 14), from which (or from the binding law of which) the Chris
tian is freed (vi. 22, viii. 2); briefly, therefore, it is sin as a univer
sal power, an objective principle, which, distinct from each man, and
so from all men altogether, is a cause of effects in them, namely,
on the one hand of sinful desires and actions (vu. 8 f.), on the
other hand of their suffering death as the reAos, the 6\pti>via t^9
a/xaprtas (vi. 21, 23). Of sin in this objective sense it is said,
that it " entered into the world" (the complex of created existence)

SIN THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PRE-CHRISTIAN MAN. 39
" by one man" (namely, by the sin of Adam, Trapd^aa-is 'ASdp,, ver.
14) ; that to this consequently it owes not ouly the beginning
of its appearance, but also of its existence, for previously to that
event it had not come into being at all. "And through sin came
death" — death also being thought of as an objective power which
can be said to reign (vers. 14, 17) ; not, however, to reign in the
sense that it was co-ordinate with sin as a sovereign ruler, but
as its coming into the world was only a consequence of the entry
of sin, so it serves only as the means by which sin exercises
and manifests its dominion. "And so death reached aU men,
inasmuch as all Jiave sinned." Ourtos, that is to say, in eon-
sequence of what has just been said, namely, in consequence of
death having once come into the "World with and by the sin of
one man, it now reached every individual man; the dominion
of death, having once entered as an objective power into the
world, extended itself immediately over the "whole mass of man
kind, was absolutely universal, therefore no longer conditioned
and caUed out Jay the particular act of each' individual for him
self; but by having once entered into the world through one
man, Adam, it was (^vrius)- at once estabUshed as the power which
had dominion over aZ(. -^
But now death altogether is only a consequence and visible
manifestation of sin ; accordingly, its SieX9eiv eh Trdvras must also
be a consequence of sin, being shared by all. This is expressed
by the words. i4> ^ Travres Tjnaprov. But the difficulty here lies
in the juxtaposition of two .apparently contradictory reasons
assigned for the universal dominion of death ; on the one hand,
the one transgression of one mah Adam (oiItws), and on the other
hand, the transgression of all (for both Lexicon and Grammar
- require that rifmprov should be understood of committing sin, and
the aorist shows the verb to refer to a definite historical action).
But in this hard and unqualified juxtaposition of these two dif
ferent reasons is contained doubtless an indication that it was
the Apostle s intention that they should be regarded, not as two
different things, but as one and the same; that, consequently, the

40 SIN AND THE LA W.
transgression of Adam at once and as such vjas also the transgreSr '
sion of all. Of course it is only possible to view the matter
thus by supposing tliat, through a certain moral or mystic iden
tity with Adam as the representative head of the race, all were
made partakers of his act. Such an identification of what is
done or suffered by a number of individuals with that which is
done by their head, who is, as it were, their personified unity,
is a mode of thinking by no means unusual with Paul, as will
be seen by a glance at the two parallel passages, 2 Cor. v. 14, et
eis wrlp TrdvTwv aTriOavev, apa. Travres dwiOavov, and 1 Cor. XV. 22,
winrep ei/ toJ ASa/x Travres dtroOvrjiTKoviTLV, ovrcos iv t^ Xpicrri^ Travres
^(aoTToi-ja-ovTai. Moreover, the sense just given to the sentence,
icj> ^, &c., is required to maintain the coherence of the passage
(for the thread of the argument would be severed by any other
interpretation), and also by the words which immediately pre
cede and follow it: by those that precede; for if we were to
understand the word nj/jutprov to refer to the personal transgres
sions of each individual for himseK, theh this would plainly be
the cause of their being doomed to die ; but this would be in
direct contradiction to the last sentence, according to which
death, on the contrary, so, that is in consequence of that one act
of Adam, passed directly to all. The thought contained in the
chief sentence cannot, however, be nullified by the relative sen
tence joined to it, but can only be more accurately determined :
since, therefore, the chief sentence has declared the dominion of
death over all to be the immediate consequence of the act of
Adam, the relative sentence cannot in contradiction to this make
out the dominion of death over individuals to be caused by their
personal transgressions, nor even to be brought about indirectly
by this means; but it may well define more accurateily the idea
contained in the principal sentence, of an immediate causal con
nection of the sin of Adam with the death of all men, by the
intermediate thought that not only the objective dominion of
death over all, but also no less truly, and indeed as its logical
antecedent (hence e<^' <^), the objective dominion of sin over aU

SIN THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PRE-CHRISTIAN MAN. 41
had its origin in the sin of Adam. The relative sentence cannot
be intended to give a new cause which would destroy the force
of the immediate causal connection between the sin of Adam
and the suffering of all aflirmed in the chief Sentence ; it can
only assign for the doom of death pronounced on all a cause
which is already implicitly contained in that causal connection,
and therefore' simply forms an elenient in this relation of cans-.
ality. The word T^p,a,prov is certainly ambiguous in itself;, it
might, if it stood alone, be also understood to refer to the per
sonal acts of sip of individuals, and apart from the context this
would be no doubt the more obvious meaning. But ^ the ambi
guity which is perhaps stUl to be found in ver. 12, is completely
removed by the reasoning contained in the following verses :
" For tintil the law, .sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed
(that is, as personal guilt and liability to punishment) where
there is no law ; .nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses,
even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's
transgression, who is a type of him .that was -to come." It is the
object of these sentences to: explain 'how far the death of all is a
punishment fdr the sinning of all, or in what sense the latter is
to be understood as - the reai cause of the universal dominion of
death. It is declared that this cause is not to be sought in the
personal culpability of individuals, as is proved by a two-fold
evidence of fact : on the one hand, the personal sin of individuals
could not be reckoned. against them as personal guilt (by God)
during the period from Adam, to Moses, while there was as yet
no law ; therefore they could not be subject to the dominion of
death in consequence- of sins committed at that time, which were
not guilty and mortal traut^gressions like that of Adam ; and yet,
on the other hand, it is the fact that they were one and all sub-
' ject to the universal dominion of death. Consequently this domi-.
nion of death cannot (at least during that period of history, and
therefore not in general and for all) be caused by the personal cul
pability of individuals themselves ; accordingly — as it is a fixed

42 SIN AND THE LAW.
axiom that it must in some way be caused by sin — it can only
be caused by that (impersonal) sin of the mass which was included
in the sin of the one man Adam. And this was precisely the idea
contained in ver. 12 which had to be proved.
This theory certainly has something in it very aUen to the
modern tone of moral reflection. We should, however, be more
reconcUed to it if we considered, in the first place, that Paul ia
by no means its inventor, but that he took it from the Je"wish
theology, and only adapted it to his Christian system; and,
secondly, that in spite of its harshness it has for inteUigent
thought a deeply speculative idea as its basis. That death
(that is, of the body) came into the world and became the
universal inheritance of mankind in consequence of the first sin,
was the universal doctrine of the Jews : for instance, it is said,
Wisd. U. 24, that when God had made man for immortahty,
death came into the world through the envy of the devU ; and
Ecclesiasticus xxv. 24, " Of the woman came the beginning of
sin, and through her we aU die." Other passages are adduced
from Jewish theology by Eeiche in his commentary on this
passage ; especiaUy worthy of notice is that in which the
death of the righteous is expressly referred to the sentence pro
nounced on the first man, to which they are subject in spite
of personal freedom from guilt, which is precisely the idea ex
pressed in vers. 13 and 14. But since there is also another
fundamental notion, "Non est mors sine peccato neque casti-
gatio sine iniquitate," the contradiction of these two views can
only be reconciled by regarding the first sin, which was the
cause of the death of all, to be at the same time the sin of all ;
and accordingly it is said further, " Eodem peccato, quo peccavit
primus homo, peccavit totus mundus, quoniam hic erat totus
mundus," or "prime homine peccante cuncta corrupta sunt,
nee in statum pristinum restituentur ante Messiae adventum ;"
and the cause of this is elsewhere stated to be, that the first
man "dux erat mundi et radix omnis posteritatis" (see the

SIN THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PRE-CHRISTIAN MAN. 43
quotations adduced by Eeiche, Commentary on the Epistle to
the Eomans, Vol. I. pp. 368 — 370). We have here unmistakably
the same idea that is expressed in Eom. v. 12.
If we now examine the dogmatic theory which is contained in
these passages, two things are equaUy certain — that it is not
the Church's doctrine of original sin, and that it is not the
rationaUstic theory of the merely personal sin of the individual.
The latter is the direct opposite of what we think we have
proved to be the only possible sense of the passage; but on
the other hand the passage, strictly taken, says nothing of a
transmission by "inheritance" or otherwise of the sin of Adam
to the rest. If the sin of Adam was at the same time the
sin of aU (the act of the race), there is no more need of a
transmission of sin from him to the rest, brought about by the
intervention of the indi"vidual members of the race; but the
whole mass was placed in the position of sinners immediately
by his act — that is, they were placed in that relation to God
which is determined by sin, in consequence of which sin is now
the ruUng power over aU without any personal co-operation on
the part of the subject, nay without any reference whatever to
the subjective constitution of individual men.
The relation of mankind to God was fixed once for all by the
single act of Adam as the head and moral representative of the race,
as that of sinners who are under sentence which is pronounced
9,gainst them in the form ofthe dominion of death. We must not
lose sight of the objectivity of this dogmatic conception of sin, as
no mere subjective moral condition, but an objective religious
relation between God and man, which appears on the part of God
as Kplp-a, and on the part of man makes itself felt as ^dvaTo^s. For
this is of the utmost importance for the right understanding of
the entire dogmatic system of Paul, and especiaUy of the doc
trine of justification. When so regarded, the idea that the rela
tion of the whole of mankind to God has been fixed by that one
act of Adam, and that aU have faUen together under sentence,
has an appearance of great harshness from a moral point of view.

44 SIN AND THE LA W.
But this point of "view is here (as everywhere in the writings of
Paul) too narrow, and fails to do justice to the philosophical
spirit which the Apostle brings to bear on religion. The one
act of the first man is obviously not his mere personal, indi
vidually limited act, but, in the view of the Apostle, at the same
time that of the race. It is consequently by no means he who
happened to be the first man, selected by chance from among the
rest, but man in general, man as man, who has placed himself in
the relation of a sinner to God. This at bottom means that the
relation of man to God is, a priori, pre"viously to aU contingent
individual action, therefore from the beginning and of necessity,
that of alienation and contradiction. This contradiction mani
fests itself, and we become conscious of it, as a standing under
the wrath of God, and experiencing this wrath in the doom of
death, and it must have so manifested itself in order that at last
voXXQ iJi,a,XXov rj X**/"* '"^' V Swpea ev ^^dpiTi tq tov Ivos dvOptoirov
'Irjcrov XpiiTTOv €ts toiis tfoAAoiis iTrepicrcreua-ev. According tO this
deeper apprehension of the Apostle's idea, the one man Adam
is only the personification of the principle of the natural man,
and his act is therefore the manifestation of this principle, the
commencement of the /Saa-tXemiv of dp,apTia. and of ^avaTog, and
yet at the same time a necessary moment in the divine scheme
of salvation as the condition of the jSaa-iXeveiv of xap's. Of course
it is not meant that the Apostle became conscious of this thought
in its pure speculative form, but it would naturaUy assume in
his mind the form of the traditional Jewish notion of a, first sin,
and a, judicial sentence of condemnation passed on mankind in con
sequence. It was only under this form and from it that he
developed the deep idea of a universal and purely objective sin,
which as a reUgious relation once given, as the principle of the
natural man, not dependent on individual moral conduct, but
the root of it, manifests itself in particular acts of sin. But that
this principle also preceded the first act of sin committed by
Adam, as it precedes the personal sins of all other men, is not
to be found directly expressed in the passage we are consider-

SIN THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PRE-CHRISTIAN MAN. 45
ing,^ and indeed is inconsistent with the obvious sense of the
words and the context. For, in the first place, the words, ij a/xaprta
da-rjXdev eis toi/ Koo-pkov, undoubtedly imply the entrance of some
thing new, which consequently did not previously exist at aU ;
and, in the next place, Adam's act of sin, in order to form a
parallel with Christ's act of righteousness, must really have the
significance of a causal act. We must in both these cases bear
in mind that it is Paul's way to conceive the precise historical
moment in which a new general principle is originally manifested
as the operative cause of that principle. Thus the death of Christ
is, in the dogmatic conception of the Apostle, not merely the
manifestation of the new principle of the reconciliation, but the
operative cause of it ; and in the same way he conceives the
sin of Adam, the antithesis in the history of the world to the
death, of Christ, as not simply the first manifestation of the
principle of natural sinfulness, but its efficient cause. The
universality of the consequences is then in both cases connected
with the individual cause by the conception of a judicial act,
in the one case a sentence of favour, in the other a sentence of
condemnation; and this is in both instances nothing but the
complement of that method of conception according to which
the general principle was embodied in an individual causal act.
These two conceptions, therefore, are inseparable, and both equally
belong to the form of the dogma, and neither is to be explained
away from the literal sense of the passage. It is quite out of
place, therefore, to introduce here the doctrine of the a-dp^ as the
natural principle of sin, for this passage expressly exhibits the
principle of sin, not as natural, but as of historical origin^ It
can oidy cause confusion to" apply here a psychological mode of
• "With reference to this point, . Ernesti ("v. Ursprung der S'linde," &o.. Vol. I.
p. 135 f.) must be allowed to be in the right.
^ This is opposed to the view of Liidemann, "Anthropologic des Ap. Paulus,"
p. 86 f. His explanation of this passage shows itself to be wrong by its want of
clearness and consistency ; and this is the consequence of his arbitrarily introducing
the notions of adpS, and irveviia as the foundation of Paul's doctrine, which notions
belong to another sphere of thought.

46 SIN AND THE LAW.
treatment which is quite alien to this passage, whose point of
view is purely that of objective dogma, or of the phUosophy
of religion, and by no means that of subjective psychology or
ethics. EquaUy unjustifiable is it, on the other hand, on the
authority of this passage, which enunciates a historical beginning
of the principle of sin, to interpret the doctrine of o-dp^ to mean
that the human adp^ became the principle of sin at a particular
point of time, and was not in itself that principle. On the
contrary, we have no more right to think of the a-dp^ in con
nection with Eom. v. 12 f. (where not one syUable referring to
it is to be found), than we have in Eom. vU. to think of the fall
of Adam as the cause of the sinfulness of the a-dp^. An unbiassed
exegesis wUl rather leave both views side by side, and wUl not
be put out by the fact that as they stand they are certainly
inconsistent. In Philo, too, "we find the two contradictory doc
trines propounded with equal naivete : (1) the Jewish theological
doctrine of the historical origin of sin in the faU of Adam, and
(2) the Platonic phUosophical doctrine of the defilement of the
soul by the gross material body to which it is bound. But if
we are compeUed to confess that there is a formal contradiction
between Eom. v. 12 f., and Paul's doctrine of the sinful o-ap^,
we are all the more justified in penetrating through the ob"vious
form of the doctrine in Eom. v. 12 f, to the speculative idea
embodied in it, which is so plainly suggested by the actual
words of Paul where he identifies the act of Adam with the
common act of aU. So soon as we grasp the thought that it
was not in truth the first man as an individual who was the
subject of the faU, but man as man, we see the historical
beginning to be merely the form which expresses the univer-
saUty of the principle which has no beginning ; and thus the
substantial agreement of the passage with the Une of thought in
Eom. vU. is placed beyond doubt.
From the moment when Paul had estabUshed the idea of sin
as an objective reality, corresponding with an objective righteous
ness, consequently a state of sin previous to any act of sin, he

THE FLESH. 47
must have felt that this result of theological speculation needed
also to be exhibited anthropologically in the nature of man;
and the more so, since with regard to favour (grace) also he did
not remain satisfied with the purely objective "righteousness
before God," but worked out the subjective "life in the spirit"
as the complement of this. When he had once descended in
this way into the sphere of ethical anthropology, the same
antithesis, sin and favour, which had hitherto been apprehended
theologically under the form of a condemning and a justifying
sentence of God, had now to be represented anthropologicaUy
under the form of Flesh and Spirit.

The Flesh.
Ch. vU. of the Epistle to the Eomans commences (1 — 13) by
expanding into fuUer detaU the theme of ch. vi, that man is
freed from the dominion of the lusts of the flesh by faith ui the
crucifled one; and this idea is here supported by a very peculiar
turn of thought. The bond between man and the law is dissolved
by the death of Christ, and consequently also that between man
and the lusts of the flesh, which worked in his members by-
means of the law. But since the point of this argument depends
upon the law and the energy of the sinful lusts being indissolu-^
bly bound together, so that the one stands and falls with the
other, it might appear to foUow that the law itself is sin (ver. 7).
The Apostle rejects this conclusion. He adheres, indeed, to the
premise, and expands it : the law is the means by which the
energy of sinful lust acts, because by its commandment it gives
the occasion which causes the revival and activity of that sin
which was tUl then dead. But he goes on to show that the
cause of the law so working as to occasion sin is not to be
sought in the law itseK, for it is, on the contrary, holy, just and
good, but in the nature of man, which is such that the law caUs
forth in him the opposite of that which was really intended (ve? s.

48 SIN AND THE LA W.
13, 14). This brings the Apostle to speak more particularly of
the dominion of sin in man, that is, in his "flesh."
When it is said (ver. 18), " I know that in me, thait is in my
flesh, dwelleth no good thing," and this negative statement is
afterwards supplemented by the positive assertion, that the evU
which I wUl not, and yet do, is not really wrought by myself,
but by the sin which dwelleth in me (ver. 20) ; and when the
words "in me" are more definitely determined (ver. 23) as "in
my members," two things are made perfectly clear: first, that the
flesh is not itself sin, for sin dwells in the flesh, which is therefore
the abode of sin, and not sin itself; secondly, that the flesh is not
the entire man, for the contrary is most distinctly affirmed when
the flesh is stated to be the abode of sin, but man's real self to
be on the side of the good, of the law ; it is not I myself who do
the evil, but sin which dwells in me ; and this expression, " in
me," is carefully restricted to the narrower notion, " in my flesh,
in my members," it being evidently implied that sin is not the
only thing that dwells in me, and " the flesh" is not the only
thing which constitutes my nature ; but that looking at me in
another relation, something also good after all — a delight in the
law of God — has place in me, namely, in my "inner man," or in
''my vov's. This, turned into a positive statement, amounts to say
ing that the flesh is that side of man which forms the opposite to
the " inner man," and which has this in common "with the mem
bers of a man — that it is the abode of sin. How can we under
stand this otherwise than that the flesh is materially identical
_with the members, that is with the body, as the outer man ? This
obvious Conclusion is fully estabUshed by the fact, that in the
same context throughout ch. vi. — viii the expressions, a-dp^ and
crw/ia (cro)/*a tov Oavdrov, vii 24 ; (r(afji,a Trjs d,/x,oipTtas, vi. 6 ; and <rdp^
ap,apTias, vUi. 3; also, a-dp^ and o-w/ia as synonymes in viii. 13),
are constantly interchanged: the only possible explanation is,
that the body of man and the flesh are materially identical. At
jthe same time, it would be carrying this deduction too far to
(assert that these two notions are absolutely identical, and equi-

THE FLESH. 49
valent in form as well as content. Against this view it has]
been with good reason urged that certain expressions have been/
applied to the body which are not appUcable to the flesh as thg
seat of sin. For instance, in l^Cor. vi. 13 — 20,_where Paul is
insisting on the sacredness of the body as an argument against
the sensuality of the Corinthians, he says that it belongs to the
Lord, it is a member of Christ, the temple of the Holy Ghost,
wherefore we should glorify God in our body as weU as in our
spirit. l_Cor;_xy,.^5::::::50^is especiaUy instructive on this point ;
here it is said expressly that flesh and blood cannot, inasmuch -
as they are corruptible, inherit the kingdom of God. Therefore
the earthly or natural body, which consists of flesh and blood,
and is sown in corruption, must perish, because it is not the body
that shaU be. But the body of the resurrection is composed of
different material, that is to say, not earthly but heavenly, not
psychical but spiritual, not corruptible but incorruptible and
glorious ; there are these bodies of flesh and blood, of earthly,
corruptible matter, as weU as bodies of spiritual, heavenly, incor
ruptible matter. This brings the relation between the two ideas,1
o-cS/Aa and a-dp^, into perfect clearness. The (rdp^ is the material
of the (earthly) body, but the body is the organized form in which
this matter exists as a concrete earthly individual. It is now plain\
how far these two conceptions can be interchanged, and in what \
sense they are, notwithstanding, different. So far as the body
has for its material substance the flesh, the earthly, corruptible
matter, which is opposed to the heavenly and spiritual, so far
can it share the predicates of the flesh, and be designated as the
body of death and of sin ; but so far as it is, on the other hand,
the organ of an ego whose true function is to be governed not
by the flesh but by the spirit, and which as Christian actuaUy is
determined by the spirit (of God), so far the body can and should^
be an instrument and temple of the Holy Ghost.
That the- flesh is the material substance of the body, and thus iii)
general what is understood hy (living) matter, is ui so many pas
sages the most obvious, not to say the only possible sense, that
E

50 SIN AND THE LA W.
ithis meaning could never have been overlooked or disputed, were
it not that the moral meaning of the word has constantly been
jtaken erroneously for the point of departure. In the first place,
/there are the numerous passages in which Paul expresses pro-
I cesses, states, relations of the body and bodUy Ufe, by the
\ adjective "fleshly," or by the substantive with a preposition.
For instance, " that circumcision which is outward in the flesh"
(Eom. U. 28) ; the union of the sexes is a union in " one flesh"
(1 Cor. vi. 16) ; birth and blood-relationship is Kara o-a/oxa (Eom.
i. 3, ix. 3, 5) ; the unbeUeving Jews are, through their mere
bodUy relationship to Abraham, while unlike him in spirit, only
TiKva, o-apKoi (Eom. ix. 8) ; and similarly Ishmael, who was begot
ten by the mere bodily powers of Abraham, is a son Kara a-dpKa
yevvrjOiis; while Isaac, on the contrary, the child miraculously
born in consequence of God's promise, is born Kara irveviM (Gal.
iv. 29). Then, further, a condition of bodUy sickness is caUed an
dirdiveLa t-JJs crapKo'S (Gal. iv. 13 f.), o"/coAo^ tq crapKL (2 Cor. xil. 7) ;
the mortality of the body depends on the fact that the flesh is
mortal, must from its nature faU a prey to corruption (<f,dopd,
1 Cor. XV. 50 ; comp. 2 Cor. iv. 10 f. and Eom. viii. 11) ; and,
finaUy, bodily life is expressed by ^tjv or Tr^pnraTw Iv o-ap/ci (Gal.
U. 20 ; Phil. i. 23 ; 2 Cor. x. 3), which is carefuUy to be distin
guished from e'vat iv (rapKi in a moral sense (Eom. vui. 8 f.), which
is equivalent to ^rjv Kara a-dpKa, or (TapKiKov uvai.
But, further, the living matter which constitutes the substance
of the earthly body is only a part of the universal matter which
forms the substance of the earthly ivorld, and by means of which
the whole earthly world, as weU as the earthly body, has the
character of being visible to the senses, and therefore also weak,
transient, and perishable (for the connection ofthe ideas "visible"
and " temporal," see 2 Cor. iv. 18, to. pXeTrS/jieva, Trpoa-Kaipa, to, Se
! iir] f3Xe7r6p,eva (XKovta). Thus the notion of crdp^ obtains a wider
i extension to everything " worldly,'' in so far as this, as sensuous
and transient phenomenal being, is in opposition (though not in
(contradiction) to the real supersensuous and eternal divine or

THE FLESH. 51
heavenly being, — a "widening of the notion, which,- although rest-'
ing wholly on the primary non-moral meaning of materiality,
yet trenches closely upon the moral and dualistic meaning of thCj
word. In this sense earthly goods are caUed a-apKiKd, because
they belong to the realm of the sensuous and transient worldly
IKe, in opposition to the higher goods of the spiritual life (Eom.
XV. 27 ; 1 Cor. ix. 11). In this sense masters in relation to
slaves are caUed ot Kara trdpKa Kvpioi (Col. iU. 22), because this
social relation affects only the outer worldly Ufe, not the relaiiion
of Christian brotherhood. When Paul, according to the practice
of his adversaries, wiU boast Kara a-dpKa (2 Cor. xi. 18), his- boast
ing refers especially to his bodUy descent from Israel (ver. 22),
though not to this alone, but also to the other distinctions which
mark a legitimate Apostle (xU. 12), aU of which, however, belong
to the sphere of external sensuous things. 'When he asks the
Galatians whether, after they had begun in the spirit, they wiU
now leave off "in the flesh" (Gal. ui. 3), he is thinking, as is
shown especially by iv. 9 — 11, compared with v. 1 f, of the
threatened faUing back of the community from the freedom of
the gospel which they had already won, into the slavish ceremo
nial of the heathen and Jewish worship, which hinged entirely
. upon the sensuous (o-roixeta tov Koa-piov, iv. 3). In Uke manner
he throws in the teeth of his Judaizing adversaries that their
pretended piety moved in the sphere of the a-dp^, inasmuch as
they gloried in outward sensuous rites, in circumcision for in
stance, which, just because it is an external rite, can have no
value for the spiritual relation of man to God. Again, when the
Apostle assures the Corinthians (2 Cor. x. 3 f.) that he does not
strive Kara a-dpKa, and that his weapons are not fleshly, the con
text, together with ver. 1, vU. 10, and xi. 6, shows very plainly
that he means by this expression such arguments as would im
press a mind which looks at the exterior, is influenced mainly by
that which it sees through the eyes, and is liable to be deceived
by the sensuous appearance of things ; such weapons are not at
his command, for, as is weU known, neither his person nor his
e2

62 SIN AND THE LA W.
speech was impressive ; on the contrary, his appearance conveyed'
the impression of da-diveia, of ^dySos and Tpo/xos, and his preaching
had nothing in it of the persuasive power of man's wisdom
(1 Cor. ii. 3 and 4), and was on this very account foolish in
the eyes of those who were fleshly or worldly-wise (i 20, 26) ;
but nevertheless, on the other hand, it was wisdom in the eyes
of the perfect, namely, the wisdom of God in secret, hidden untU
that time, but now revealed by the spirit of God (U. 6 f.). This
last antithesis alone is sufficient to show that here too we have
to do with the primary meaning of the word ;a, wisdom is fleshly
that keeps to the outside, to the surface of sensuous appearance,
while the preaching of the Apostle deals with the hidden secrets
in which the depths of the Godhead are disclosed. FinaUy, this
is established by the special application of what has before been
said to the concrete case of the Corinthians (1 Cor. ui). When
the Apostle in this passage caUs his readers "fleshly" ("carnal"),
and " babes," because in their party spirit they gloried in men
(iii.' 21), that is to say, prided themselves upon the authority of
this or that man, as if it alone were valid, instead of placing
themselves upon the one foundation, Christ, and judging aU
authorities thereby, in whatsoever esteem they might be held
by men, it is clear that in this case also the reproach of being
"fleshly" refers to the fact of the Corinthians determining the
greater or less authority of their different teachers and party
leaders by the consideration of their external advantages or
deficiencies, and thus forming a hasty judgment based on mere
appearance, with which the divine and true judgment did not
coincide, the result of which accordingly was but empty vanity
and self-glorification (iU. 21 ; compare iv. 3 — 7).
r In aU these passages we have as yet no ground for going
beyond the common Hebraic notion of a-dp^, according to which
it signifies material substance, which is void indeed of the spirit,
but not contrary to it, which is certainly weak and perishable,.
Vand so far unclean, but not positively evU. And as the Old
Testament also called meu in general "flesh," and attached to

THE FLESH. 53
this expression the idea of human weakness and nothingness,
but not of positive wickedness, so Paul knows the word in this
sense, and repeatedly uses it so (Eom. iu. 20 ; 1 Cor. 'i. 29 ;
Gal. U. 16, and i 16 : a-dp^ koX ai/ta, equivalent to falUble, weak
men). Only one cannot but see that it was naturally the nextf
step, to raise the uncleanness and perishableness of the flesh,
in consequence of which it cannot attain to the kingdom of
God (1 Cor. XV. 50), to actual sinfulness, since both these notions
coincide in expressing something displeasing to God, and con-j
trary to the essential holiness of his nature. In fact, this step
in advance had already been made in many passages of the Old
Testament, in which the sinfulness of man is referred to his
fleshly origin and his fleshly nature (cf. Ps. li. 7, cUi. 10, with
14 f. ; Is. xlviii. 8, and especially numerous passages in Job, iv
17 f , XV. 14 f., xxv. 4 — 6). But Paid must have been the more
ready to take this step of advancing the physical uncleanness
and perishableness of the a-dp^ to moral sinfulness, since the
Messianic Trve.vpxi, had for him, as we know, grown out of a prin
ciple of transcendent physical life into a principle of morally
good IKe. When it is no longer the mere imperishableness and
strength of a heavenly substance that is connected with the idea
of TTvevfia, but a morally good spontaneity, its opposite, a-dp^ can
no longer be a mere earthly perishable substance, but a moral
spontaneity must also belong to it, which can of course only be
the opposite to that of n-vev/ia, and therefore wicked. Thus out
of a-dp^ as merely spiritless substance grows a causality opposed
to the spirit, out of its merely passive mortality an active
tendency towards death, or working of death (to 4>p6vqp,a tijs
(rapKos ddvaTOi, Eom. viU. 6 ; Tot iraOrip.aTa Tiav a,p,apTiwv ivrjpyeiTO
iv Tots jxiXeaiv r^piZv iii to Kapiro(j>opT](Ta,i T(f 9avdT(f, Eom. VU. 0 ).
But when the a-dp^ has once gro"Wn out of a mere spiritless sub
stance into an agency opposed to the spirit, its pecuUar activity
can of course only consist in an iTriOvfiuv KaTo, 7rvevp,aTos, and the
^ Liidemann has aptly commented on this passage in his " Paulin. Anthropologie,"
p. 30 f.

54 SIN AND THE LA W.
product of this, its natural acti"vity in the indi"vidual, can only
be individual iTnOvfilai and 'ipya of a sinful kind. Thus from
the opposition of physically different substances, as set forth in
1 Cor. XV., results the dualism,^ of antagonistic moral principles.
Gal. V. 17 : 17 a-dp^ iTnOvp.ei Kara tov Trvevp.a.TO'S, to Se Tvevfia Kari.
TYJi o-apKos, TauTa Se dXXi^Xoii dvTiKeLTai, iVa fj,rj a, av OeXrjTt,- Tavra
TTOLTJTe. How entirely both these principles are thought to be
objective, is shown by the concluding sentence ; they stand over
man, who is as it were placed between them as the object of
their mutual antagonism, so that when he foUows either one of
them, he always experiences an opposition from the other.
It is clear what kind of fruit we get from the flesh so con
stituted, when its anti-spiritual e7ri6vp.eiv gains the "victory and
transforms itself into action ; nothing but gross sins, first of
I sensuality, but afterwards also the more spiritual sins of idolatry
and witchcraft, and the manifold forms of selfishness (vers. 19 —
i 21). That sins of selfishness too proceed from the flesh, has
proved a stumbling-block, and has given rise to the opinion that
it is necessary to give to the word flesh as used by Paul a strange
sense, which is entirely aUen to the primary meaning of the
word.^ Only we must bear in mind that when once the material
a-dp^ has been conceived as an agency opposed to.the spirit, it
may easUy become the principle of sin in general, and thus of
every individual sin, without its foUowing that the form of
manifestation of each individual sin must be determined by this
^ It is the merit of Holsten to have been the first to work out energetically the
dualistic idea of the Pauline aa.p%, first of all in a remarkable treatise on this idea,
published 1865, and afterwards in a work which I have often quoted, "Zum Evaiige-
lium des Paulus und Petrus, Altes und Neues." Agreeing with him as I do in the
main, I cannot always foUow him in details, and in the inferences which he draws.
" Thus Schmid, in his "Neutest. Theol.," II. 268, makes out that the trap? is
proneness to sin in general; and /. MiiUer, in his "Lehre von der Siinde," says
that the trap? is the love of the world ! These explanations, which simply set aside
the primary meaning of the word, are exegetical caprices which are refuted by the
whole of the preceding observations ; we will only refer by way of example to the y^
monstrous absurdity of such an expression as, "In me, that is in my proneness to
sin, or in my love of tbeworld, dwells no good thing." A careful exegesis should
avoid imputing to the Apostle such unmeaning tautology as this.

THE FLESH. 55
materiality, and so can only be sensuous. The form of the
individual sins which result from the principle of a-dp^ is rather
determined in each case by the o^-gan which is seized by the
impulse of the sinful principle, and becomes subservient to it.
¦If this organ is the body (which has been shown to be by no
means identical with "flesh"), then the sins which proceed from
the flesh wUl be of a sensual kind ; but K it is the soul or spiritual
faculty, the reason (yovi), or the heart (/capSta), the sins also will
belong to the thinking and feeling spirit, and so be of a spiritual
nature, like those of selfishness and irreligion.^ This is a point
of cardinal importance for the right understanding of Paul's
anthropology. Since matter, which the "flesh" everywhere and
always is, has been changed from a mere spiritless substance
into a principle opposed to spirit, its activity henceforth is not
limited to its 'immediate sphere, namely, the sinful body, but
extends over the entire man, so that he now becomes a o-ap^tKos
avBpmros, i.e. one who not only has the a-dp^ for his physical
substance or basis — that would be o-ap/ctvos— but who has adopted
the anti-spiritual imOvpetv, which is the peculiarity of the crap^,
as the law of his life, whose entire personal life is enslaved
under the directing influence of an anti-spiritual principle. Ac
cordingly the o-apKtKos av^poiTTos is by no means merely the
sensuous or sensuously-minded man, but he who in his entire
personal life, that is in every relation, is guided in opposition to
the spirit and to God ; but man is this by nature just because
he is o-apKti/os, i.e. because he has fleshly matter for his sub--
stance :^ from his being physically flesh (a-dpKivov efvai), it inevi
tably follows that morally he is fleshly (a-apKiKov eTvai), that is to
say, in sinful opposition to the spirit. This relation of the two
conceptions is made quite clear by Eom. vii. 14, o vd/ios Trvev/xaTi/cds
i(TTiv, iyoi Se crdpKwos eljn, TreTrpap.evos vtto T'^v a/xapTiav, that is to
say, the law is in its substance spirit, I am in my substance
flesh, whence it follows ine"vitably that in the actual moral con
stitution of my life also, I cannot be in harmony with the law,
^ Compare Liidemann, ut supra, p. 72 f. " Compare Holsten, p. 397.

56 SIN AND THE LAW.
but must be in contradiction to it ; or that I am sold as a bond
man to the anti-spiritual principle of sin, and given over to its
dominion. In precisely the same way, a-dpKivos in 1 Cor. Ui. 1 — 3
is primarUy the physical antithesis to irvevfiariKos, and denotes
the Corinthians as persons who (Uke every other natural man)
have flesh as their substance, and so as in the first instance
unspiritual, babes (v^moi,, ib.). But here also this being flesh is
taken immediately to involve being fleshly; (ver. 3) eVi yap
a-apKLKoi ia-Tt : for from the existence of epts, CrjXos and Sixoo-Toa-ia
among them, it is to be seen that in them the flesh, or the sub
stance of their natural man, stUl continues to be the gmding
principle of their personal character.
/ From aU this it foUows very plainly that the hridviieiv t^s
{a-apKo's has not more in common with that which we caU
I " sensual inclination," or " sensuality," than with selfishness or the
1 self-seeking particular wUl of the natural self. Nay, we may
/with strict truth say that the peculiar anti-spiritual acti"vity of
the substance of flesh, its iTridv/jieiv, is at bottom no other than
the natural will that is directed towards the finite natural life of
1 the individual, as it shows itseK sometiqaes as sensual, sometimes
1 as selfish ; only while modern psychology takes the indi"vidual
soul or spirit which animates this material corporeaUty as the
subject of this natural wUl, Paul takes the animated matter of
the body itself, — a distinction which has its origin in the differ
ence between two ways of regarding the universe, ,but has no
important bearing on the practical side of the question, with
which we have here to do. But it is probable that the misin
terpretation of the word a-dp^ is a consequence of overlooking
this difference between our anthropology and that of Paul I
refer to those who take the word in its specific Pauline sense to
mean, not matter in active opposition to spirit, but the passivity
of spirit as against matter, or such a direction of Ufe by spirit
as aUows itself to be determined by matter.^ This view cannot
^ Thus Ernesti, "Vom Ursprung der Sunde nach Paulin. Lehrgehalt," II. 52 f.; also
R. Schmidt, "Paulin. Christologie," p. i3 f. ; likewise Riedermarm, " Dogmatik," § 207.

THE FLESH. 57
be reconcUed with an impartial consideration of Paul's state
ments. Expressions such as koto a-dpKa eTvai, or irepnTaTetv,
would on such an interpretation be astounding pleonasms; it
would scarcely be possible to speak of iiri6vfx,eiv, or ^p6vrip,a t^s
a-apKoi, since the state of aUowing oneself to be determined by
matter could not be the subject of such predicates.^ Any
attempt to disarm this objection by substituting for this passive
state, or this kind of direction of Ufe, the nature of man so far
as it is found in this condition, the natural human being deter
mined by sense or by the world,^ woiUd only increase the diffi
culty on the other side. For how could Paul in that case draw
so marked a distinction between the seK and the flesh as the
real abode of sin, as he does in Eom. "vU. 18 ? How could the
iv Tjj a-apKt p,ov of this vcrse be replaced by iv rots p,eXe<riv p^v in
ver. 23, Khe understood by it the whole human being as it is by
nature ? The voCs, though it also belongs to the whole human
being, is here exactly opposed to the p,eXr\, as the opposite to the
abode of sin, as the abode of the law of God. How could he,
moreover, connect the o-S/ia toi! OavdTov with a-dp^, as requiring
deliverance, if orap^ were not just the material of this body, if it
were in fact something entirely different from it, namely, the whole
nature of man ? How could he in this case describe, in viii 13,
the living no longer after the flesh as a mortKying of the wpd^ets
TOV o-difiaTOi ? AU these passages become clear, without any forced
interpretation, only when we aUow to a-dp^ in every instance its
primary meaning — which is also the most natural one — of matter.-
The maui reason why this, which is the simplest and the only
satisfactory view, meets, notwithstanding, with such constant
opposition from so many quarters, is probably to be sought in
its undeniable consequence, that sin, K the animated matter of
the body is its principle, appears unavoidable, and humanity
tainted with sin by nature and of necessity. We can certainly
escape from this difiiculty by maintaining that it is not matter
•¦
^ Compare on this point lAldemawn, ut supra, p. 58 f.
» So Weiss, "Neutest. Theol.," 2nd ed., p. 244 f . : cf. Ritschl, "Bntstehung der
- "•-'-" 2nd ed. tl. 70.

58 SIN AND THE LAW.
as it is in itself that is the ground of sin, but only self-surrender
to it, or empirical human nature so far as the spirit in it allows
itself to be dominated by materiaUty. Only this is so far from
being the meaning of Paul, that it is exactly the opposite of it.
For it is precisely the object of Eom. vU. to explain the moral
constitution of the empirical nature of man from the flesh, from
the i/d/ios iv Tots p,eXea-i,v, from the a,p,apTLat, which was already
latent and potentiaUy present in our members, before any com
mandment existed, and which is only caUed into Ufe by the
commandment. If, then, the a-dp^ itself were nothing but just
this condition of man's nature which was to be explained, then
the whole of this wonderfuUy subtle and brUUant deduction
would in truth be nothing but the most "wretched argument in a
circle ! People would give anything to explain away the idea
of an impersonal principle of sin contained in the nature of man,
that precedes every manifestation of sin, and is the ultimate
cause which infaUibly produces it ; and yet this is just the pith
of the whole passage. For according to the 7th and foUo"wing
verses, sin is aUeady in man, even before the law comes to him
and brings it to his consciousness. Sin, then, by no means origi
nates in the ego allowing itself, with consciousness and "wUl, to
be determined by that which is material, but rooted in the being
of this conscious sinner lies as lUtimate cause an unconscious
a,p,apTia in the form of a purely objective power, which as uncon
scious may be called "dead," because it does not make itseK
sensible to the conscience as sin. But this dead, i.e. latent sin,
which is potentially present, is roused to Ufe (dvefijo-ev, ver. 9) by
occasion of the law, which forbids the hitherto innocent desire,
ie. it now comes into consciousness as sin, and awakes the feel
ing of personal guilt and liability to death (Jytb Se direOavov).
And thus becoming conscious, the ego first distinguishes itseK
ideaUy from the sin that dweUs in it, and from, the flesh as its
¦ principle and abode, and is now further able really to separate
itself, with its personal wishes, its sympathy and antipathy, from
this element of its nature which is opposed to the law, and apply
itself to the law of God, though of course it can do this only in

THE FLESH. • 59
inward reactions, which lack the power of actuaUy overcoming
the law of sin in the members. So completely, then, is the a-dp^
an independent, objective principle of sin, that it was not only
sinful in itseK from the beginning, as yet without the willing or
the 'wishing of the ego, as the subject of the imdyfieTv which was
by its nature opposed to the law, but it afterwards proceeds still
further, in spite of the better knaiuing and wishing of the ego, and
in open contest with it, to work out its anti-spiritual acti"vity in .
real acts of sin which it constrains the resisting but powerlesgy
ego to commit.
As a " dead" sin is here spoken of which is roused to Ufe by
" occasion" of the commandment, and then flrst exhibits itseK in
desires opposed to the law as that which it already was in itself
innocently (Jva yevijTat Kad v7repj3oXrjV dp,apTU>Xo'S rj apapTia 8ta tijs
evToX-ijs, ver. 13), so, on the other hand, the potentiality of sin,
which was restrained at least outwardly by the bridle of the law,
may also find in a false freedom the " occasion" of its release ;
comp. Gal. v. 13, p,6vov p.^ ttjv iXevOeptav els d(^opii,r]V Ty crapKi, i.e.
the Christian freedom from the law ought not to serve as a soU-
citing occasion to the flesh whereby its hitherto bridled eiri6vp,etv
would be released and given over to a Ufe of gross sin. Although
the point of "view here is very different from that of Eom. vU. 8 f.,
inasmuch as the question is not here, as in the latter passage,
about the first inward awakening of the potentiality of sin and
of the consciousness of guilt, but about the breaking out of the
inward potentiaUty into the actual life of sin, yet the presuppo
sition (with which alone we are here concerned) is in both cases
the same, namely, that the basis of aU actual sin is a natural
potentiaUty of sin, which may be called indifferently a.p,apTca or
trapl (it is called the former in Eom. vU. 7, 8 ; the latter in
Gal. v.. 13), because it consists in that iindviJ,eiv KaTO, tov 7rvevp,aT0S,
which is essentiaUy peculiar to the a-dp^, and owing to which the
trap^ is from the flrst in itself, and by a necessity of its nature,
sinful and sin-working.
Thus our conception of the adp^ of Paul receives confirmation \

60 SIN AND THE LA W.
I at aU points, over and above the advantage it has on the score of
simplicity, inasmuch as it never loses sight of the original mean
ing of the word, about which there can of course be no doubt.
The difference between such expressions as, e.g., (rjv or irepiwaTetv
iv a-dpKi, Gal. ii. 20, Phil, i 22, 2 Cor. x. 3, and etvai iv a-dpKi,
Eom. viu. 8 f , seems to us to be only that between different
moments or elements of the same idea : in both cases iv o-dpKi
means "in the material element;" only in the former instance, as
this forms the substance of the earthly body, it is equivalent to
" in the earthly Ufe of the body ;" but in the latter case, since it
constitutes the agency which is opposed to the spirit, it is equi
valent to " in the sovereignty of the principle of sin." In every
individual case the context must decide which of these two
moments is to be thought of : in many passages, however, the
moral is fused almost inseparably with the physical meaning, in
so far at least as the negative element of unspirituaUty and
vanity attaches to the latter, as in those passages of the Corin
thians where the "writer speaks of " fleshly wisdom," and of the
party-seeking Corinthians being fleshly.
In the notion of a-dp^ thus deflned we now have again the
objective guUtiness of man previously to any subjective wiU
and deed on his part, as it has already been presented to us in
Eom. V. 12. In both cases, sin appears as something original,
objective, presupposed as a necessary antecedent of the individual
wiU. But the difference between that passage and the doctrine
of a-dp^ is, that in the former the origin of this general principle
is found historicaUy in the first sin of Adam, in the latter psy
chologically in the nature of man, in the material of- his cor
poreaUty. It has often been thought that this disc;repancy in
the ground assigned in these two parts of the New Testament
for the empirical sinfulness of man could be reconciled by
regarding the constitution of the flesh, according to which it is
the principle of sin, as the consequence of Adam's sin, so that
before this historical faU the nature of man had been quite
different, and therefore that his flesh had undergone in conse-

THE FLESH. 61
quence of this act a complete change of its nature. Only in
Paul himself we find not the slightest trace of such an astound
ing doctrine. On the one hand, he speaks indeed of the faU,
but "without connecting it with a change in the nature of man ;
on the contrary, the consequence of it was only the Di"vine judg
ment by which all men were objectively set down as sinners, i.e.
placed towards God in the relation of sinners, and therefore, as
objects of the Divine anger, Uable to the penalty of death. On
the other hand, Paul traces sin to the constitution of man's
nature, his being flesh ; but he not only speaks not a syllable
that would indicate that any past historical change had accom
panied this, but, on the contrary, he plainly excludes such a
supposition ;i he speaks. Gal. v. 17, of the antagonism of the
flesh to the spirit in terms of such wide universality, as neces
sarily to convey the impression that it attaches to these two
substances by, their very nature, and so from the beginning and
without exception ; nay, in the very passage (1 Cor. xv. 45 — ;47)
in which he speaks expressly of the first Adam in his relation
to the second, or to Christ, and consequently could hardly have
avoided putting the original better nature of Adam prominently
forward, he is so far from doing this, that he lays the strongest
possible stress on the opposition of the two : the first Adam is
XoiKos iK •yijs, a mere ^v)(rj fwo-a, not like the second TrvevpaTiKos ;
with his nature, which consists of flesh and blood, he attains not
to the kingdom of heaven. Now here, although we must regard
these expressions as referring primarUy to the physical consti
tution of the flesh as a corruptible and impure substance, yet
we must not forget that to Paul the unspiritual passive material
is at the same time the active material whichis opposed to the
1 Compare Usteri, "Paulin. Lehrbegriff" (6th edition), p. 28. "There appears
to be no allusion in the writings of Paul to a change in the moral nature of man, or
of his bodily constitution in consequence of the fall, i.e. of the first actual sin of
Adam ; olt the contrary, he raakes the first Adam (1 Cor. xv.) xoiKog and Tpvxiicoe
from the beginning, which he certainly would not wish to be understood of his nature
after the. fall and not before it." "We must allow Usteri to be right here, although
we consider him to have failed in his attempt to reconcile this view with Rom. v. 12.

62 SIN AND THE LA W.
spirit. If, then, the a-dp^ is by its nature and from the beginning
the principle of sin, the question of the origin of sin certainly
brings us face to face with an antinomy,^ the deeper solution of
which (indicated above, p. 45) does not further concemmexe-
getical statement. We "WUl only remark here, that the^Church!s
doctrine of original sin resulting from a'ehange in man's nature
through the historical faU of Adam, rests on a combination of
Paul's two modes of representation, but cannot be justified either
by the letter or the spirit of the doctrine of Paul.
Certain as it is, however, that Paul regards man as essentiaUy
sinful through his fleshly nature, it is as clearly not his "view that
he is merely sinful, that no better power forms a part of his
nature.^ On the contrary, in the aU- important passage from
which we started, Eom vii, the irdp^ is mentioned as one part of
the whole man, and an essentiaUy different part, the ea-m dvOpioiros,
or VOV'S, is distinguished from it. This conception corresponds
generaUy to our " reason," so far as we understand by this both
the theoretical and practical faculty of thought. Now is not, Uke
¦irvevp,a, substance, but faculty, the formal capacity of the ego to
exert itself in thinking and wUUng ; in its most universal form,
it is^ simply consciousness or self-consciousness (in this merely
formal sense, e.g., in 1 Cor. xiv. 14 f., equivalent to consciously
reflecting activity of thought). The voCs, as formal capacity of
the spirit, can take up into itself contents of opposite nature,
drawn either from the divine spirit or from the flesh and tbe
world; in the latter case, it becomes itself a vow t^s a-apKos.
(Col. ii. 18), VOV'S dvorjTO's dS6Kip,oi (Gal. iii 1 ; Eom. i. 28), and
as such needs renewal in the strength of the spirit of God
(Eom. xii. 2), by which it then becomes a vow Xpto-ToC, a percep-
1 And so we may venture to say that the two parties in this controversy (Ernesti, .
Weiss, on one side, and on the other, Baur, Holsten, Usteri, LiidemamiJ,a,T:e both
equally right and equally wrong.
^ This and what follows is in opposition to Holsten, who (ut supra, p. 403 f.), erro
neously identifying the irapS with the whole raan (whereas it really constitutes only'the
£?(u avOpioirog), makes this latter to be " in its substantial essence a/.iapTla" —a deci- ¦
dedly un-Pauline, Manichean exaggeration.

THE FLESH. 63
tive reason'fiUed and enlightened 'by the spirit~of Christ, a Chris
tian reason, such as is attained by Christians (1 Cor. ii. 16).
Yet we must not suppose that the vow is according to Paul a
mere empty form of the spirit, indifferently related to each and
every content ; on the contrary, the vd/ios deov dweUs within it,
and that not merely as an object of consciousness, but as its own
immanent impulse towards goodness (vd/^ios toS vods p,ov, Eom. vii.
23), which wars against the inclination to sin which is in the
members, and that with such success that the ego, at least accord
ing to the inner man, turns in harmony and sympathy towards
the law of God, though its external acti"vity stiU remains captive
under the ban of the law of sin in the members. It is only
because man possesses in his vow a not inactive element akin to
the divine, that it is possible for him under the influence of the
law to free himself entirely from the flesh (with whose sin- work
ing substance the ego in the flrst stage of its gro"wth is indistin-
guishably fused), and to arrive, through the consciousness of the
discord between his outward action and his inner better wiU, at
the feeling of the need of deliverance, as is so strikingly expressed
in Eom. vii. 24.
It is this divine element contained in the vow which manifests
itself even in the heathen as hwwledge of God (Eom. i. 20), and
as laiu of conscience (ii. 14 f.). The moral consciousness, as pos
sessed and obeyed even by the heathen, proves that men have
the essential contents of the law written in their hearts, and that
not as a dead, theoretical knowledge of good and evil, but (as is
indicated by the reference to the specific organ, " the heart") as
a force working through desire and feeling, which both gives the
impulse to action {iav <j>va-ei Tct tov vop.ov TfOLy), and also makes
itself felt as a guiding authority in the testimony of conscience
to itself (<rvp,p,apTvp6vfrri's T-^s (TVveiS'qa'eio's Kat fieTa^v aXX-^Xoiv tSv
Xoyicrp,wv KaT-qyopovvTOiv). And the divine relationship of the
vow is revealed in the natural knowledge of God, no less, than in
the moral consciousness ; for it is no other than the activity of
the vow, the voetv, by means of which the Godhead, which cannot

64 SIN AND TEE. LA W.
be perceived by the senses, becomes through its works an object
of intuition to the inner sense ; it is through an intellectual
intuition that the reason, recognizes God in the creation (rot
ddpaTa avTov aTrb KTicreioi Koo-p-ov ToVi 7ronjp.a(rt vooijp,eva KadopaTat,
'Y i. 20). The undeniable conclusion from aU this is, that in fol
lowing Paul we must not venture to regard man so one-sidedly
as a creature of flesh as to forget that he stiU has within himseK,
united to his sinful flesh, namely, in his reason and conscience,
a higher divine capacity, a natural element of deUverance (ie.
an element in the preparation for his Christian redemption). In
this weU-weighed estimate of man's moral and reUgious nature,
Paul is as far removed from the Pelagian over-estimation as from
^ Augustine's depreciation of man.^
A question here occurs incidentally, which does not belong \
directly to Paul's doctrine of sin, but is only indirectly connected
"with it, since it does not refer to the specific Christian anthropo
logy of the Apostle, but to the general views which he held in
(common with the Jews. It is the question whether, together with
the ardp^, a TTvevp.a belongs to the natural man, and in what sense.
' An affirmative answer must unhesitatingly be given to the first
part of the question, on the authority of several quite unequivo
cal passages. The Apostle speaks expressly ofthe 7rvevp,a, dvdpumov
in opposition to the irveSpta Oeovi'hi 1 Cor. ii 11, where the context
distinctly excludes the notion of the irvevfia ayiov of the Chris
tian, since he is dealing with a proposition of the most general
psychological truth. SimUarly, in 1 Cor. v. 4, vi 20, vii 34,
2 Cor. vU. 1, the irvevpa is simply the psychological opposite to
the o-co/Ao, and indicates the immaterial personaUty, or the inner
man, in opposition to his material appearance in the body. This
view is also supported by 2 Cor. ii. 12, vU. 13, and 1 Cor, x"vd. 18 ;
for although it is the spirit of the Apostle which is here spoken
' Compare the following striking judgment of Baur's: " To allow that not only the
(rap?, but also the vovg, belongs to human nature, and that the acti-vity of the vovq
tends to the good, even to the extent that the Apostle admits, is to hold a view essen
tially different from that of Augustine" (Neutest. Theol., p. 148).

THE FLESH. 65
of, and this might therefore be the Christian spirit, yet the con
text clearly points to the natural human spirit; for he ascribes
to it such states of feeling {dvd-Kavtm and Sveo-ts) as can be pre
dicated much better of the human spirit, weak and liable to
suffering as it is, than of the divine spirit, the active principle of
strength and consolation. Lastly, Eom. viii. 16 unmistakably
shows that Paul further distinguishes the human from the divine
' spirit in the Christian, as the receiving from the giving subject.
But the more important question is, "What is the meaning of
this natural irvevpa in the anthropology of Paul ? Has it a higher
digmty, essentially related to the Christian -rrvevp-a., or not ? We
may obtain some significant indications on this point from the
passages to which we have already referred. The human spirit
is there distinguished specifically, as requiring consolation and
rest, from the divine spirit, which is essentiaUy strength, not
capable of suffering. But the human spirit may evidently be
defiled, and may therefore require purification from aU poUution
(2 Cor. vii. 1, KaOapta-t!jp,ev laurow diro TravTos p,oXva-p,ov o-apKos Kal
¦KvevpaTQi) ; it may be an object of Christian solicitude to be holy
both in body and in spirit (1 Cor. vu. 34), which presupposes
that this spirit, namely, the natural, might also be not holy.^v^
It is in entire accordance with this view that the Apostle, in
1 Thess. V. 23, "wishes for his readers, that the God of peace may
sanctify them wholly, and that so both their spirit, soul, and
body may be preserved blameless : this presupposes, again, that
this spirit, namely, the natural spirit, is still in need of sancti
fication through the divine influence, and would not otherwise be
preserved uninjured, nay, would more probably be lost. It is no
less evident from 1 Cor. v. 5, 'iva to ¦Kvevp.a a-wOy iv Ty fip,ep<i TOV
Kvplov 'l-qcr^ov Xpta-Tov, that there is a possibiUty of this natural
TTVevpa not being saved, or being lost. All these passages agree in ^
yielding to us the two-fold result, that the natural Trvevp.a. is
indeed subject to the possibility of suffering, of defilement, and
of perdition, and yet that this possibility by no means must
necessarily come to actuaUty; but, on the contrary, that its
F

66 SIN AND THE LA W.
I weakness can and should be helped, its defilement prevented,
I and its ruin guarded against, by the strength of the Christian
\ Tvevixa. According to this, the natural spirit is just as essentially
[distinguished from the specific Christian irvevp,a vrhich cannot be
exposed to all these affections, as from the anti-spiritual a-dp^
hich must perish by 4>dopd, because its most characteristic ten-
encyis towards ^avaTos (cf. supra, p. 53).^ Thus the natural Trvev/ia
tands indifferently midway between those two opposing princi-
'/ples, as the neutral substratum of personal IKe, which forms the ?
[ground on which those two principles operate. It has no more
in common with the supernatural Messianic Trvevfia which is
imparted in baptism, than the universal divine spirit of life, which
according to the Old Testament view animates aU creatures and
especially man, has with the supernatural spirit of revelation
which comes from time to time upon the prophets. As that ,^
i spirit of life of the Old Testament is essentially identical with
the soul (since this simply represents the individualization of
that universal substance), so also in the language of the New
Testament, from which Paul makes in this case no exception,
I the (natural) ¦!rvevp,a is in fact no other than the ^vx'7 (^^^ '^^J
in which the two expressions are put side by side in Luke i 46 f.,
is quite enough to show their essential identity).^ This is no
doubt the reason why Paul, when speaking of the natural man
in his moral and religious aspect, so constantly avoids using
the word TrvevpM, and only speaks of \j/vxri or a-dp^ on the one
1 Compare Liidemann, ut supra, pp. 43, 48 . Baur had already written in the
same strain, ut supra, p. 147 : "Although Paul also speaks of a human Trvivjia, yet
this has no significance in connection with his peculiar notion of TtvAp,a." Also
Holsten, p. 391, who, however, draws erroneous consequences as to the meaning of
the word vovq.
^ Compare Weiss, Neutest. Theol. (2nd edit.), p. 245 f. Even 1 Thess. ¦/. 23
appears to me to furnish no argument against this view ; for just as in Luke i. 46 f.
the two conceptions are placed one beside the other in a popular rhetorical fashion
without being really different, so may Paul, when he wishes to emphasize the com
pleteness of man's being, bring together the different expressions of popular phrase
ology, without any intention of teaching thereby a philosophical trichotomy, of which
we certainly find no trace elsewhere, and shall scarcely, I think, find any in Hebrew
thought.

THE FLESH. 67
hand, and on the other hand of the vow. The natural man has
none of the irvevpa, as Paul understands it in his specific Chris
tian psychology, which forms the dualistic antithesis to the a-dp^:
in marked contrast to this irvevpu ^moiroiovv, he is mere <\ivxq fwo-a,
a mere physical principle of IKe, which as such is no autonomous
power opposed to the a-dp^, but, though not exactly identical
with it, is only the powerless substratum for its ruling force.
The higher, godlike side of man, as distinguished from the a-dp^,
is therefore not his ¦Kvevpa but his voSs, in which we have already
recognized the godUke spiritual faculty of reason in the widest
sense of the word, which however is only related to the Christian
¦jTvevpM, as the receptive capacity to the effective principle of
redemption. The inquiry regarding the relation of the vow to
the Christian irvevp,a cannot be carried out in detaU until we
arrive at a later stage of our work (Ch. v.), as we cannot tUl then
enter upon the pecuUar Christian psychology of the Apostle,
The only further question that need be here raised is, how is it
possible to suppose a godlike spiritual capacity, like the vow,
to exist in men, if the substratum of it, the subject of the
personal Ufe, is only such an indifferent irvevpa. as has just been
described ? We certainly cannot expect to obtain a solution of
this question from Paul, to whose mind pure anthropological
questions of this kind were evidently quite aUen, and who,
therefore, in this case simply foUowed the popular unreflective
mode of "viewing the matter which he found current ; and our
exegesis must accordingly confine itself to indicating this diffi
culty, which is one only from our point of view.^
'^ According to ow mode of thinking, it appears to me that logical consistency re
quires that -*e adopt one of the two following conclusions : either, looking to the irveviia
of the natural man, which is indifferent and alien to the moral essence of God, we must
deny to him every godlike element, so that his vovq too would be a merely indifferent
form of consciousness ; or, looking to the godlike element, which according to Paul
is present in the vovq, we must allow that the substance of personality also which
shows itself in vovq, the human Trvev/ia, is something related in its essence to the
nvtviia Oiov, and therefore at least the potentiality of the Christian -n-veS/ia, so that
this latter is the actuality of the natural irvtB/ja. The former consequence has been
deduced by Holsten, but with the result, as we have shown above, of placing himself
r2

68 SIN AND THE LA W.

The La"W.
By the expression o vofios, Paul always understands primarUy
the positive Mosaic law, and that in its undivided entirety. Although
the idea starting from this point so enlarges itself in his mind,
that he recognizes also in the natural moral consciousness a law
written in the heart,^ yet 6 vop.oi, without any farther quaUfi-
cation, is always the specific term for the positive Mosaic law,
so much so that expressions like ol iv t$ vd/x^ (Eom. Ui. 29, U. 12),
ot vKo v6p,ov (1 Cor. ix. 20), are precisely synonymous with
'lovSatoi (Eom. iU. 19, ix. ; 1 Cor. ix. 20). Moreover, Paul's view
of what is comprehended under this conception is the same
as that of aU Jews, or Jewish Christians ; it denotes primarUy
the whole of the positive ordinances contained in the Old Tes-
in open contradiction to Paul's doctrine of vovq, and grossly exaggerating his doctrine
of sin. Impressed witH this fact, I followed the second course in my article on
"The Tlvevfia of Paul" in the " HUgenfeld'sche Zeitschrift" (1871, Vol. II. ), and
this I still believe to be more in accordance with the meaning and spirit of Pauline
speculation than the former, which is followed by Hotsten. But I willingly grant that
the way in which I there tried, starting from the vovq, to prove that the natural
irvviiia is also a potentiality of a divine Christian Trvtvua, is not in harmony -with
the immediate form of the Pauline doctrine, and is altogether more in accordance
with modem than with ancient modes of thought. I wish to explain, therefore, that
the essay referred to is a dogmatic attempt to solve, by means of categories of modem
thought, the difficulty which exegesis has simply to point out and to leave alone.
Moreover, I may remark that the article expressly professes to be " an exegetio and
dogmatic study:" its error, therefore, consisted solely in not making a sufficiently
clear distinction between the dogmatic and the exegetical parts.
' This law written in the heart must by no means be confounded with the Christian
law of the spirit. Nor is it the meaning of Paul to ascribe to it on account of ita
inwardness an advantage over the external Mosaic law (comp. Rom. iii. 2 with ix. 4).
That inwardness is obviously very far from that in which the law has become the proper
content of the will, the subjective determination of the will which constitutes the
Christian law of the spirit, but, "from the pre-christian point of view, the law,
even where it appears as something inward, exhibits itself as the command of a foreign
higher voice, a holy power which man must recognize in opposition to his rfomipt-j
will ; it remains, therefore, a letter that kills, whether it exhibits itself as the
command of an external or internal revelation of God." So Neander well says,
Gesch. d, Pfl. d. Chr. Kr., p. 668 ; and to the same purport, Cs«m, ' Paul. Lehrb.,
p. 36; and Weiss, Neut. Theol., p. 259: "It was an essential advantage that the
Jews possessed the law fixed in writing ; it stood before them by this means in unas
sailable objectivity."

THE LAW. 69
ta;ment, without any distinction between the ethical and ritual
portions ; then, further, the whole of the Old Testament as a
divine revelation, without regard to the particular contents
referred to in each single case; for even passages from the
Psalms or Prophets are quoted as declarations of the law
(Eom iii; 19 ; 1 Cor. xiv. 21) ; and especially the whole of the
historical part of the Old Testament is included under the vd/ios
(GaL iv. 21 ; Eom. iii. 21, 31, which passages can only be ex
plained as introducing the proofs from the Old Testament
history which foUow).^ We must absolutely reject the distinc
tion between the ethical and the ritual part of the law, in the
sense that Paul did not consider the latter as belonging to the
revealed law of Moses, but only perhaps to the iraTpiKal irapaSoa-en?
The free position which Paul everywhere assumes with regard
to the ritual law also from the standpoint of the gospel freedom
from the law, is far from being a proof that he ignored the former
as a divine and Mosaic revelation; on the contrary, the pro
fusion of theological dialectic with which he tries to convince
the Judaizing Galatians of the invalidity of precisely this cere
monial law as weU as of the other (circumcision, laws regarding
food, U. 12, the keeping of days, iv. 10), is the- clearest proof
how completely he held the ritual to stand or fall with the
general body of the law. If it had been in his eyes something
which did not at aU belong to the law proper, he coiUd have
made his treatment of the matter far easier to himself ; for he
could in that case have simply drawn the line of demarcation
between the real and the imaginary law, instead of between the
law and the promise. Moreover, he mentions (Eom. is. 4) among

• The interpretation, often favoured elsewhere, which connects the above passages
with the ethical law of the Christian spirit (Rom. viii. ), would interrupt the simple
cours?of the argument in Rom. iii. 21 by an unmeaning digression.
* Cf. , for example, Holsten, ut supra, p. 401 ; and, on the other hand, for the true
view of the unity of the vojioq, cf. Usteri, Paul. Lehrbegriff, p. 34 f. ; Neander,
" Gesohiohte der Pflanzung der Christlichen Kirche, durch die Apostel," pp. 507, 669 ;
Lipsius, "Paulin. Rechtfertigungslehre," p. 54 ; Ritschl, AltkathoL Kirche, p. 73 ;
Weiss, Neutest. Theol., p. 269 f.

70 SIN AND THE LA W.
the advantages granted by God to the Jews, between the revealed
vop,ode<TLa and the Ukewise revealed iirayyeX'tai,' the XaTpeta, the
service of God, consequently the ceremonial law, which was
something revealed to the Jew by God, and accordingly belonged
to the positive di"vine law as much as any other part of it.
If it be asked how the Apostle could in that case ha"ve said of
the law in general and without qualification, that it was irvev-
ptaTiKos, when the external ritual law also belonged to it, the
answer is, that the law was to the Apostle, simply in conse
quence of its immediately divine origin, soinething transcending
the realm of earth, and therefore belonging to that of spirit;
consequently that it had also a spiritual character through this
origin, quite independently of its particular content ; because it
is in its entire positive shape a revelation of the spiritual wUl
of God, therefore it is also with regard to its entire contents
something spiritual — that is to say, in the sense that in every part
of the law there must be spiritual contents and an essentiaUy
deeper meaning. This allegorical mode of thought, which was
common in Paul's time, did not make it impossible for the im
mediate form to be unspiritual, purely external. So far as this
alone were reflected on, the essence of the law might even be
represented as a ser"vice of the worldly (external and sensuous)
elements, and placed on the same level as the heathen worship.^
Although, then, the Mosaic law is spiritual as regards its origin
and essential contents, yet it estabUshes, so far as its outward
form is concerned, a " weak and beggarly" sensuous worship for
^ Gal. iv. 3 — 9, aToix&a tov koujiov, can grammatically mean nothing but the
primary materials of the world, the elements cognizable by the senses, since the geni
tive joined to (jroixfia must denote the whole which is composed of the aroix^Xa.
By these sensuous elements we must understand partly the earthly materials used in
worship, such as sacrifices and offerings of food, partly sidereal powers (the signs of
the zodiac, which used to be shortly designated as UToix^Xa), which determined the
seasons, and consequently the feast days (ver. 10) ; both these meanings are applicable
to aroLx&a also in Col. ii. 20. Compare ver. 16 (possibly also in ver. 8). This,
the oldest, interpretation has been again of late rightly maintained, in preference to
"the rudimentary condition of non-Christian humanity," by Neamder ani Hilgenfeld,
with whora Bam; Lipsius, Holsten, and R. Schmidt agree.

THE LAW. 71
beginners (vrprioC), who could not yet bear anything higher — that
is to say, the spiritual service in its pure and adequate form of
presentation. Thus it is not between one part of the law and
the other, the ethical and the ritual, that the Apostle distin
guishes, but, if he distinguishes at aU, it is only between the
spiritual content of the whole undivided law and its literal
form {ypdp,p,a, 2 Cor. iii). And though the latter, taken by itself,
was to him something worldly or fleshly (oToix^ia tov Koa-pov,
Gal. iv. 3, or a-dp^, iii. 3 and vi. 12), yet this distinction, after
all, is ordinarily kept in the background, because, according to
the habit of allegorizing sanctioned by tradition, the form, that
which was Uteral and external, appeared as the vehicle of the
deeper spiritual content, with no independent value of its own.
Thus, for example, in 1 Cor. ix. 9, the command, " Thou shalt
not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn," is, without hesi
tation, not merely applied as an iUustration, but interpreted
actuaUy to mean that the gospel workmen were worthy of their
hire ; and in Gal. iv. 24, the account of Sarah and Hagar is
interpreted as relating to the law and the gospel.
Now we might . certainly suppose that, by logically carrying
out this typical allegorical interpretation, Paul could have esta
bUshed the abrogation of the ceremonial law, on which the
contest with the Judaizers primarUy turned, more simply and
more mUdly than by his harsh and artificial method of exhibit
ing the law (stiU regarded as divinely revealed) in a purely
negative relation to the scheme of salvation. And in fact we
find that Paul's system, as it appears tinged by Alexandrian
thought in the Epistles to the Hebrews and the Epistle of
Barnabas, has followed that course, and that with the marked
approval of the ancient Church, to which this mode of conceiv
ing the relation between the law and the gospel was much more
famUiar than Paul's own mode. But it is easy to understand
how Paul himself did not yet take this course, and could not
well have taken it. For we must bear in mind that the Jewish
school, to which the aUegorical interpretation in Paul's time was

72 SIN AND THE LAW.
famiUar, were far from abrogating the vaUdity of the Uteral sense
of their historical Scriptures, or those which related to the law,
by ascribing to them a spiritual meaning ; on the contrary, the
spiritual deepening of the sense would have had the effect of
contributing to the predominance of the law, and therefore to
the confirmation of its vaUdity as a whole, including its literal
- sense ; this spiritual content and the Uteral form of his revealed
scripture were far too intimately united in the mind of a Jew for
him to think of a separation of the two, and the abrogation of
the latter, as even possible. How, then, could Paul have hoped
to attain his object by this method ? How could he prove to
the Judaizers the abrogation of the ceremonial law by spiritual
aUegorizing, when they thought to glorKy and confirm/the whole
law — including its ceremonial portion — ^by this very means ? But
Paul's own habits of thought made it impossible for him to think
of doing so, for he himseK had by no means arrived by the road
of such allegorizing speculation at the consciousness of the non-
vaUdity of the law for beUevers in Chri^st, but by the very dif
ferent way of the knowledge of the cross of Christ. In this he
saw the radical breach between the old covenant of works of the
law and the new one of righteousness by faith accompUshed in
fact ; and to labour for the practical recognition of this breach
was the work of his Ufe ; the relation between law and faith must
therefore of necessity have presented itself to him in theory also
as a purely exclusive and negative relation ; and hence a problem
of no sUght difiiculty had to be faced, namely, to reconcUe this
their negative relation with the origin of both in the revelation
of the one God. Most of the Apostle's dialectical dissertations
on the law are attempts to solve this problem.
Until, then, the abrogation of the Mosaic law for the Christian
community had been declared as a principle, and partly also in
fact established, by the active energy of Paul, no one could think
of finding a positive typical relation also between the law and
the gospel, .by systematically carrying out that aUegorizing of
the law and the history of the Old Testament which was then ¦

THE LAW. 73
in vogue and had already been used incidentaUy by Paul him
self, and thus making the breach less abrupt, and less oppressive
to the consciousness of the Jews who beUeved in the revelation
of the law.
We have hitherto seen the Apostle Paul in complete harmony
with the Jewish consciousness as to the apprehension of the
essence (notion and origin) of the law. So much the more diffi
cult must have been his position when he now, proceeding from
this common ground, set forth the purpose of the law in diame
trical opposition to the conviction of the Jews and Jewish Chris
tians. And this conviction rested on the very ground of that
common presupposition with more apparent logical correctness
than that of Paul, who was compeUed to employ artificial dia
lectic in order to prove the logical correctness of his thesis, which
reaUy rested on the knowledge of the cross of Christ. For whereas
the Jews and Jewish Christians beUeved that the law, as given
by God, being holy, just, and good in its nature, had also as its
object to make man just, good, and pleasing to God, Paul set
against this, first, the antithesis, " By works of the law is no flesh
righteous before God ;" and, secondly, the thesis, " The law came
in (between" promise and fulfilment, or between sin and redemp
tion) on account of sin ;" that is to say, first, that sin might be
, known ; secondly, that it might be increased and fiUed up.
As to the ground on which the first proposition rests, we
must distinguish between the reason or the ground of our know
ledge and the real ground or cause of the fact itself. The former
is taken from the Christian consciousness of the significance of
Christ's death on the cross in the Divine scheme of revelation,
and is therefore only con"vincing to the consciousness of one who
already believes in Christ ; the real ground, on the other hand, is
the fleshliness of human nature, which stands a priori in contra
diction to the spiritual contents of the law.
Although the latter is the more objective, yet, just in the chief
passages in which he deals with the proof of the abrogation of
the law, Paul has made no use of it, but has dra"wn his proofs in

74 SIN AND THE LA W.
a very artificial manner from the Scripture ; a very noteworthy
fact, which indicates to us that the Apostle did not arrive by the
method of psychological speculation at his original view of the
purpose of the Mosaic law, and also that his no less original doc
trine of the o-dp^ is derived not from the presuppositions but
from the consequences of his doctrine of salvation ; for on this
supposition alone can we explain the fact that the decisive proofs
of the doctrine of salvation are set forth independently of the
crap£ doctrine. The Apostle's doctrine of salvation was immedi
ately dependent, in its negative as weU as its positive aspect, on
the significance of the cross of Christ. This is shown by the
fact that the Apostle thus clearly expresses the decisive ground
of his own conviction. "If righteousness came by the law, then
did Christ die in vain ;" and to the same purport, " If a law
had been given that could make alive, then would righteousness
indeed come by the law," and not from the faith in the crucified ;
the death on the cross would have been aimless and fruitless.
According to these passages (Gal. U. 21, iu. 21), the process of
the Apostle's thought is simply the foUowing : it is impossible
that the death of Jesus as the Messiah upon the cross can be
regarded as an event allowed by God to happen by chance,
without reason or purpose; but its purpose can have been no
other than to produce true righteousness : now K the death of
Christ (i. e. faith in it) be the means of effecting this purpose,
then the significance hitherto attributed to the law, of serving
as the means of righteousness, is by that very fact denied ; for
of these two means, the death of Christ and the law of Moses,
which have as Uttle to do with one another as beUeving and
doing (ui 10 — 12), it is only possible that either one or the other
can be the right means to the end : now K this means be, as
it indubitably is to the Christian, the death of Christ, then it
cannot also be the law, the saving efficacy of which, as a means
to righteousness, is absolutely excluded by that of the death of
Christ. The way in which the Apostle thought out dogmaticaUy
in detaU this connection between reason and consequent, does

THE LAW. 75
not belong to this part of our inquiry, but to the doctrine of
redemption and justification : here we have only to establish the
fact, that the logical ground for his pecuUar -view as to the pur
pose of the law, is to be sought in the root of his Christian
consciousness, in his faith in the crucified.
But now the real ground of the impossibUity of righteousness
by the law, lies not in the law as such ; this, on the contrary, is
holy, just, and good ; nay, it is, although completely void of the
strength of the ¦jrvevp.a. ^wottoiovv, stiU ¦Kvevp,aTLK6's (at least as
regards its essential content, though here the fact is certainly
left out of sight that it belongs also to the realm of the worldly
and fleshly with respect to its form as ypdpp,a). The ground of
the fact that the law, although ¦n-vevp.a.TiKO's, does not attain to
fcooToiiJo-at, lies in the nature of man, in his being sold under sin,
in his being fleshly. Because the natural man as o-ap/ctvos (see •
above) is under the dominion of the material principle, the o-ap^,
the spiritual wiU of God and his revelation finds in the law only
a formal point of connection with the vow of man and his ideal
power of -wUling ; but in actual IKe the claims of the spiritual
principle which is external to him are overborne by the real
energy of the principle of the flesh which dominates him from
within : this does not subject itself to the law, and indeed cannot
do so, because it is contrary to its nature, whose characteristic it
is, 'iTTiOvp.e'iv KaTO. irvevp,aT6'S, and also KaTO. vofiov (Eom. viU. 7 and
Gal. V. 17). But K we ask further, why the law has not the
power to conquer .the flesh, and to bring its o"wn spiritual content
to the actuaUty of action in spite of it, Paul's answer would be,
Because the material substance of the flesh can be conquered only
by the opposite and equaUy real substance of the spirit when it
enters man as a real IKe-giving power ; the law cannot ((aoTrotya-ai
(Gal. Ui 21), because it is not itself a Trvevpa ((aowoiovv, a sub
stantial power of Ufe and real animating principle, not an out
pouring of the divine essence, which (like the 7rvevp.a) would
produce even in man a divine and spiritual vitality, but a mere
expression of the di"vme wUl, which, as against the real substance

76 SIN AND THE LA W.
of that flesh which is opposed, to God, is something unreal and
without strength.
Now, for us, with our modes of ^thought, the outcome of this
certainly is, that the law, precisely on account of its eodernality,
cannot produce true righteousness, the inward goodness of the
wUl itself, because, as an abstract command, as a mere impera
tive, it always stands over ctgainsf the concrete will, and accord
ingly cannot animate it inwardly, cannot turn it to inward unity
with the good, but at most can move it to outward subjection in
external acts (epya, tov v6p.ov), which leave its self-wiUed desires
(the iiridvp.etv KaTo. tov ¦n-vevp,aToi) uubrokeu. It comes to the
same thing, then, whether we say that the impossibUity of righ
teousness by the law Ues in the flesh, or that it lies in the
externaUty'^ of the law, inasmuch as both express the opposition
between the subjective wiU and the objective command, between
the natural self-wiU and the divine determination of man, — an
opposition which cannot be overcome by starting from one of
the two opposing parts, because their existence is involved in
this very opposition, but only from an entirely new standpoiat
and from an entirely new principle. But however certain it is
that we have here the characteristic idea and the great and
enduring truth of Paul's doctrine of the impossibiUty of righ
teousness by law, yet we cannot but acknowledge that the
immediate form in which this doctrine is presented by him is
determined by the peculiar realistic Jewish view of flesh and
spirit. The psychological deduction, therefore, given above,
though quite consistent with his idea, does not correspond with
^ Only we must be careful not to understand by this externality merely the positive
form of the Mosaic law, but rather that characteristic which belongs to the law as
such, and therefore also to the law of conscience, namely, that of standing as an objec
tive power over against, i.e. in opposition to the will, so far and so long as it ia purely
subjective. This characteristic, which lies in the nature of this ethical relation, al
though it is strikingly exemplified in the positive law oi, Moses, is yet by no means
exclusively peculiar to it. Consequently what Paul says of that law has its enduring
sigmficoMce wherever the standpoint is that of law, recurring constantly, as this stand
point does, in the spiritual development of humanity, so that it may even at times
become the predominant type of the whole of Christianity.

THE LA W. 77
the way in which he-sets it immediately before us. He nowhere'-
refers the impotence of the law to its externaUty, but always
simply to the resistance of the d-ap|. Even in 2 Cor. iu., the
law is called a "letter that"'kUleth," not with reference to the
psychological relation between command and will, but simply
because it announces to the sinner in a fixed judicial form
{ypdp,p,a) the judgment of death (KaTaxpio-ts) as a penal statute
of positive validity. And with regard to the epya vd/^ov, his
meaning is not that they are insufficient for righteousness before
God, because the external law demands merely external epya, so
that the law might be satisfied by those epya (external " legaUty"
prompted by a sensuous motive), but not God, who sees the
heart, and who is satisfied only by true " morality." That is a
modern turn of thought^ which is quite alien to the direct sense
of Paul's doctrine. But, the epya vo/xov cannot ma^e righteous,
first, because in that case righteousness by faith according to the
promise would be done away — this is the logical and for Paul
the decisive ground — and, secondly, because man as fiesh can by
no means be truly subject to the law of God, since the jtpovetv of
the flesh is by nature ex^pa ek 6e6v, so that consequently the
actual fulfilment of the vd^os tov. deov, or actually perfect epya tov
vd/tov, are absolutely impossible. But it is evident how com
pletely this real ground is a merely secondary and derivative
inferential one in the eyes of Paul; from his speaking, when
righteousness by faith has recurred to his mind, quite fraiiHy of
iroirjTal tov v6p,ov, of epya and ipyd^ea-6ai to dyaOov, for which every
man wiU receive from the Judge the due recompence (Eom. ii.
^ This is in opposition to the view of Neamder, ut supra, p. 508 f., and p. 673 f.,
to that of Usteri, p. 55 f., Lipsius, p. 65 f., who introduce the modem psychological
mode of thought too directly into that of Paul.
" According to this mode of thought, the whole weight of the unsatisfactory nature
of the epya tov v6p,ov would fall upon the Mosaic law, as if this were satisfied with
mere external epya. But this presupposition, incorrect in itself, was very alien to the
mind of the Apostle, who saw in the law a holy and good revelation of the spiritual
will of God. And so Baur's criticism also of the conception of the epya tov vo/iow
does not apply to the actual doctrine of Paul, but only to the rationalizing interpreta
tions of it {Bam; N. Test. Theol., p. 179).

78 ' SIN AND THE LA W.
6 — 13). To interpret these expressions, epya, ttomjt^s v6p.ov, simply
of faith, as the only work which is of value in the eyes of God,
is a makeshift which may be very convenient to reUeve the
embarrassment of Protestant commentators, but is utterly unsa
tisfactory ; for ipyd^ea-Oai and iTia-TeveLv, p,i<r6oi and x«P's, are, in
iv. 4 f , placed in opposition so as mutuaUy to exclude one ano
ther. Nor is the attempt to consider those epya as the fruit of
faith in any way justified by the context. If we look at the
matter impartiaUy, from a historical standpoint, this antinomy
(for we have one here and frequently elsewhere in the writings
of Paul) can only be explained by supposing that in Eom. u.
Paul adopts the standpoint of ordinary morality, and especiaUy
of the Jewish law, from which standpoint the impossibiUty of
works of the law and a reward for them did not strike him.^ If
he had arrived by means of psychology at his specific doctrine
of the law, it would scarcely have been possible for him to take
the view expressed in Eom. U. ; but we can weU understand that
it everywhere occurred to him again where the logical premises
of his altered doctrine of law (the doctrine of grace) were absent
from his thoughts, if we suppose the real logical, i.e. psycholo
gical, ground of his new doctrine of law to be contained in his
Christian doctrine of redemption. Thus our view of the inner
genesis of the system of Paul is again corroborated on this point.
But now, if the law is so weakened by the resistance of the
flesh (Eom. viii 3) that it can never produce actual righteousness
in man, has it not then been given by God utterly without a

' Compare Ba'ar, N. Test. Theol., p. 181 : "Paul speaks in Rom. ii. 6 f. of works
as the rule of divine justice, without any embarrassment, as if the possibility of a colli
sion -with his doctrine of faith had never occurred to him. It does not occur to him
because his doctrine of justification refers throughout only to the relation of Christian
ity to Judaism, an opposition which, when thought of in the abstract, has to do with
general principles, but, as soon as it is applied to the concrete relations of actual life,
becomes of itself a mere relative opposition."^ — ^What is true in this is, that the doc
trine of the insufficiency of Ipya is founded upon their antithesis to justification by
faith, and that this abstract opposition of tpya and tt'iotiq allows of and even requires
a higher synthesis, which indeed it has found in the writirigs of Paul himself, in his
doctrine of living in the spirit.

THE LAW. 79
purpose ? No ; it undoubtedly has a purpose, only this is prima
rily the exact opposite of that which is generaUy supposed. It
has been given, not for the sake of righteousness, but, on the
contrary, for the sake of sin, twv Trapapdo-eav xap'v. Gal. iU. 19.^
And this in a double sense ; for sin, which as yet is in man un
consciously, must be brought into consciousness as what it is ; but
also at the same time the latent power of sin must be incited to
manifest and develope itself completely hy fuller utterance in deeds.
Sin, indeed, was already present in the world before the law
was given by Moses, and is also present in the individual man
before he becomes aware of the command (Eom. v. 13, vii. 7) ;
that is to say, in an objective manner, in the ungodly and anti-
spiritual tendency of the fleshly principle which dominates him.
But in this merely objective existence of sin, the subjective con
sciousness that this sinful condition or action ought not to be, is
stiU wanting ; the imputing of sin as personal guilt is therefore
stUl wanting, and consequently the feeUng of guilt, in which the
ego for the first time feels the sting of its contradiction with
itself and with God. And so far this condition of relative inno
cence, when evil is only present objectively, and does not come
to the subjective consciousness, and so is not wiUed as the true
act of the ego, nor burdened with the painful feeling of guilt,
may be designated in a certain sense as a state of " being aUve,"
^ To give to these words the interpretation, "to guard against transgressions," is a
gross misapprehension. In the first place, the language itself does not allow of it, for
X^pi-v always implies furtherance, and not hindrance. Then, again, it contradicts the
whole of the context, which is intended to prove neither more nor less than this very
point of the inability of the law to procure righteousness or to guard against sin.
Moreover, it contradicts the plain words of the Apostle in Rom. v. 20 and -vii. 13,
which remove all doubt that he looked upon the increasing of sin and the multiplying
of transgressions, instead of the opposite of this, as the primary object of the law.
Besides, it is part of Paul's notion of Trapd^aaiQ that, as a positive transgression of a
command, it presupposes the existence of the law ; therefore the law could not have
been given in the first instance in consequence of the TrapafiaaeiQ, for the purpose of
restraining them. — Comp. Usteri, p. 64 (who, moreover, like Bawr, places the purpose
too one-sidedly in the consciousness of sin). The right view is given by Weiss, ut supra,
p. 263 ; Lipsitis, ut supra, p. 75 ; Ritschl, ut supra, p. 73 ; Hausrath, Neutest. Ztgesch.,
II. 473 : also the commentaries of Meyer and Hilgenfeld: De Wette and Riickert
take a different -view.

80 SIN AND THE LAW.
of unchecked feeUng of Ufe, because a state of undisturbed inner
harmony (Eom. "vii. 9). Though death, the necessity that the
body should die (v. 14), was already dominant during this
period, yet it also stUl lacked its painful sting (1 Cor. xv. 56),
so long as the feeUng of guUt was absent ; for it was felt only
as the natural lot of man, and not as a penalty inflicted in
consequence of sin, and so could not disturb the harmonious
feeUng of Ufe in the state of relative innocence which preceded
the law. But this state can only last in man and in each
individual so long as sin "is dead" in him (that is to say, for
his consciousness, consciousness of sin being not yet awakened) ;
it immediately ceases, therefore, when the law, with its com
mand, p,r] iiTidvp'fia-ei's, Confronts the man innocently dominated
by the im6vp,ia t^s o-ap/cds. The immediate result is, that sin,
which was before dead, "revives;" that is, in the first place, it
comes to consciousness as that which it is, as contradiction to
the (expressed) wUl of God, or as transgression of the (positive)
command ; thereby also it ceases to be unimputable ; it is now
imputed as the true conscious guUtiness of the ego. (Hence
" without the law no TrapdjSaa-K, no iXXoyeta-Oai ;" 'both come only
in consequence of the /*^ iTridvfi'qa-eis ; cf. iv. 15, v. 13, vU. 7^—9).
The previous state of inward harmony and of undisturbed feeUng
of Ufe is at once disturbed by this awakening of the feeUng of
guilt, and in its place comes the feeling of discord in one's seK
and with God, which is felt as the damning "wrath of God, and
destroys the joyous feeling of Ufe (hence, iyio drreOavov, vu. 10.
The law, KaTepyd^eTai opyyv — ddvaTOV, iv. 15, "vU. 13).
Now inasmuch as the death of the body acquires its pain and
sting as the punishment of sin, by the entering in of this figura
tive death, or of the misery of the feeling of guUt "wrought by
the law, it may be said of the law, as in Eom. v. 13, "without
contradiction, that it gives to sin the power by which it becomes
the sting of death, or briefly, that the letter of the law " killeth"
(1 Cor. XV. 56 ; 2 Cor. iii. 6). The revival of sin by occasion of
the commandment, however, does not consist in this process of

THE LAW. 81
consciousness alone; the actual increase of its mamfestation is
inseparably connected with it. For indwelling sin, the sinful
incUnation of the flesh, takes occasion from the commandment
falsely to represent that which is forbidden as a good worth
stri"ving for, and by this "guUe" to excite what was before inno
cent desire, so that now all kinds of concupiscence begin to be
awakened, and these incited stiU further by the goad of the
tcommand become wUful lusts, and for the first time acquire the
energy (vii. 5, 8) to master and enslave the will, so that the law
only caUs forth more abundantly the transgressions which it
ought to prevent. Thus the law is the incitement which pro
vokes the sin latent in man to put forth its whole energy, the
result of which is, that sin appears as sin ; nay, more, as " ex
ceeding sinful," and hence, at the same time, its consequences,
its having death as its fruit, become more and more sensible
(vers. 5, 13).
Now according to the Apostle aU this is not only the effect
which the law produces in our experience, but the divine pur
pose of it. What was distinctively new, so thoroughly paradox
ical and so deeply wounding to the Jewish consciousness, was
precisely this doctrine that the law, this revelation of the holy
wiU of God, should have, not merely as its contingent effect, but
as its direct purpose, the increase of sin and the working of
wrath, instead of the prevention of sm and the working of righ
teousness. But to the Apostle this was emphaticaUy a cardinal
point. By exhibiting the law as a means of sin, the bond that
connected it in the consciousness of the Jew, and even of the
Jewish Christian, with the end of salvation as a means or con
dition, was completely sundered; the law was utterly severed
from its positive causal connection with salvation (whether as
sole or as auxUiary cause), and thus ceased to have any positive
significance and validity for the time of the accomplishment of
salvation. But how could the law have only a temporary validity, and
yet be a revelation of the eterncd wUl of God ? And how could
G

82 SIN AND THE LA W.
it be a revelation of the holy wiU of God, if it had as its
purpose the increase of sin ? The Apostle solved these ob"vious
questions by pro"ving that what he stated to be the proximate
purpose of the law, was again a negative preparatory (not posi
tive causal) means to the final end of salvation wiUed by God,
to redemption by Christ. Excluded from its positive causal
connection with the scheme of salvation, the law might yet be
incorporated as a negative moment in the process of salvation,
and so remain, if not in immediate yet in indirect relation to
the Divine purpose of salvation, which was identical and con
sistent with itself through aU the various stages of the process.
This, then, is the position which the Apostle assigns to the law
with reference to the scheme of salvation — it comes in bet'iveen sin
and redemption, cts an intermediate purpose directed to the latter
(Eom. V. 20). But in support of this theory, the result of dog
matic reflection on the relation of the law and the gospel (to a
certain extent speculatively constructed out of the Christian
consciousness), he required also a supplementary exegetical proof .
This he found in the relation in time between the first revela
tion to Abraham of the wUl of God regarding salvation, and the
revelation of the law through Moses.
To Abraham, as is set forth in Eom. iv., Gal. iU., was given the
promise of the inheritance, the foundation of the scheme of sal
vation, as a promise of favour {grace), that is to say, in the sense
that it was to be a free gift of the favour of God. Only after
wards was the law added to the promise of favour which had
already been made 430 years before. Now if the object of this
law had been, that the obtaining of the inheritance should be
conditioned by the doing of the law, then the inheritance would
have been the wages df service, and no longer a gift of favour,
for the wages of ser"viceable deeds is a debt and not a gift of
favour. In this case, then, a previous utterance of the wUl of
God sanctioned by an oath — the promise of the inheritance as
a gift of favour — would be so essentially changed in its origi
nal meaning by the " supplementary ordinance" (l?rtSiaTao-o^eTa(,

THE LAW. 83
Gal. iu. 15) of a condition on the fulfilment of which depended
the attainment of that which was promised, that it would be
as good as abrogated {ddeTet, ibid.). Now if such a supple
mentary alteration or abrogation of an expression of the wiU,
sanctioned by an oath, is not permissible even among men>
how much less is it conceivable that the oath of God to Abra
ham which was solemnly confirmed with reference to Christ,
should be again abrogated by the later coming in of the law, i.e.
altered in its essential original meaning as a promise of a gift of
favour ! Accordingly, the only view that remains open to us is,
that the law which came in after the promise must have had
a purpose of such a nature as to prepare and establish the ful
filment of the promise in its original sense. But the obtaining
of the inheritance as a gift of favour would be estabUshed by
proving that every other way of obtaining it was impossible.
This is exactly what was done by the law ; it had by no means
¦ to release men from the bondage of sin, from their imprisonment
in the dungeon of sin, and to lead them to righteousness, but,
on the contrary, to keep guard over them in this imprisonment,
so that they should not in any way seek to deliver themselves ;
it was to keep them for ever mindful of their bondage in the
slavery of sin, so that they might seek to attain salvation by no
other way than by the way of faith which was ordained by God,
and which alone corresponded to the sense of the promise.
Thus the law is the jailer who keeps guard over men shut up
in the prison of sin, in order that they may accept the fulfil
ment of the promise of favov/r as such, in faith, and not strive
to obtain it by works ; in another figure, the law is the school
master who keeps the boy under restraint, until the time when
he wUl be capable of attaining, by the road of faith which is
ordained by God, the right of sonship which- belongs to him.
This is the meaning of the passage. Gal. Ui. 22 — 24. There
is no question here of the restraining or bridling of the sinful
lusts, any more than in ver. 19. The expression, (rvveKXeia-ev
IJ ypa<^^ TOi n-avTa vrrb a,p,apTia.v, can, according to the context, and
g2

84 SIN AND THE LAW.'
according to -the very similar paraUel passage, Eom. xi 32, have
no other meaning than that God has (according to the testimony
of Scripture) given aU men as prisoners under the dominion of
sin; and in this imprisonment they are guarded by the law,
inasmuch as it never aUows them to escape from the conscious
ness of their impotence by which they are fettered.^ But the same
thought is also expressed in the other figure of the iraiSayayo's :
in this character the law, by the constraint of discipline, presents
the consciousness of the right of sonship from arising until the
goal is reached, at which the promise of the vlod eo-ta has attained
fulfilment ; with this the submission to restraint and the yoke of
service imposed by the schoolmaster came to an end, and was
superseded by the right of sonship (vers. 25, 26). Accordingly
this conception of the law as a schoolmaster does not, any more
than the other figure, directly point to the awakening of the
desire of salvation as a positive preparation for the redemption;
the obvious thought is only that of a bondage which forbids the
striving after salvation in one's own might, by any other than
the pre-ordained way of faith, in order that the fulfilment of
the promise should be imparted to all simply as the result of
faith (Ik TTia-Teuis, ver. 22), and that so a part (the Jews) should not
seek to obtain the promise by the private road of ipyd^eadai, KaT
6<j>eiXrjp,a, instead of Kara xt^/"".
The law, according to this explanation, is only the negative
means, which is to cut off at once and render impossible any
other way than that of faith. But as to the means by which
faith itseK comes into existence, the passage in question con
tains no direct intimation. It is true that the negation with
which we have been deaUng contains also indirectly the affir
mation that the law, in bringing to consciousness the impossi
biUty of a subjective self- won righteousness, caUs forth the
1 The right explanation, in the main, is given by Meyer and Hilgenfeld, Comm. ;
Lipsius, p. 79 f. ; Weiss, p. 264 ; Usteri (not without some vacillation), p. 66 f. Holsteii
truly remarks that it is not quite correct to say that the awakening of the need of
redemption by the law is to be found directly in the passage under review, p. 316.;
and Hausrath, ut supra, p. 474, follows him.

THE LAW. 85
desire for the means of salvation ordained by God himself.
In this sense, the complement of our text on its psychological
side is found in that passage, Eom. vii, where the struggle
between the law and the flesh forces from the writer the cry,
"0 wretched man that I am, who wUl deliver me from this
body of death ?" Here again, then, in the case of the law,
as before in the case of sin, we have the same two modes
of viewing the matter, — the objective theological and the sub
jective anthropological, — at times running parallel to each other,
and at times indistinguishably intertwined. According to the
former, the several moments of the development of man, or the
history of religion, — sin (Adam), promise (Abraham), law (Moses),
redemption (Christ), — are fused together only in the objective
unity of the Divine counsel, the fulness of whose wisdom is
unfolded precisely in ^he manifoldness and relative opposition
of the ways to the one goal (Eom. xi. 33 in connection with
32). But according to the latter, these moments proceed as
phases of an immanent process of the spirit of man and of
humanity, the one preparing for the other, the one bringing
itself about by means of the other,^ The former determines the
course of the discussion in Eom. xi. and Eom. v. 12 — 21, and
especiaUy in Gal. iii. ; the second is found in Eom. vii, and
with a somewhat different turn in Gal. iv., inasmuch as tho
figure of the schoolmastership of the law in this passage leads
to the thought of a childish stage in the development of
humanity, which precedes the freedom of sonship as a natural
preparatory step, in which the bondage of the law appears,' not
as a .positive institution of the Divine counsel with a view to the
revelation of favour, but as the natural consequence of the imma-^
turity of man in his first stage of development. Yet here, again,
the end of the period of tutelage is conditioned, not by the occur
rence of natural maturity, but by Divine predetermination (irpo-
6earp,M, ver. 2) ; and, conversely, in Eom. xi. the succession of the
' Compare on this the similar observations of Holsten, ut supra, p. 317, note, and
p. 419.

86 SIN AND THE LAW.
moments of the history of reUgion, determined by the Divine
counsel, is again brought about psychologically by means of the
belief and unbeUef of the Jews or GentUes. Thus the objective
and subjective modes of "vie"wing the scheme of revelation, i.e.
the religious development of humanity, easUy run into one
another, as is natural, since they are in fact only two sides of
the same process, which is at once di"vine and human.
" FinaUy, we may ask whether and to what extent Paul has
attained his object, of reconcUing his peculiar doctrine of the law
with the beUef in its immediately di"vine origin, and making it
acceptable to the believers in revelation, to the Jews and Jewish
Christians, who took their stand on the ground of the theocratic
history of the Bible. And here, while we cannot but admire the
keen intellect ofthe Apostle, who sought to render possible what
was impossible, to incorporate the ideal, truth of the new a^
deep views of the world and of history with the letter of tf ie
historical religion of Israel; we must at the same time in fair
ness aUow that the Jews and Jewish Christians were reaUy in .
the right, from the positive standpoint of the letter and of his
tory. However deep and true, from the standpoint of Chris
tian speculation, that relation is which the Apostle esjiabUshed
between the law and the salvation "wiUed by God, and however
masterly each step of the reasoning by which he seeks to. prove
this relation, in Eom. iv. and Gal. iU., by the position of the
law relatively to the promise, yet it is not to be denied that
aU this was altogether aUen from the historical intention of the
giving of the law, and is whoUy without ground in the letter of
the law. It is simply self-evident to the mind of any one who
takes his stand on the historical ground of the Old Testament,
that the law was not given with the object of increasing sin by
its non-fulfilment, but in order to be fulfiUed, and by this means
to lead to righteousness. It could never occur to one in that
position that this purpose of the law stood in any way in con
tradiction to the promise made to Abraham, as Paul argued ; it
would, on the contrary, appear self-evident that God, in the

The law. 87
covenant which he made with Abraham, only gave the jpromise
of blessing for the seed of Abraham on the understanding (no
matter whether expressed or not) that the seed of Abraham
should devote itself on its part to obedience to the Divine will,
and therefore to the fulfilment of the law which was to foUow :
with this, therefore, as the conditio sine qua non, the fiUfiUnent
of the promise to Abraham would appear to him to be inse
parably connected ; how else could it be a covenant, if perform
ance on the one part did not correspond to performance on the
other? And although the law, which was the obligation of
Israel to do its part corresponding to the promise, certainly fol
lowed 430 years after the promise, yet the covenant obUgation
on the part of Abraham was at once entered upon by the accept
ance of circumcision, from the first, as the seal of the covenant ;
and accordingly the promise was from the beginning attached
to a performance on the part of man as its indispensable conditio
sine qua non ; and thus the law by no means came in between
promise and fulfilment as something foreign tjo them both,, but
is the necessary complement t)f the promise; andthe doing of
the law is not the jnere temporary, but the perraanent and stUl
valid condition of the fulfilment of the promise. Against such
obvious objections of his Judaistic opposers, Paul might assert
that the promise of God to Abraham was estabUshed beforehand
with reference to Christ (TrpoKeKvpw/jievqv ek Xpia-Tov, Gal. iU. 17,
comp. 16), inasmuch as thq exact words of the oath, t$ uireppaTi
(and in an oath the exact words must be taken), could only apply
to one man, Christ. But, in the first place, this kind of proof, if
not' inadmissible, could certainly not be con"vincing even for that
age; 'and, secondly, even on the assumption tha,t this proof was
vaUd, the conclusion which Paul drew from it was more than his
opponents would aUow. For they could always say, even sup
posing that in the promise to Abraham reference was made to
its fulfilment in Jesus Christ, this would not exclude their con
ceiving the fulfilment of the promise in Jesus Christ as attached
from the beginning to the 'fulfilment of the covenant-obligation

88 SIN AND THE LAW.
of obedience to the law, as the corresponding performance on
the part of the children of Abraham. The argument urged by
Paul against this was, that in that' case the fulfilment of the
promise would no longer be Kara x"-P'''^' ^^^ '"*''¦' o</>e'^'?A"«) as
pLicrOos for the ipyd^ea-Oai of man (Eom. iv. 2 — 4, 13 — 16, xi 6 ;
Gal. iu. 18). But on what ground was he reaUy justified in
making this exclusive disjunction of these two ideas ? What if
the Jewish Christians had a conception of Christian salvation
to which that dilemma was in no way appUcable ; which, on the
contrary, included within itself ipyd(ea-6ai and p,ia-9os on the one
hand, and Tna-Teveiv and x«P's on the other, as two mutuaUy com
plementary moments, in which conception, therefore, righteous
ness and life were both gifts of Christ, and also consequences of
man's own act ? To this Paul had only one answer, but that
the weighty one, apa Xpto-TOS Soipeav ajre^avev !
It is quite cjear that the Jewish Christians were right from;
the historical exegetical point of view, but that Paul was right
dogmaticaUy ; the former had on their side the literal interpre
tation, judging by which the world would .pronounce them to be
in the right ; the latter had only the divine right of the higher
idea, which must always submit to be regarded by the men of
the letter as a falsification of the word of God and an invention
of individual caprice (2 Cor. iv. 2, 5) ; and that for the simple
reason, that the truth of the higher idea must ever remain unin
telligible, in spite of the best intentions, to those who cannot
free themselves from the bondage of the letter ; how much more
so to those whose clearness of vision is darkened by maUgnant
prejudice and suspicion, and the self-conceit of infalUble autho
rity ! (ibid. vers. 3, 4). But the position of Paul was aU the
more difficult, because he also fully shared the assumption of
his opponents, — the irrefragable authority of the letter as the
immediately revealed word of God. Consequently he could not
have recourse to the modern historical point of view, of an
advance from a lower to a higher stage of the development of
tne spirit of man, according to which the earlier stage, for aU its

THE LAW. 89
relative truth, e"vidently loses its authority in presence of the
higher stage. It is true that he does in many passages show a
tendency towards this point of view, especiaUy in Gal. iv. ; only
the strictly supernatural groundwprk of his thought does not
aUow this to become a ruUng principle; even though he at
times considers the law as tttcoxo, koI dia-devrj a-TOixeia tov k6(tp,ov,
yet it stiU remains in his eyes the immediate literal expression
of the holy and eternal will of God. In this difficulty Paul had
recourse to that method which has at aU times assisted thinkers
who have been fettered by supernatural presuppositions to fill
up the gulf between the old and the new ; he has thrust back
the new into the place of the old — nay, behind it as the oldest of
aU. The evangeUcal principle of faith was the ruling principle
in the foundation of the scheme of salvation long before the
giving of the law by Moses, namely, in the promise to Abraham,
and a means of salvation "was even then contemplated, such as
was manifested in Christ, as a revelation of righteousness through
God by faith without the works of the law. As this could not
of course be demonstrated by the letter of the Old Testament,
he was obUged to have recourse to the traditional allegorizing,
the " spiritual interpretation of Scripture," by means of which a
mind which formally beUeves in the letter, but has substan-
fiaUy advanced beyond it, has been able, from the time of Philo
to our own age, to conceal from itself the inward contradiction,
and by a gentle violence to force the opposing letter to bend to
the power of the higher idea.
For our modes of thought of course an exegetical method of
this kind has no authority, and its arguments cany no conviction.
That the singular t^ (nrippaTi must refer to Christ (Gal. iii. 16);
that the driving out of Hagar with her son Ishmael, in favour of
Sarah and Isaac, means the abrogation of the covenant of the
law in favour of the gospel freedom of sonship (Gal. iv. 21 — 31) ;
that the dissolution of the marriage bond by the death of the
husband represents the dissolution of the covenant of the law
by the mystical death of the body of Christ (Eom. vii. \) ;.that

90 SIN AND THE LAW.
the transitory^ luminous appearance in the face of Moses had
indicated to Moses himself that the law was a merely tem
porary institution, and that he had veUed his face from the
IsraeUtes in order to veU from them the knowledge of this fact
(2 Cor. iU. 7 — 13),— aU this appears to us to be quite arbitrary
subjective interpretation, without any objecti"Pe power of con
viction, and we cannot blame the Jewish Christians K they did
not feel in the least degree refuted by such arguments, but, on
the contrary, rather confirmed in their view of what they regarded
as Paul's boundless caprice. Completely justified, however, as
the Jewish Christians might be, from their positive historical
standpoint, in urging this objection against Paul, and especially
against his exegetical mode of arguing, yet when "viewed from the
higher ideal historical standpoint, the objection is very "weak.
For we must bear in mind that, in the first place, allegorizing was
at that time the estabUshed method of aU reaUy independent
and inteUigent study of the Scriptures ; and, in the next place,
that the aUegorizing of a Paul, compared with that of a PhUp or
of the Eabbis, stands infirUtely higher, because with him the
caprice, after aU, lay oiUy in the form, whUe the substance, which
he invested, with authority by means of this arbitrary m.ethp)i,
consisted of operative ideas full of the deepest objective truth,
and was not the mere play of a subjective fancy ; and, finallyi that
it is true of all times (including our own) that there is no otheif
means of reconciling faith which is stUl formaUy steadfast to
the unconditional truth of the old letter, with the ideal convic
tion which has in substance advanced beyond it, than this very
"artifice of the idea" by means of which the reUgious spirit
veUs its new developments from itseK, until the fruit has grown
strong enough to dispense with the protecting sheU of the old,
and allow it to faU off.

CHAPTEE II.
EEDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHEIST.

We. have seen how Paul regards man as a prisoner in a two
fold sense : first, inasmuch as he is under the law as his task
master and jaUer, which holds htm fast in the fetters and the
curse of the consciousness of guUt, reveals to him the wrath of
God, and is consequently for him the letter that kiUeth, or
delivers over to death; and, secondly, inasmuch as he is sold
under sin itself as the power dwelling in his flesh, subjected as
a slave, without a wUl of his own, to its dominating (^ires.
Now with this two-fold imprisonment the Apostle cdT
redemption by Christ — ^that is to say, by his death. For
impossible to doubt that in his eyes the death of Jesus, the
Messiah, is not merely the principal, but the exclusive means of
salvation. We have already seen (Introduction, p. 7) how the
>vhole of his gospel is comprised in the " word of the cross," in
-the knowledge and preaching of Christ Jesus as " the crucified."
We shaU see more fully later on how far salvation could for
Paul be based, /car i^ox^v, precisely on this death, as an external
fact by itself, and quite apart from the life^ of Jesus, which
1 Kom. V. 19, SiA ttiq inraKoriQ ro5 evoQ, furnishes no argument against this, for
we milst understand by this expression, not the whole obedience of the life of Jesus,
but his one act of obedience (StKaim/jLa, ver. 18), in opposition to Adam's one act of
disobedience (7rapairrw/ia, ver. 17). The words here made use of are evidently to be
explained by their opposite. The. view so much favoured in modern times that it was
only as the culminating point of his moral life that the death of Jesus had this high
significance for Paul, is part and parcel of the rationalizing misinterpretation of the
whole of Paul's doctrine of redemption.

92 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
preceded it. Corresponding to the two-fold imprisonment froin
which the death of Jesus redeemed mankind, the idea of this
redemption has also two separate sides to be distinguished. The
first signification (both in origin and importance) of the redeem
ing death of Christ is connected with the sentence of guilt, by
which man, as the object of the wrath of God, was placed under
tlie curse of the law, subjected to death as the punishment of sia.
Man is ransomed from this disastrous state of punishment in
that the demand for his punishment is satisfied by the death of
Christ as a vicarious expiatory sacrifice. Through this ransom
the death of Christ is the cause of the appeasing of the wrath of
God, or of the manifestation of his love, and thus it is a purely
objective act of God on Christ in our behalf, for the purpose of our
rescue. But, at the same time, the deatli of Christ frees us from
the power, of sin which dwells in the flesh, for this principle of
sin is destroyed, first in Christ himseK, and then in us through
our mystical communion with him. From this point of view the
death of Christ as a mortification of the flesh is the commence
ment of a subjective ethical process, which goes on and completes
itseK in us. Here also then, in order to do justice to all Paul's
utterances, we must distinguish between the same two essen
tially different points of view as in the doctrine of sin, namely,
the objective theological and the subjective anthropological. Accord
ing to the former, the death of Christ is the principle of a new
religious relation of humanity; according to the latter, it is the
principle of a new moral behaviour.

The Death of Christ as an Expiatoey Sacrifice.
We must unquestionably take as our starting-point that
passage in which Paul, in the course of the systematic develop
ment' of his doctrine, first expressly discusses the Christian
principle of " the righteousness of God," and traces it back to its
objective ground, in the redemption by means of Christ (Eom.

THE DEATH OF CHRIST AS AN EXPIATORY SACRIFICE. 93
iii. 24 — 26). After having shown in the preceding part of the
letter that righteousness is not in fact attained by means of
human action through fulfilment of the law, the Apostle now
shows how it must proceed from the favour of God and come to
man as a gKt, and has been wrought out by God himseK through
the scheme which is completed in the death of Christ. This
scheme is described by the Apostle in the following unmistak
able language : " God has set forth Jesus Christ as a propitiation
through faith (as a propitiatory sacrifice which becomes subjec
tively operative through faith), by means of his blood (by the
shedding of his blood, i e. by a violent death, as a bloody
sacrifice ; and that) for the purpose of declaring his (God's)
righteousness, (which was necessary) because of the remission (the
overlooking, leaving unpunished) of sins that are past, (which
remission was only possible) through the forbearance of God; for
the purpose (he resumes) of declaring his righteousness at this
time, (and, further, this proof of his righteousness was given in
this way, namely, in the expiatory death of Christ instead of the
death of all men, with the two-fold intention) that lie might be
(seen to be) just Himself, and (at the same time) the justifler of
him (who takes the determining principle of his religious life),
from faith in Jesus (an intensive expression for the beUever)."
Let us now expand the thoughts contained or indirectly pre
supposed in this passage. Sin during the period which preceded
Christ was not only not prevented, but was in fact increased by
the law ; nor had the particular manifestations of the wrath of
God against sin avaUed to suppress it; on the contrary, they
had stUl further aggravated it (compare i. 24 f.), and could not,
therefore, be regarded as an adequate punishment of human
guilt, such as should prove God a just Judge. Consequently,
the relation of God to sin on the whole, in spite of all
particular instances of punishment, was essentially that of
forbearance and remission, of indulgent non-observance. But
in this way the Divine justice which demanded punishment

94 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
was not sa,tisfied ; it had no adequate proof by facts, and might,
therefore, appear to have no existence. This required a tan
gible proof that avenging justice, although hitherto (relatively)
latent, nevertheless really existed. This proof could only be
given by filling up the measure of punishment, that is to say
— since death is the wages of sin — ^by a bloody penal death.
Were this to be accomplished, however, in the person of the
guUty, the justice of God would indeed be shown, but not his
favour. God would appear as just or righteous HimseK, but not
as also justifying the unrighteous. In order to attain, therefore,
this two-fold end, in order so to demonstrate the justice which
required punishment, that favour should at the same time be
sho"wn, God, instead of inflicting the fuU penalty of death, as
his avenging justice required, on aU who had deserved it,
inflicted it on one who had not deserved it; and thus set forth
this one in his blood that was shed, as the victim who suffered
(-vicariously) the punishment due to others, and so expiated their
guUt; and this He did in his own interest (TrpoeOeTo in the
middle voice), in order to cause the recognition of his own
justice, which recognition had been endangered by the previous
impunity of sin; though, of course, at the same time in the
interest of men, who found themselves by this means redeemed
(ransomed-^a7roy\Tjrpa)crts, from AiJTpov) from guilt, or from the
avenging justice of God, which hung over them like the sword of
Damocles, requiring the exaction of the penalty.
It cannot be denied that this explanation is equaUy in accord
ance with grammar and logic; nor that it is strikingly in
harmony with the presuppositions of the Je"wish idea of God
and sacrificial ritual. As regards the "justice of God," which is
proved by the death of Christ, nothing else is to be understood
by it than the justice which judges — that is to say, which
punishes; this is clearly shown by the context, according to
which the proof of justice appeared to be necessary "on account
of the pre"vious overlooking" — that is to say, impunity of sin, in

THE DEATH OF.CHRIST AS AN EXPIATORY SACRIFICE. 95
connection with which it is evident that only the justice which
punishes could be called m question. Moreover, this view^ is
the only one which accords simply and naturaUy with Jewish
notions, according to which justice consists in the exact requital
of actions, and consequently the punishing of every instance of
guUt ; but in whose person the guilt was punished, whether ui
that of the guilty person himself, or vicariously in that of
another, was of no immediate concern; all that was required
was that the penalty should be inflicted, and the punishment of
even the third and fourth generation for the sins of their fathers
was quite conceivable. The Jewish miad was especially fami
liarized by the rite of sacrifice with the idea of an expiation of
guUt by a vicarious atonement. But we are plainly directed to
this train of thought by the use of the word tA-ao-Ti^ptov in the
text. The primary meaning of the word is certainly only "means
of propitiation," but in connection with ev tw — diptaTL and
irpoedeTo, according to which it was a means of propitiation set
forth through the shedding of blood, the means of propitiation
can only be thought of in the concrete as a " propitiatory sacri
fice." But the Hebrew consciousness^ (like that of the ancient
^ Among the different interpretations which have been suggested in modern times,
that of Hofmann has found much favour, namely, the ' ' consistency of God," which
agrees with that of Ritschl, who says, "Grod has proved his justice in Christ, in that
He has aflted according to his essential nature in justifying the believer, and yet
having no communion with sinners without an atonement" (Altkath. K., p. 86). But
we must remark that Paul always refers the justification of believers by God solely to
the Divine favour, and not to the justice of God, which, on the contrary, requires the
punishment of the sinner. Ritschl's view evidently arises from his confounding the
divine quality of righteousness or justice with the righteousness which proceeds from
God as a gift conferred by his favour ; but these are two entirely different ideas, both
as to their origin and meaning. The interpretation which Lipsius has given to the
text in his work, "Paulin. Rechtfertigungslehre," may be passed over, as he has
himself abandoned it.
[The English language has two different words, "justice" and "righteousness," to
express these two ideas,"while the German "Gerechtigheit," like the Greek SiKacoavvri,
covers both; but "justification" of course means "making righteous." — Trans.]
" The idea of eoepiatory sacrifice, as expressed in Lev. xvii. 11, is, that the (shed)
blood of the sacrifice, by means of the soul or life contained therein, is' to "serve as a
covering" for the souls of those who bring it. This does not mean that the unholinesa

96 REDEMPTION. BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
world in general) associated with this idea the thought of vica
riously giving up a living thing to death, in order to redeem by
this means another Ufe which had been forfeited to the Deity ;
the wrath of the Deity, aroused by sin, demands expiation by
death; the life of the guUty person himseK is first of aU forfeited
to this demand; but this forfeited life may be rescued, K another
is given up in its place to the death demanded by the wrath of
God. This is only so far " vicarious punishment," that one Ufe,
which had incurred the penalty of death, is set free through the
vicarious suffering of death by another, without this other one,
who suffers death vicariously for him who is worthy of death,
suffering this penalty on his part also as a punishment; the penal
character of the expiatory suffering ceases through the vicarious
quittance of the penalty. We should therefore be going beyond
the bibUcal idea of expiatory sacrifice if we were to imagine
Christ to.be a personal object of puiUshment inflicted by the
wrath of God. He only experienced in himself, in his person,
the suffering which the guilty had incurred as a punishment due
to themselves, the infliction of which was demanded by the
Divine wrath; but as an innocent person who only suffers
"vicariously, he experienced suffering, not as a punishment, but
only as externally aUotted to him. According to biblical ideas,
therefore, there is no such thing as a " vicarious pufiishment of
of the man is to be screened from the sight of God, by placing between them the holy ( !) .
life of a beast (this would be a strange notion !), but that the souls which have
become liable to punishment through sin, and subject to the avenging justice of God,
are covered, i. u. protected and rescued from the wrath of God, which would otherwise
strike them, inasmuch as his claim to a life which has become forfeited' to Him, is
satisfied by the substitution of the life of the beast. This meaning of the Hebrew
word is made very clear by one of its derivatives, which signifies "redemption through
a substitute tendered for the real debtor, raiisom," Xwrpov. Compare Ex. xxi, 30 ;
Num. xxxv. 31 ; and Is. xliii. 3, which is quite conclusive: "I have given Egypt Cush
and Sheba, Xvrpov avH aov." For how could these unclean Gentile nations serve as a
"covering" for Israel in the sense of screening their uncleanness from the holy eyes of
God ? But they might well serve as a vicarious substitute or ransom, by which Israel
is redeemed from the curse of God's avenging justice, under which he would otherwise
have irrecoverably fallen, inasmuch as the Divine wrath, which demands the punish
ment that is due, now finds the satisfaction of its claims in those heathen nations
which are substituted for Israel itself.

THE DEA TH OF CHRIST AS AN EXPIA TOR Y SA ORIFICE. 9 7
Christ," inasmuch as vicarious suffering is the negation of
punishment, is expiation instead of punishment.
It will be conclusively proved by other passages that Paul
applied this idea of propitiatory sacrifice, which is found in the
Old Testament, to the death of Christ ; or rather that he adopted
this view, which had already been enunciated by Jesus himself
(Matt. XX. 28), and which was prevalent in the primitive com
munity (compare dpviov io-cj)ayp,evov in the Apocalypse). In this
sense alone must we understand Paul when he says, 1 Cor. vi. 20
and vii. 23, ijyopao-^ijTe Tiprjs, " Ye are bought with a price," which
God, as it were, allowed it to cost Him, by giving up his Son for
your redemption, and which Christ has paid by his vicariously
given IKe, in order to rescue those who were otherwise lost, and
thereby at the same time to win them as a possession for God.
The same idea is stUl more distinctly contained in 1 Cor. v. 7, to
5ra<rxa ij/tcSv inrep 7jp,aiv eTv6-q Xpco-rds : if Christ was Sacrificed for
us as our Passover, then this sacrificial death was an expiatory
sacrifice ; for vicarious atonement is undeniably the fundamental
conception of this primitive rite, the Semitic " ver sacrum," in
which the first-born, who was devoted to God, was released by
the vicarious sacrifice of a lamb, and his exemption thereby pur
chased (" exemption" is the meaning of the Hebrew, " release"
of the Arabic name of this rite).
EssentiaUy simUar is the thought contained in Eom. v. 8 — 10,
in spite of the apparent contradiction that the death of Christ
is in iii. 24 f. stated to be a proof of the justice of God, but in
this passi^ge a proof of his love. It is in reality both of these
in both passages : that death follows sin as a punishment, is a
proof of his justice, but that Christ undergoes the penalty instead
of the guUty, is a proof of the love of God, who has ordained
this scheme which reconcUes his justice with his love, of his
own free wiU (ry avTov x"/"-^'" iii- 24). The words wrep rffiwv,
which occur here and are repeated in many other passages,
signify primarUy indeed simply " for our good ;" but the con
necting thought, both in this and the other passages, is that of a
^ H

98 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
vicarious act (compare especiaUy 2 Cor. v. 21). This is also
indicated by the effect of the death of Christ as described ifl
ver. 9 f. ; this consists in two things — ^first, in the already com
pleted fact that we ix^pol ovtcs KaTtiXXdyr^p.ev Tif 6eif Sia tov
6avdTov tov vtov avTov; and, secondly, in the hope which is foimded
on this, that we cr(D6r]cr6p,eda Si avTov aTrb T-^s opyTjs, that is at the
last jiidgment. As this hope is derived from the completed fact,
the future hoped for must be the completion or the definite con
firmation of the same work of salvation, which as past is ex
pressed by ixOpoi OVTCS KaT-qXXdyyp,ev Tt^ 6eQ : KaTaAAay^vat tw
6e(} must therefore contain a declaration about our position with
regard to God, or concerning our faith which is dependent on
God, just as this is evidently contained in o-ufeo-^at d;ro tijs opyijs.
But in that case, KaTaAAay^vat t<J OeS cannot express a change in
our voluntary behaviour towards God, our disposition and moral
attitude towards Him, for that would be of course dependent
upon ourselves, and not, like o-w^ea-Oai dirb Tys 6pyy<s, upon Him ;
no conclusion could therefore be drawn from the former to the
latter, and least of all the conclusion clearly drawn with so
much confidence in ver. 10, from the greater to the less. Because
we had changed our hostile feeling towards God, it would by no
means follow with certainty that God also would from that
time have given up his anger against us, and that we should be
saved from its disastrous consequences; the merely subjective
wish to be henceforth at peace with God would not suffice 'to
justify the objective certainty that God also on his part was
at peace with us. But the future salvation from thp wrath of
God might be hoped for with aU the, more certainty, on the
supposition that the greater thing had already been done by
God ; that we, while as sinners we werecpbjects of his wrath, had
nevertheless been reconcUed to Him by the death of his Son,
which had been ordained by HimseK, as the palpable proof that
his love towards us far outweighed his anger. Accordingly, KaraX-
Aay^vat is a change of our relation to God proceeding from God
himself, not a change of our behaviour towards God proceeding

THE DEATH OF CHRIST AS AN EXPIATORY SACRIFICE. 99
from us ; and ex^pot ovtss therefore does not denote ^ an active
enmity on our part agauist God, but our passive condition under
the curse of the Divine anger. In this sense alone is the text
consistent with itself, and with Eom Ui. 25, and 2 Cor. v. 18 ;
it declares that the death of Christ was a pvoof to us of the
Divine love, inasmuch as by it we have become reconcUed to
God, instead of being hated by Him, and so the anger of God
which oppressed us is removed from us — in short, the death
of Christ was a conciUation of God's anger, ordained by his
love. .The same thing is said in Gal. m. 13. That which is ex
pressed in the previous passage as " propitiating the enmity of
God," is here called " redemption from the curse of the law." The
law is the expression of the Divine wiU, therefore, the curse of
the law is the expression of the wrathful wiU of God, of his
avenging justice. From this curse which oppressed us, Christ
has " redeemed us by being made a curse for us," that is, by giving
himseK up as a ransom to the death which the Divine wrath
demanded. The abstract expression KaTdpa is probably not
applied here merely in recollection of the words used in the
passage quoted from the Old Testament, but also because it
really expresses the thought more accurately than any other:
Christ was not personaUy accursed, but only came to stand in
the place of such an one before God, inasmuch as he suffered
the accursed death as a "vicarious expiatory sacrifice, and by this
ransom redeemed our life, which as cursed was forfeit to our
^ This follows necessarily from a right understanding of the meaning of KaroK-
Xay^vai. If we understand this to refer to the. doing away with the anger of God
against sinful humanity, and Ix^poi ovteq, nevertheless, to refer to our hostile attitude
towards God, there is certainly a "want of clearness of thought" (RiicJeert), only it
is not the Apostle who betrays it. Ritschl is more consistent, who (Altkath. K. , p. 87)
not only understands tx9poi in an active sense of "the sin of mankind in its quality
of enmity against God," but also denies that it has any reference to an expiation of the
wrath of God, because Paul always connects the wrath of God with the aTToXKviievot,
but in no case with the aoiZofievoi', who on the contrary, so far as their former con
dition as sinners is concerned, are only put under favour. And yet Paul says
aoiQriaoneQa airo Trjg opyrJQ ; if we require to be saved from the wrath of God, then
we must surely at one time have lain under it.
h2

100 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
wrathful God. Thus this passage also agrees exactly with the
ancient notion of expiatory sacrifice.^
The same may be said finaUy of 2 Cor. v. 21 : " God hath made
him to be sin for us, who knew no sin (by personal experience), that
we might become the righteousness of God in him." Here also we
have the abstract word dpapTia, as in Gal. Ui. 13, KaTdpa, not with
out good reason^for Christ was not personally sinful ; the rela
tive sentence expressly denies it ; but he was put in the objec
tive relation of the sinful world towards God,^ so that, although
really in his own person not sinful, yet he passed ideaUy for a
sinner in God's regard and deaUng, was esteemed as such;
exactly in the same way as we, conversely, by reason of what was
done to him, come to stand towards God in the objective rela
tion of the righteous, to pass ideally in the regard and the
dealing of God as righteous, although we are not so reaUy in our
own persons, but, on the contrary, are sinners. We have here
neither more nor less than an exchange between Christ a'nd us, —
he takes from us the part of sinners, we receive from him that
of the righteous ; sin and righteousness appear on both sides as
purely objective characters, separable from>the person, and trans
ferable, of mere ideal validity in themselves, but involving very
real consequences — on the one hand death, on the other hand
Ufe. This is a mode of looking at the matter which wUl not so
much surprise us after what we have seen in chap, i of the
' The dogmatic objections urged by Al. Schweizer (Stud, und Krit. 1858, p. 436 f.)
can have no weight against these simple, facts that exegesis yields. Not that they are
therefore groundless ; we shall in a, later portion of this work bring forward the
very same considerations ; only they ought not to be introduced directly into the

'¦' The interpretation of this passage given hy Holsten, ut supra, p. 437, and accepted
by Hausrath, that God placed him, who in his previous existence was absolutely
sinless, in a condition of being really affected with sin, by' sending him into sinful flesh,
is wrong, first, because in the whole context there is no reference to Christ becoming
'man, but throughout, and therefore also in ver. 21, only to his death; and, secondly,
on account of the analogy with our SiKaioa'livq deov, by which, according to Paul's use
of the word, and according to the context (compare especially ver. 19, p.ri Xoyijo/tfvoc '
— avTuv), imputed, ideal righteousness alone can be understood ; consequently that
which corresponds to it, the apapria of Christ,, must also be only imputed andideal.

THE DEATH OF CHRIST AS AN EXPIATORY SACRIFICE. 101
ebjectivity of Paul's notion pf sin, and what we shall have to
say of the objectivity of his notion of righteousness in chap. iv. ;
although it must appear in the highest degree perplexing to a
mind accustomed to think pf morality as subjective.
One can hardly help further giving to hrep ypiav in this passage
the meaning, " in our stead," especially as the words mrep Xpurrov,
which occur twice previously, can scarcely be rendered other
wise than in Christ's stead; mrep is thus precisely equivalent
to avT6. This makes it stiU less possible to suppose that the
text refers to a deliverance from the power of sin ; not only do
the analogies drawn from other passages which we have men
tioned point rather to exemption from guilt, but ver. 19 does
the same, when taken in connection with the passage we are
here discussing, inasmuch as the reconciliation with God, com
pleted by God in (that is by means of) Christ, is here further elu
cidated by the words, py Xoyi^opevos aVTOi's Ta irapairTiopaTa avTWV.
This reconciliation, therefore, does not consist in the fact that\
sin is no longer operative in man, but in the fact that it is uo
longer imputed to him by God as guilt which deserves dam
nation, that consequently man is no longer on its account an
object of the Divine anger. And in tbis way the whole passage ^,
contains the thought, which fully agrees with aU that has gone '.
before, that the redemption of mankind from guilt is brought .
about by Christ's vicariously suffering the penalty which man
'^had incurred through sin, and that this exchange of parts be
tween the guiltless and the guUty has been ordained by God
himself from love to us.
And here one cannot avoid asking the question, what, necessity
was there that this incurred penalty should be suffered at all,
when the Divine "wUlingness to show favour already .existed
before this expiation, and indeed was necessary in order to
render it possible ? What need was there that the love of God
to sinners should attain its realization in this round-about way ?
Since it was God himself who ordained the reconciUation of the
sinful world, how could this same God, who so abounded in love,

102 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
be on the other hand one who required an expiation, whose
avenging wrath must be satisfied, before his love could show
itself as such ? This question it is, probably, which has con
sciously or unconsciously hovered before the mind of commen
tators with a confusing influence, and hindered an impartial
apprehension of the simple grammatical meaning of the passages
we have quoted (which may be classed amongst the most misin
terpreted texts of the Bible). Nor can it be denied that this
question involves no small difficulty, and that not merely when
regarded from a modern point of view, or one otherwise alien to
that of Paul, but quite as much so when we start from Paul's
own position. It may indeed be said that the real answer to
the question just propounded is perfectly simple and obvious.
Eedemption from the curse of the law by a vicarious endurance
of it was necessary, because the law, this irrevocable expression
of the holy wiU of God, had once for all assigned death as the
punishment of sin. Simple and lucid, however, as this conclu
sion may appear, and completely satisfactory as it may be to
ecclesiastical and orthodox commentators, yet it has no sUght
obstacle to encounter in the presuppositions of Paul himself.
Let us only recollect for a moment what this very Apostle has
taught about the law, its meaning and its purpose in the Divine
economy. The law is to him, as we have seen, by no means
a thing that is vaUd, unconditionaUy and eternaUy, and there
fore also in reference to Christ, but it has only come in as a
temporary intermediate purpose, between promise and fulfilment,
in order to increase sin, and to awaken mankind, who were
all enslaved and impotent under its bondage, to faith. Now
how can this law, which from the beginning "wIfe only destined
to a mere temporary dominion, as a means subservient to
Christ, raise against Christ, its originaUy predestined Lord, after
he had appeared, such a claim as could only be' satisfied by his
bloody expiatory death ? Is not a claim which was originally
established only for a certain period of time, extinguished of
itself at the expiration of this period, without the necessity of

. THE DEATH OF CHRIST AS AN EXPIATORY SACRIFICE. 103
any other release ? And this question remains with equal force if
we turn from the law to the Divine justice which reveals itself in
the law. How is it possible that its claims for the punishment of
sin should be unconditional, and valid with regard to Christ, when
it was God himseK whose sentence had subjected all to sin, with
the distinct purpose of showing mercy on all through favour ?
(GaL Ui. 22 ; Eom. a. 32). If the avenging justice were from
the beginning ancillary to the wUl to save, as a subordinate
moment, in the same way as the law is an ancillary moment or
temporary stage in the scheme of salvation, can it (the avenging
justice) in that case make so unconditional a claim to satisfac
tion, that without it the wUl to show favour can in no way be
realized ? If this were so, would not that which should only be
a moment, be raised into an independent and co-ordinate, if not
a predominant, factor? All these questions undeniably bear
hard upon the PauUne system, and add to the difficulty of under
standing it. But that only binds us the more, as scientific
expositors, impartially to establish this inconsistency in Paul's
system and to make its origin intelligible. In fact, the contra
diction to which we have drawn attention, is very simply ex
plained by the genesis of the system, and is a most instructive
point, giving us a deep insight into the structure of the dogmatic
thought of Paul.
For thus much is clear — ^if Paul's notion of the law, its insuffi
ciency in a religious point of view, and its merely temporary
significance, had been his original view, from which he started
" and on which his system was founded, then he could by no
possibiUty have conceded that the claims of the law, which he
ranked so low, could only be satisfied by the accursed death
of the Messiah, as a vicarious expiatory sacrifice ; but the law
would have been for him (as it was in the eyes of John) a lower
preparatory stage, which disappeared of itself on the manifesta
tion of favour and truth in Christ; and the death of Christ
would have had no relation whatever to the extinct claims and

104 REDEMPTION B^ THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
threats of the law. But in fact it is just the reverse in the case
of Paul. The law was from first to last to him, as much as to
every Jew, the unconditional decree of the Divine wUl, and its
validity was unUmited. Its abrogation by the death of Christ,
which opened a new way of salvation, could therefore only take
place in such a way that the claims of the law should at the
same time be recognized and satisfied, and thus an adjustment
or compromise should be estabUshed between the new principle
of favour and the legal principle of justice, such as we found in
the expiatory death of Christ. Proceeding from this point, the
abrogation of the law by the expiatory death of Christ being
now estabUshed, he came upon the further task which awaited
him — to reconcile this conditional and temporarUy Umited soU
dity of the law with the unity and unchangeableness of God.
We have seen how Paul did this, by deducing from the tempo
rary estabUshment of the law between promise and fulfilment,
the inference that it had also in the Divine intention from
the beginning only the character of a conditional intermediate
purpose, not that of an absolute final end. Thus Paul, starting
from his initial hypothesis of the indestructible vaUdity of the
law, and stUl influenced by it in his view of the death on the
cross as an expiatory sacrifice, was ultimately driven, by the
logical consequences of the doctrine of the cross itself, to a
conclusion regarding the law which completely destroyed his
hypothesis. This striking discord between the conclusion
reached through manifold dialectic arguments and the original
premise (regarding the law), might easUy be concealed from the
mind of its author — the experience of aU times furnishes simUar
examples : on the other hand, it was probably the main reason
that the system of Paul could not be taken up by others -without
undergoing a change, nor be retained in its original sense in the
Christian community, and least of aU by those who accepted its
essential conclusions. Inasmuch as these took their stand at
once on the conquest and degradation of the law, to which Paul

THE DEATH OF CHRIST AS AN EXPIAlVR Y SACRIFICE. 105
could only have attained after a violent conflict with the law^
they had no longer any ground for regarding the work of Christ,
after Paul's manner, as an escape from the demands of the law, a
redemption from the curse of the law, a manifestation of the
avenging justice of God, and the Uke. In their eyes, therefore,
the ethical significance of the appearance of Christ, and espe
ciaUy of his death (which significance was not overlooked indeed
by Paul, but held a secondary place in his thoughts), must have
occupied the foreground and formed the cardinal point of their
system and of their preaching. This was the simple and in
evitable consequence of the direction already taken by Paul
himself in his new doctrine of the law ; but with Paul the new
doctrine of the law, which resulted from his doctrine of redemp
tion, produced no reflex influence on the form of the doctrine of
redemption itself, and it is this which has given to the dogmatic
teaching of Paul its peculiar character, which combines and
blends together the Jewish form and the Christian idea. Paul's
docirine of redemption was thus the way of overcoming the religion
ofthe lav, still put in legal forms, a compromise between grace and
the law, in terms derived wholly from the law.
By this historical mode of considering our subject, we shall
arrive at the solution of another question, which has ever been
much vexed by dogmatic writers, although it is remarkable that
it was never raised by Paul, because it lay quite out of his path,
in the psychological genesis of his system, and it is this : How
far was the death of the one victim, Jesus, an expiation satisfac
tory to the justice of God for the sin of humanity, or an equiva
lent ransom in place of the death of aU? It is commoiUy thought
that the ground of the absolute sufficiency of the death of Christ
as an expiation is to be found in 2 Cor. v. 21, where it is stated
that it was the death of one who was personaUy sinless. But
certain as it is that personal sinlessness forms the conditio sine
qua non of the possibUity of vicarious expiation, it is no less
certain that it does not foUow hence that this could be a suffi
cient ground for the unconditional expiatory value of one death

106 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
in the place of aU. One undeserved death is obviously in reality
only the equivalent for one deserved death, but not for the death
of the countless numbers who have deserved it. Nor does the
passage quoted say that it is; in the words, tov p,y yvovTa
afjiapTiav, it Only States the condition on which alone the expres
sion apiapTiav i'lroiya-e could have been applicable — on which
alone, therefore, a vicarious sufferuig could take place ; but it
says nothing to show what it was that gave to this its absolute
expiating power. In the other passages that have been quoted,
it is simply stated that redemption has taken place through
Jesus Christ, through the death of the Son of God, that Christ
has redeemed us, without a word of explanation to indicate what
gave this expiatory value to the death of Christ. That there is
no reference in the mention of the " Son of God" to a divine
nature, the partaking of which has made this one death sufficient
(according to the views of Anselm and Luther), is self- evident,
for a divine nature of that kind was utterly alien to Paul's
Christology, as we shaU presently see. The fact from which we
must start rather is, that Paul prefers to speak of the death or
cross of Christ, i. e. the Messiah. And this reminds us of the
source from which this whole theory has sprung. The death of
the Messiah on the cross would in itself be an inconceivable
contradiction, if it had not been ordained by God as the means
of producing the Messianic righteousness by the expiation of
guUt : for this reason, that is for no real reason, but for consis
tency's sake oiUy, it is to be regarded as the absolute means of
expiation. We have only to reaUze in our minds this psycho
logical account of the doctrine of the expiatory death of Christ,
in order to understand clearly how it might well happen that
the question of the possibility of such a vicarious satisfaction
never arrested Paul's attention, any more than that of its
necessity. Let us now abstract from that which we must regard as the
Jewish and legal form of Paul's doctrine of the atonement, and
there stiU remains, as the ideal religious substance of his

_ ^A TH OF CHRIST AS AN EXPIA TOK x ,sjhji%is:iCE. 107
thought, the contemplation of the reconciling lave of God, which.
raises man out of the discordant relation to God in which he
finds himself by nature, and places him in the unity of fellow
ship with God in love (Eom. Ui 24, xap's ; v. 8, dyajrr; tov deov
eh ij/xas ; 2 Cor. v. 19, 6eos ijv iv XpicTT^, Koa-pov KaTaXXdcrcroiv
ea,vT(^ ; Eom. VIU. 31 f., o deos vjrep ¦ypiZv, os ye tou iSiov vtov ovk
ec^etcraTO aAA' mrep TrdvTOiv TrapeSwKev avTov), and which can only be
met on the part of man by a grateful confidence, and beUeving
acceptance of God's wilUngness to show favour As it is no less
certain that this, which is the core of the Pauline doctrine of
reconcUiation, contains the fundamental idea of genuine evan
gelical piety, than that its form is derived from genuine Jewish
thought, we can easUy understand from this antagonism why
Christian piety at one time accounts this doctrine a treasure,
and at another time finds it a rock of offence. But there is
another point which is hereby rendered intelligible. This
variance between the Christian idea and the Jewish form places
in God himself an opposition between reconcUing love and
wrath which is irreconcUable because it insists on punishment, —
an opposition of motives which dogmatic thought has striven in
vain to harmonize, because it is in fact only to be explained by
its psychological genesis. In such cases the religious imagina
tion has recourse to the simple expedient of separating the
opposing motives, and attributing them to different subjects as
influenced by them and representing them, and then regarding
the reconcUiation of them as the action of these opposite
characters. And so it has happened here. The love of God, the
motive of the work of reconcUiation, naturally found its repre
sentative in him who gave himself up in self-sacrifice as a wiUing
organ of its counsel of grace, that is to say, in Christ, the his
torical Mediator of reconciUation. But the wrath, which through
its inexorable demand of punishment made a vicarious expia
tion necessary for the work of reconciliation, found its repre
sentative in that form in which the religious consciousness
of the Je"wish nation had long ago personified the avenging

108 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
justice of God, namely, the devil. Love and wrath, whose work
ing together in God, Uke the diagonal of two opposing forces,
produced the atonement by means of vicarious expiation, were
thus respectively attributed by the religious imagination to
Christ and the Devil; and consequently the atonement itseK
naturally became a dramatic action, struggle, or judicial process,
between these two representatives of opposing motives in God.
Naively as this idea was at a later period worked out, and
widely as it departed from the elementary form given to it by
Paul, yet no one who is familiar witb the character and processes
of religious imagination wUl see anything else in this than a
perfectly natural, nay necessary, development of Paul's doctrine
of reconciliation, with its antagonism of love and anger in God,
of the Christian and the Jewish idea of God. In the original
system of Paul, it is true that this substantiating, in the person
of the devil, of that wrath which requires expiation, is not yet
completed ; although the personification of the curse of the law,
from whose claims the sinful world must " be redeemed," or of
the dominion of the law from which we are released, being
"accounted righteous through the death of Christ,'' approaches
very closely to this substantiation, and prepares the way for it.
But in the earliest form of Pauline doctrine, immediately subse
quent to the time of Paul himself, namely, in the Epistles to the
Colossians and Hebrews, we already find the death of Christ
brought into relation with the Devil and the Satanic kingdom
(Heb. ii. 14 ; Col. ii. 15; compare Chap. ix. of this work). On the
other hand, it was more obvious to envisage the reconciling love of
God in him who brought about the reconciliation as a human act of
love, and to return it to Him with grateful responsive love. Here,
in this kindly element, the doctrine of the atonement has from
the first thrown off the hard dpgmatic husk, and has become a
growing germ of pure and simple piety. This was the case in an
extraordinary degree with Paul himself; through all his dog
matic reasoning on the knowledge of the cross of Christ, the
dominant mood is grateful love to him who loved him and gave

LIBERATION FROM THE DOMINION OF SIN. 109
himself for him. And it is the intensity of this simple and
moraUy true feeling which became in Paul the root' of a ne"w
and most significant mode of regarding the death of Christ.

The Death of Christ as Liberation from the Dominion
OP Sin.
This view has not, as would appear from some of the later
commentaries, sprung from scholastic reflection on the relation
of the death of Christ to the nature of the flesh. The theological
idea of the destruction of sin in the death of Christ is, on the
contrary, the last dogmatic precipitate from a religious expe
rience, the source of which lies in the simplest characteristic of
Christian piety, in the thankful giving up of the heart to the
Mediator who has given himseK up for us, in the consciousness
of the duty of entirely devoting our whole life to him, to whose
act of love we owe our higher Ufe of union with God. Gal. ii. 19 f.
and 2 Cor. v. 14 f. are the passages which afford us a gUmpse of
the psychological genesis of this train of thought, of the reUgious
birth-place of that mystical union with Christ, in which Chris
tian piety in the mind of Paul discovered the power of sanctifi
cation, of the new moral life and freedom from the servitude of
sin, at the same time with the blessedness of reconciliation.
" If one died for aU," says this passage in Corinthians, " then are
you all dead ; and in truth he died for all, in order that they
who live might henceforth not live for themselves, but for him
who died for them and has risen. Therefore, if any one is in
Christ, then is he a new creature; the old has passed away;
behold, aU has become new." This passage starts unmistakably
from that view of the death of Christ which we have hitherto
been considering, viz., as a vicarious suffering /o7- us (and it thus
agrees with the passage above mentioned, v. 19 — 21), but it no
less plainly goes further, and gives to Christ's dying for us
an application which makes it a (moral) dying of all with

110 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
Christ.^ But this turn of thought is brought about simply by the
subjective reaction which the objective fact of a death endured
for us was calculated to produce in our sense of gratitude ; if we
owe our rescued life to Christ who has rescued us by his vica
rious death, then this rescued Ufe can no longer be held by us
at our own disposal, but it must belong to him to whom we owe
it ; but as such it is no longer the old life, which consistedin
our Uving only for ourselves, but it has become an entirely new
Ufe, as belonging to Christ and devoted to him, namely, a life
bound up in communion with Christ (ev Xpia-r^), kept within
certain limits by his love, of which he gave proof by deed in
dying for us (ver. 14, -q dydiry tov Xpia-Tov (Tvvexei ij/iSs) ; accord
ingly, if we compare this new life of obligation to Christ and
through him with our former life of selfish freedom from obli
gation, or of obligation to the law, we cannot but come to the
conclusion that we who are in possession of the love of Christ
are altogether on our side also dead with Christ (as to our former
IKe) ; his death therefore was at the same time our death. Thus
^ We may certainly call this also a vicarious relation, only in another sense ;
thus Bauj; N. T. Theol., p. 159, and in HilgenfeWs Ztschr. f. w. Th. 1859, p. 241 :
" It is possible to take the place of another in two different senses ; first, "in such a
way that he whose place another takes does not do that which another does for him ;
secondly, so that he whose place another takes likewise makes that which this other
does for him into his own act. We may call the first the real, the second the ideal
vicarious act ; in the former, one person stands only externally beside another person ;
in the latter, each is not merely beside and outside the other, but each is in a spiritual,
inward fashion in the other. " And p. 243 : " The idea of this passage (2 Cor. v. 14 f.)
is that of a union of Christ with us, brought about by the principle of love, by means
of which that which he has done for us is the same thing as if we ourselves had done
it ; as he identifies himself with us in his death, and has set himself in our place as
dying for us, so must we also think of ourselves as in his place, and regard ourselves as
dead with him. This unity as a being in each other, in which one lives in the other,
in which we are crucified with Christ because he has been crucified for us, we live in
him because he lives in us (Gal. ii. 20), is the true Pauline notion of vicarious action."
This latter passage says too much. For the original notion of vicarious action, aud
that which alone corresponds to the dogmatic theory of expiation, is rather that which
Bawr in the passage quoted above calls the "real," or which might also have been
called the legal notion. But the text we have quoted certainly shows how easy it was
for this "real" to pass over into the "ideal," the legal into the mystical notion, and
how decided from the very beginning was the tendency of PauTs oirni mind to gravi
tate in the latter direction.

LIBERATION FROM THE DOMINION OF SIN. Ill
regarded, therefore, the death of Christ is seen to be the common
death of aU who beUeve in Christ, by which they cease to exist
according to their " old man," and begin the Ufe of a new man.
But the Apostle himself tells us in the plainest language whence
this view sprang ; it is founded on reflection upon a fact of
inward eocperience — the fact, namely, that he whom Christ's love,
as shown in deeds, has rescued, has become devoted to Christ, and
therebya new man (ij dydrry TOvXpia-Tov o-wexei ij/^as, Kpivavras TovTO,
on et ets, &c.). We find precisely the same idea in Gal. U. 19 f. '
Here also the being crucified with Christ, through which Christ
becomes the principle of life in man instead of the old self, is
traced back to the inward fact of "belief in the Son of God, who
loved me and gave himself for me"-^an explanatory sentence,
which plainly enough describes this beUef as precisely that
frame of mind which is presupposed in the passage from the
Corinthians above referred to, namely, that of grateful obliga
tion and self-devotion. In this passage also, it is the sense of
being bound up with Christ in the feeUng of a grateful return of
his love, which makes the faithful partakers in the death of
Christ, or makes this death to be the common death of all
believers. Gal. vi. 14, St' ov ipol Koa-pos ia-TavpwTai Kayd rtS Koa-pci),
wUl be seen to point to the same view, although the emotional
process which engendered the idea cannot so directly be traced
here as in the two passages last mentioned ; yet even here there
is an intimation of it in the word Kavx^a-Oai, which is an expres
sion of joyfully exalted feeUng. Gal. v. 24 declares further (ol tov
Xpia-Tov Tijv a-dpKa ia-Tavpoxrav) , that the mortification of the fle,&
of the old man is already accompUshed in principle in those
who belong to Christ's family, and this by the very fact of their
ha"ving entered that famUy through faith and baptism: but that
the killing of the flesh in a purely objective sense, apart from
this subjective act, has been once for all accomplished by the
death of Christ, is not only not stated in this passage, but is a
notion that is expressly excluded by the use of the active verb,
co-ravptoo-av, according to which the kiUing of the flesh is referred .

112 REDEMPTION BY TEE DEATH OF CHRIST.
to the personal act of each individual in becoming a Christian,
and consequently depends again on self-devotion to Christ.
Thus we see that, according to these earlier letters, the death of
Christ effects the putting away of our old man and the begin
ning of a new moral life, in no other way than by the psycho
logical means of our grateful devotion to him who died for us.
But the teaching of the Epistle to the Eomans goes further
by connecting this effect directly, overlooking the psychological
means by which it was attained, with the bodily death of Christ.
This, however, is an advance, not so much (as has strangely
enough been generally thought in later times) in the dogmatic
deepening of the knowledge of the death of Christ, as in the
dogmatic formaUzation, and at the same time externalization, of
a fact of religious experience, which is in itself purely inward
and of psychological origin.^ It is probable that the motive for
this is to be found in the fact that, considering the immoral con
sequences that might be deduced from the doctrine of favour,
the Apostle was most anxious to prove that for Christians to
remain in sin was a logical impossibiUty, by reason of an actual
objective breach with sin. With this aim he recurs in Eom. "vi.
first of all to Christian baptism unto the crucified, in which
the believer, by his mystical communion "with Christ, had made
the death of Christ his own death, so that he himself was also
crucified a;s to his old man. The train of thought connected
"1 By overlooking this, and making a conception like that of Rom. viii. 3, the direct
source of Paul's doctrine of salvation (as, e.g., R. Schmidt does in his "Paulin. Chris-
tqjogie"), the theological dogma is cut off from its roots in the religious consciousness,
and nothing remains but a dry scholastic theory ; in which form one cannot conceive
how it can ever have produced any impression on the religious mind. Reuss also
(Histoire de la Theol. Chrgt. &c. II. 165 f.) holds the mystic doctrine of redemption
based on Rom. vi. — viii. for the only one, and rejects that of vicarious atonement in
face of the historical facts ; but at any rate he traces back this, which he supposes to
be the sole doctrine, to its true source in the mystic faith of Paul. To see in this a
" haay mysticism," which " leaves an utterly unreasoned residuum in the very heart
of Paul's view " {R. Schmidt, ut supra, p. 63, note; cf. Weiss, Neut. Theol, p. 205,
2nd. ed.), is an utter mistake ; so much so that the truth is rather the very opposite ;
it is just the would-be scientific attempt to ignore the mystic faith of Paul, in which
the dogmas most peculiarly his own all have their root, that makes these dogmas an
" utterly unreasoned" and utterly unreasonable scholasticism.

LIBERATION FROM THE DOMINION OF SIN. 113
with this idea had not yet been worked out in the passages
before quoted from the Epistle to the Galatians and the second
to the Corinthians. But now the Apostle endeavours to ground
this " being dead to sin," given for the beUever as an ethical
fact in baptism, upon a deeper, and as it were a stiU more objec
tive fact ; thus that which in the baptism to the death of Christ
(therefore generaUy in the union with Christ through faith) was
accompUshed in the individual as a spiritual fact, — namely, the
dying to sin, or the death of the old man of sin, — now comes to
be represented as a fact accomplished externaUy, and to the
senses, in that very death of Christ : the purely sensuous fact of
the violent putting to death of the fleshly body of Christ becomes
in his eyes not only a symbol, but an essentially homogeneous
type and beginning of the putting to death of the old man in
us : 6 yap diredave, Ty dpapTiif direOavev itfidira^ — OVTU) Ka), vp,ets
Xoyt^ea-de eavTOvi ve/cpoiis pev Ty d/iaprtji feovTas Se, &C. (ver. 10 f.).
We must not faU to note here that the relation of these two
sentences in the logical argument, as they were used by the
Apostle for his hortatory purpose, proves absolutely nothing as
to the succession of these thought's in their psychological genesis ;
in the latter, their relation 'to each other is precisely reversed;
just as they who have been baptized unto Christ have to regard
themselves as dead to sin, just so, and for that same reason, we
have to regard Christ as one who himself also died to sin in his
own (bodily) death : proceeding from the former thought, which
was given as the immediate principle of Christian consciousness,
the Apostle was led on to the latter conception simply by that
habit of thought which connects a spiritual principle with a
fact of sense, and envisages it as immediately given in that fact ;
only on the ground that the principle is made one with the
external fact, is it possible and necessary that the practical
consequence included in the principle be deduced as a moral
demand from the fact (ovto) Kal ipek Xoyt^ea-Oe, &c.).
This conception of the death of Christ can only be under
stood by means of this its psychological Genesis ; in itself it is
I

114 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
anything but simple, and presents the greatest difficulties ; for,
if one thinks of it, there is but very Uttle, if any, real homo
geneity between the ' physical extinction of the bodily Ufe of
Christ on the cross and the ethical annUUlation of the old man in
devotion to Christ. An ^.Uegorical analogy is the utmost that
is suggested here, according to our mode of thought ; but this is
by no means aU that the Apostle means ; he affirms a thoroughly
real parity between the two proceedings, and so in particular a
perfectly real dying of Christ to sin — that is to say, ceasing from
aU relation to it ; for the whole force of his argument depends
entirely on this parity, and accordingly he makes the dying of
Christ to sin to be directly and inseparably connected with his
actual death.1 But now how can it be said of Christ, the sinless
(2 Cor. V. 21), that he has reaUy died to sin, ceased through his
dying to have any relation to it 1 For does not this suppose
that he previously stood in relation to it, partook of it, in the
same way as we partake of it according to our old man ? Here,
however, the Pauline notion of the a-dp^ intervenes as a medium
through which alone the comparison of the death of Christ with
the death of the old man in the Christian becomes possible in
thought. In the passage we are considering it is true that this
notion is still in the background, from which fact it may be con
cluded that this doctrine of the death of Christ has not grown
out of the doctrine of the o-ap^ ; but it comes into pronunence
in chap. vUi, where the whole argument, which commences in
chap, vi, is now brought to a pregnant dogmatic conclusion.
The Apostle had in the previous chapter described how in the
natural man the law, in spite of its holiness, and in spite of the
consent of the ego itself, was impotent, could not guard against
concupiscence, nay, could only increase it, on account of the
''- Consequently Meyer's interpretation, " that Christ died to the power of sin, so
that he had henceforth no more to suffer from it (namely, human sin)," is quite op
posed to the context, for it entirely does away with the comparison between awoBavuv
Ty afiapTia in the case of Christ and in that of Christians. The translation given by
Schmid (Neutest. Theol., § 80), "for our sin" (dativus incommodi), is of course gram
matically inadmissible.

LIBERATION FROM THE DOMINION OF SIN. 115
greater power of sin which dwelt in the flesh. This state of
inward conflict had forced from him the despairing question,
" Wretched man that I am, who wUl deUver me from this body
of death ?" The Christian answer to this is contained in viii 3,
" That which was impossible to the law, because it was weakened by
the flesh, that has God done, after He had sent his Son in the form
of sinful- flesh (in a shape or form of existence taken from the
element of sinful flesh and belonging to it), and for sin He-con
demned sin in the flesh." KareKpcve, if we look at the immediate
context and at chap, vii, with which this passage is also con
nected, can have no other meaning than the above; it cannot
mean, " He set forth sin as deserving damnation," for- the law
has in truth aUeady done this sufficiently ; neither can it mean,
" He canceUed sin by the atonement," for . that could never be
regarded as the intention of the law ; it was not for the accom
plishment of this that the law was too weak through the flesh,
but it was too weak to break the power of sin, to destroy its
dominion over man. This, therefore, the doing away with the
fower of sin, was that which God did in Christ; but how ? The
expression KaTeKpive (referring back to KaTaKpipa, ver. 1) prima
rily indicates a judicial act ; accordingly the destruction of the
power of sin must be regarded as an " actual sentence of con
demnation" OT judicial execution; sin was "condemned" in the
flesh. Now in what other way can this " condemnation of sin
in the flesh," accompUshed by God in Christ, have taken effect
than through the bloody death of Jesus ?
The other favourite interpretation is, that God deprived sin of
its ruUng power by sending his Son in the flesh — ^that is to say,
by means of the whole sinless existence of Jesus on the earth,
inasmuch as he (moraUy) overcame sin in the course of his Ufe
in the flesh.^ But this interpretation comes into collision, in the
first place, with KaTeicptve, which impUes a destruction by a single
judicial act, not a moral overcoming, extending through a whole
1 So Weiss, ut supra, p. 308 ; Ritschl, Altkath. Kirche, p. 85 ; Reuss, Histoire,
&c., II. p. 80 f.; Meyer, in his commentary on this passage.
\ \

116 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
life ; and besides, God would not properly be the subject of this
predicate in the latter sense, but Christ.^ But, in the second
place, this interpretation contradicts the view which the Apostle
consistently maintains through every other part of his writ
ings ; for he never grounds the work of salvation on the Ufe of
Jesus, but always on his death (compare the beginning of this
chapter). FinaUy, it does not accord with the expression Iv tij
a-apKi, to which, as every one must admit, the same meaning
must be given as to the a-dp^, which twice precedes it in the
same verse. Now it is proposed to translate the word in each of
these instances by the general notion, " human nature." But the
word o-op^ nowhere has this meaning at all (see Chap, i), and
here especially it is plainly shown iu the two former instances
to mean the principle of sin in man, both by the expressly added
explanation, o-ap^ d/*apTtas, and by the assertion that the trap^
makes the law impotent. It would be a most unwarrantable
caprice, therefore, to substitute, when the word occurs for the
third time, the indefinite notion of human nature. If, then, for
all these reasons, that sense is inadmissible, our interpretation is
estabUshed — -namely, that God has condemned sin in the flesh
by the death, and not by the life, of Christ ; that is to say, in
the sense that hy putting to a bloody death the body of Jesus, which
consisted of flesh, sin, which had its abode in the flesh, was put to
death with it.''' But it could only be kiUed with the body, K it
were actually within it; therefore the a-ap^ of Jesus, in order
that it might be kUled as the principle of sin, or that sin inight
1 The combination, "God has condemned sin to subjugation through Christ"
(Weiss), is quite arbitrarily introduced, and is inconsistent with the emphatic position
of 6 BeoQ, which makes it plain that a direct causal act of God for the destruction of
the power of sin is intended.
" Up to this point we are in accord with Usteri, Baii/r, R. Schmidt. The inference
that inevitably follows, as it appears to me, from these premises, was first dra-vra by
Holsten (p. 436), who is followed by Overbeck, Hausrath, iMde-mann, and others;
on the other hand, Baur has suggested, but left unanswered, the question, "How this
right of apapria over the o-ap? can be done away with in the aap^ of Christ, if the
trap? of Christ were not itself a adp^ a;uapriaf?"— a question to the solution of which
R. Schmidt's attempt (p. 100 f.) appears to me to contribute nothing.

LIBERATION FROM THE DOMINION OF SIN. 117
be kUled in it, must in truth have been the same principle of sin
as the crapl in general from its very nature is, and must reaUy
have had the same sin dweUing in it. We shall see from the
exposition of Pauline Christology in the next chapter, that this
is really implied by the passage," God sent his Son in the form
of sinful flesh." At present we shaU only add, that the force and
meaning of the whole of the context of this passage is destroyed
if this interpretation be rejected. The question was. How can we
"wretched men obtain deliverance from this body of death, this
body in whose members sin, which causes death, dwells, because
its substance is that of sinful flesh? The answer is, God has
already executed judgment on sin in the flesh of his Son, whom
He has sent for that very purpose in the form of sinful flesh.
Now, if our deliverance from sinful flesh is to be completed, it is
here manifestly presupposed that that which has had judgment
executed upon it in the death of Christ was identical with that
from which we are to be delivered; consequently that it was
precisely the general human substance of flesh, with the quaUty
of sinfulness which is inseparably attached to it, that was de
stroyed by the death of Christ. The idea that that death was in
itseK, and directly, the destruction of the principle of sin for all,
depends entirely upon the identity of the a-dp^ which was made
into the body of Christ with our own — an idea certainly in which
great difficulty is involved, since the destruction of the flesh in
the person of Christ has quite a different meaning from its de
struction in Christians : in the former case, it is the flesh as the i
natm'al material of the body; in the latter, the flesh as the moral '
principle of sin; and thus the subject is the same in both cases,
but it is regarded from two "widely different points of view. In
reality, then, this intermediate idea of the a-dp^ only gives
apparent help towards the removal of this great difficulty,
namely, that, as we have already remarked, the bodily death of
Christ is in the course of this argument made absolutely iden
tical with the ethical dying- of the old man in Christians. We
shaU, however, flnd the solution of this difficulty in the psycho-

118 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
logical genesis of the dogmatic idea, in that immediate or un
reasoned mystic faith, which feels that in devotion to the
crucified " the old has passed away, and aU has become new."
On this basis of immediate religious emotion the dogmatic
difficulties of the theory of expiation, as well as of the destruc
tion of the flesh, are resolved, and, at the same time, these two
coalesce into unity; it is one and the same revelation of the
love of God in Christ which becomes, to the believer who grate-
fuUy gives himseK up to it, at once the peace of reconciUation
and the strength of the new life.

The Eesurrection op Christ.
The resurrection of Christ presents itself to the Apostle's
mind, not as a new and special source- of salvation, but as the
inseparable reverse side to Christ's death. And accordingly he
takes it up from different points of view, corresponding to the
different modes in "which the whole work of salvation may be
regarded. In the first place, the rising from the dead of the crucified
Jesus, as deUvered to him by the tradition of the Christian
community and confirmed by his own visions, is the ground of
his belief in the death of Jesus as a Messianic death of expia
tion ; the rising from the dead had to his mind the force of a
divine announcement that the crucified was the Messiah. This
accords so entirely with the nature of the thing, with the course
of thought which pervades the apologetic writings of the primi
tive Church, and with Paul's own account of his conversion, that
it scarcely needs to be confirmed by the express words of the
Apostle. He says (1 Cor. xv. 17), " If Christ be not risen, then.
is your faith void ; ye are yet in your sins ;" that is to say, the
faith that his death serves to redeem us from our sins would in
that case be groundless and worthless. Inasmuch as the resur
rection of Christ is, according to this passage, not indeed the

THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 119
means of redemption, but the ground of the belief in the re
deeming power of the death of Christ, Paul's Christian faith in
redemption may be accurately designated as faith in the resur
rection of Christ from the dead (Eom. x. 9); not because this
formed the real substance of his believing consciousness — this
must rather be sought in the reUgious idea of the doctrine of the
atonement — ^but because it formed for him the logical groum,d
of the possibUity of beUeving in the crucified,^ as from the
Jewish point of "view is quite natural. The same Une of thought
serves to explain Eom. iv. 25, "Christ was given over (to death)
for our transgressions, and raised again fm- our justification," i e.
the objective expiation of our transgressions is completed by the
death of Christ ; but as this expiatory means can only lead to
the justification of individuals through faith (Eom. iu. 25,
tAooT^ptov StaT'^s TTttTTews), and faith can only come into existence
on the ground of the resurrection, therefore the resurrection was
the necessary means for the justKying work of salvation per
formed by the expiation through his death, and was consequently
-the intermediate cause of subjective justification, whUe his death
was the direct cause of the objective cancelling of sins. Accord
ingly we have here also, not two co-ordinate causes of salvation,
each "with its separate effect, but one and the same effect of
salvation, which has in the death of Christ its real cause, and in
his resurrection the logical ground of the possibUity of its sub
jective appropriation by faith.^
^ This distinction ought to be bome in mind in deciding the question of the perma
nent dogmatic significance of belief in the resurrection, more than it usually is by
apologetic writers of the present day, who represent the inseparability of belief in the
resurrection from belief in Christ — self-evident as this is from the Jewish point of
view — as an unconditional and permanent postulate of Christian faith. This is a very
superficial and short-sighted way of dealing with the question, and one which ends in
very serious injury to their own position. It is one of the most painful signs of the
times, that in such matters — simple as they really are — a calm and clear insight is
rendered impossible by the prejudices of ecclesiastical party spirit. A great part of
the blame is undoubtedly due to clerical journals like the "Neue Evangelische," which
immediately drag every question of objective science into the arena of their ecclesias
tical party warfare, to the discredit alike of science and of the Church.
' This explanation is supported by most of the commentators. The other, which
refers SiKalmaiQ to sanctification (according to Catholic commentators, and recently

120 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
StiU Paul regards the resurrection of Christ, not merely as this
indirect means of becoming a believer, and therefore of the sub
jective appropriation of salvation, but also as a direct element of
the work of salvation itself, namely, as the exaltation of the
crucifled as the Lord of the Christian community. PhU. U. 9,
"For this (i e. as a reward for his obedience unto death) has God
also exalted him, and given him a name that is above every 'name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those who are
of heaven, and those who are of earth, and those who are under the
earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the honour of God the Father." But this exaltation simply coin
cides in the mind of the Apostle with the raising from the dead,
as he never mentions the ascension, but rather understands the
Lordship of Christ always as the immediate consequence of his
resurrection. Thus Eom. xiv. 9, " Therefore has Christ died and
risen again, and become alive, that he might he Lord both of the
dead and of the living.'' To the two-fold state of abasement and
exaltation correspond the two classes of his subjects, the dead
and the U"ving : and as the latter are again divided into earthly
and heavenly,. the triple realm of Christ's dominion comes out
more clearly as described in the passage quoted above from the
PhUippians, which is so far from going beyond the sphere of
Paul's ideas, that it only expresses more accurately the sense of
Eom. xiv. 9. Now as we saw above that the dying of Christ for
all transformed itself in the Apostle's mind into a dying of aU
with and ia Christ, in the same way and in connection with this
idea the resurrection of Christ as Lord over aU becomes a rising
of all with and in Christ, their Ufe for him or in his service
becomes a Ufe in mystical communion with him or in his spirit.
As Christ at his resurrection passed over into a new state of
existence as contrasted with his Ufe on earth— that of pure spirit
— so a new Ufe begins for the believer with his entrance into the
again R. Schmidt, ut supra, p. 74, "Entrance upon a new state of life no longer con
ditioned by the flesh"), is inconsistent with Paul's use of the word JtKaiiuffie, which in
Rom. iv., if anywhere, means imputed justification, and nothing else.

THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 121
possession of Christ at baptism ; he becomes a new creature who
has the same spirit which forms the IKe of the exalted Christ,
as the determining principle of his Ufe; he therefore obtains a
personal share in the Ufe of Christ risen, which thus becomes
the common IKe of the Christian community, which is the
mystical body of Christ. Thus the resurrection of Christ has no
longer for the reUgious inteUigence the significance of a merely
single external and individual event, but becomes the beginning
of a continuous creative process in the community, and of the
working of that Ufe-giving principle which the community has
in common with Christ, the irvevpa fwoTrotoCv. From this point of
view it is no longer a question of the mere holding of the truth
of an external fact as a miraculous exertion of the power of God,
but of the practical yvcovat Tyv Svvapiv Ty's avacrTao"eo)s aiJToij,
PhU. Ui. 10 ; of the a-uveyepdyvai Sia Ty's TrtcrTeo)?, Col. U. 12 ; of
the a-6pKJ)VTOv yeve&6ai T(ff opoiiipaTi tijs avao-Ta(rea)S, Eom. VI. 5 ;
in short, of the real a-v^yv avTi^, foJvTas t^ Oel^ iv Xpi(TT(^ 'lycrov,
ib. vers. 8, 11. The detaUs of this subject belong to the doctrine of
the irvevp,a, chap. V. : we will only observe here in general terms
how completely the exalted Christ couicides in the reUgious con
sciousness of the Apostle "with the Trvevpa Xpia-Tov sent by God ;
for the only function which he ascribes to the latter during the
whole interval untU the coming again of Christ, intercession with
the Father for the faithful (Eom. vui. 34), is ascribed in the same
Epistle (ver. 26), and in precisely simUar terms, to the Holy
Spirit; but neither the sending of the Spirit nor the organization
of the community by the distribution of offices and gKts is ever
referred by Paul to the exalted Christ, but only to God himself
(it is other"wise "with the later author of the Epistle to the
Ephesians). FinaUy, the Apostle constantly brings the resurrection of Christ
into the closest connection with that of Christians ; partly in the
sense that the certain warrant of our hope, or the ground which
reUgion suppUes for our beUef in our own resurrection, Ues in
the raising of Christ, as an effect of the Divine favour which

122 REDEMPTION BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
sealed the work of redemption ; but partly also in the sense that
we have the spirit of Christ's life, and therewith the real opera
tive principle of our own resurrection, dweUing in us through
the mystical communion with the risen Christ. As a matter of
history external to us, the resurrection of Christ is the ground of
faith: through the communion of faith "with him who has risen,
it is the real ground of our own resurrection, or of the completion
of the work of salvation, of our eternal life. But these two points
of view so completely interpenetrate each other, that they cannot
be sharply separated: compare Eom. viU. 11, vi 8; 1 Cor. xv.
13—22; 2 Cor. iv. 10—14. The further discussion of this
subject wUl be resumed in the chapter on the completion of the
work of salvation.

CHAPTEE III
THE PEESON OF JESUS CHEIST.

It is now becoming generaUy acknowledged that the teaching
of Paul regarding Christ is not founded on a historical know
ledge of the detaUs of the Ufe of Jesus. This is proved in part
indirectly by the sUence of the Apostle in cases where the recol
lection of the Ufe of the historical Jesus would most naturaUy
have been suggested by the context ; partly by his direct decla
rations regarding the nature and the origin of his idea of Christ.
With respect to the first, the way in which the Apostle im
presses on his readers the seK-sacrificing love of their neighbour
by the example of Christ is significant : of the many instances
which might have been drawn from the pubUc ministrations
of Jesus to enforce this, not one occurs to him, but he caUs to
mind either Christ's ha"ving suffered death, in general terms
(2 Cor. V. 14), or, when he would exhibit it in greater detaU, he
refers not to historical circumstances, but to a passage of the
Psalms, which he interprets as a typical foreshowing of the
fate of the Christians and of Christ (Eom. xv. 3) ;. or, finaUy, he
takes as the example of seK-sacrificing love the act of becoming
man, in which he who existed before the worlds " became poor for
your sakes," or " emptied himself," eavTov eKevtao-e (2 Cor. vui. 9 ;
Phil. U. 7). It is more than probable that one who had so far
to seek for an example of self-sacrificing love, had no precise
information regarding the circumstances of the historical Ufe of
Jesus which lay much nearer to hand.

124 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
This view is confirmed by the direct declarations of the Apos
tle. When he says in Gal. i 11 f, that he had received his
gospel, not from man, but by revelation from Jesus Christ, his
meaning is primarily, that the peculiar way in which he under
stood and proclaimed the message of Christ did not depend upon
the authority of man, but on the direct authority of God. Now
although this does not directly exclude the possibUity of any hifor-
mation regarding the historical Jesus conveyed in the way of
ordinary experience, yet it certainly impUes so much as this, that
whatever information of that kind might have reached him was
not of essential import for his reUgious intuition of the person
ality of Chris't. For in this case alone could he so distinctly
aver that the authority of the community, highly regarded as
it was, had contributed nothing to that perception of evan
geUcal truth which he derived from a revelation of God (u. 6).
And when he writes to the Corinthians that he determined to
know nothing among them but Jesus Christ " and him as the crtir-
cified" (1 Cor. U. 2), does he not plainly say, that for his dogmatic
teaching concerning Christ, the one fact of the death of Jesus
on the cross, apart from aU the other circumstances of his his
torical appearance and Ufe on earth, was aU that he regarded ?
But this dogmatic indifference to the historical Ufe of Jesus
really presupposes a lack of historical knowledge of that Ufe, and
¦^was only possible at aU on this ground. An attempt has cer
tainly been made to prove the contrary from 2 Cor. v. 16 ; but
it happens that this passage, in the first place, affirms once more
that Paul had acquired his present Christian perception of Christ
quite independently of any previous knowledge whatever of the
historical Jesus; so far, therefore, it is at aU events a confir
mation of the essential point with which we are here concerned,
namely, that the dogmatic teaching of Paul regarding Christ did
not depend on historical knowledge of Jesus. But, further, it
could hardly be inferred from this passage that he ever had
such knowledge at all, for the abstract hypothetical sentence,
. et Kal eyvuKa/tev, &c., by no meaus necessarily refers in the con-

t

THE SON OF DAVID AND THE SON OF GOD. 125
Crete to Paul himself, but in aU probability (for more detaUs on
this point, see below. Chap. viU.) only to his opponents. We
have no reason, then, beforehand to expect in the teaching of
PaiU as to Christ anything else than a, free Christian speculation
regarding the contents of the Christian consciou.sness, which ex
presses the essence of the Christian principle of salvation in the
form of declarations regarding the person of Jesus.

The Son of David and the Son op God.
The ideas which form the groundwork of Paul's Christology
are indicated by the pregnant sentences with which he opens
the exposition of his doctrine in the Epistle to the Eomans, i 3 f.
He designates^ as the substance of the gospel of God which had
been announced beforehand by the prophets in the Holy Scrip
tures, " his (God's) Son, who (on the one hand) was horn of the
seed of David as regards his fiesh, and who (on the other hand)
was destined (or instituted) to be the Son of God with power as
regards the spirit of holiness, after his resurrection from the dead
(then putting both these sides together), Jesus Christ, our Lord."
Thus much at least is clear in this passage — the redeemer, who is
the object of the message of salvation, is indicated at first in
general terms as the Son of Ood, who was announced beforehand
by the prophets in the Holy Scriptures, i e. as the Messiah. His
readers could have understood the idea here conveyed to them
(before further detaUs were added) in no other sense, and in
this sense they were also meant to understand it; for in the
mind of Paul himself the sa"ving power of the name of Jesus the
crucified was simply contained in his Messiabship (attested by
his rising from the dead). But, taken in this sense, the idea had
many meanings, and was to a certain extent indefinite ; for the
word "Messiah" indicates primarily nothing more than a mission,
vocation, and dignity in the Divine economy of salvation, with- [
out any statement as to the nature of the personality, or the
function of its distinctive dignity. For this reason the general

126 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
description at first put forth required a more particular specifi
cation, which, together with the statement of the essential pecu
liarity of the person, should at the same time contain the ground
of his mission as Messiah, and should thus add the material
characteristics to that indefinite and formal title. Now the
Apostle states this more precise definition in a very skUful
manner, gi"ving to the general notion put forth in a formal sense
a two-fold foundation and a two-fold meaning ; one is, that side
of the Messiah's personality which was in the eyes of the Jewish
Christians the essential, but in the eyes of Paul the subordinate
side ; the other is, that which to the Jewish Christians was an
accident, but to Paul the substance. On the one hand, Jesus was
the promised son of Bavid; this Judaistic material definition of
the di"vine sonship of Jesus is not denied by Paul, but put
forth as held in common by him with his Judaistic readers : but
that which was in the eyes of the latter the whole, or at least
the essential part, of that idea, is to Paul only one element in it,
and in fact only the external and unessential element — kotcI
crdpKa. It is Only ui the flesh, only in its physical external
aspect, that the person of Jesus has that advantage of the sonship
of David which is regarded by the Judaizers as the chief thing ;
which is as good as saying that "this, does not exhaust the
l^^ianic divine sortship. On the contrary, he goes on to say,
r the true essence of it consists in the spiritual inner side of the
personality of the Messiah, in so far as this has as its character
istic the spirit of holiness. The expression, KaTo, ¦n-vevpa dyitatrvvrjt,
is purposely chosen ; KaTct ¦n-vevpa by itself only forms the oppo
sition to KaTO, a-dpKo, as (authropologicaUy) indicating the
immaterial inner side of the personaUty, opposed to the material
outward side of the body ; but the addition of the quaUtative
genitive ayKoarvvy^ shows that the spiritual inner side of this per
sonality has a spiritual nature speciflcaUy distinct from ordi
nary human nature, namely, a holy nature, in ntf degree influenced
by the sinful principle of the flesh, and that it is just this that
forms the essential ground of the divine sonship. If we con-

THE SON OF DAVID AND THE SON OF GOD. 127
sider this carefuUy, we shaU find that it involves a quite essential
diflerence between the definition of Paul and that of the Je-wish /
Christians. According to the latter, the anointing with the Holy
Spirit was communicated to the son of Da"vid by baptism (for
the supernatural begetting was not suggested till after the time
of Paul), and as a specific endo"wment of his Messianic office
with divine strength, according to the analogy of institution to
the prophetic office, by which the personaUty, which was in
itseK purely human, was gifted with strength for its di"vine
functions. According to Paul, on the contrary, the spirit of
hoUness is that which originaUy constitutes the person of the
Messiah (not something which afterwards comes to it from
"without), the principle which forms the person, consequently
the very essence of the 'personality of the Messiah, and not a mere
accident of it. Only thus is it possible, even according to the
presuppositions of the PauUne anthropology, that the personaUty
of the Messiah should be reaUy sinless, ie. only if from the
very first it not merely possessed a spiritual capacity (yovs),
which is po"werless in presence of the fleshly substance, but was
in its own substance spirit of God's spirit, holy spirit ; but K
it were tins from the very beginning, then a difference is at
once expressed between this and every ordinary human person,
which extends beyond the realm of ethics into that of meta
physics. The commencement of the essential spiritual being
of this person presupposes an existence of this spiritual essence
before that commencement, a pre-existence of the spirit which
constitutes the person. Although this presupposition, which is
proved by other passages, is not expressly dwelt on in the
passage we are considering, because its point of view is taken
from the historical Christ (with reference to his exaltation), yet
it is so far from being excluded by the statements here made,
that it rather forms the background which completes and explains
the whole passage ; though of course what the writer is here
directly concerned with is what foUowed rather than what pre
ceded the Ufe of Christ on earth.

128 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
The divine sonship attaches to the earthly person of the
Eedeemer in its spiritual inner aspect indeed from the very
beginning, inasmuch as it has the spirit of holiness as its con
stituting principle, but not yet in complete actuaUty, since it
does not yet attach to it in its outward aspect as mauKested on
earth ; for being the son of Da-vid evidently did not exclude
debasement and weakness according to the flesh. It is probably
this physical element only in the notion of a-dp^ that we have to
bear in mind here, since on it alone rests the opposition of the
earthly existence, to that of Christ risen again ev Swdpei. But
such a state of contradiction between the inner and outer is
inadequate to the complete notion of the divine sonship, which
requires not only an inward holy essence, but also an outward
existence ev Swdpei. The discrepancy is only resolved in the
resurrection, in which the holy spiritual essence obtains a corre
sponding heavenly spiritual body, and thus the entire person,
inward and outward, spirit and body (now no longer "flesh")
begins now to lead a life of pure spirituahty, to which the full
declaration of his power as " Lord" over all externally corre
sponds. This passage, therefore, does not say of the person of
the Eedeemer simply that he was the son of God as regards the
spirit of holiness, because that notion was not as yet, d"uring his
existence in the flesh, completely reaUzed; but it says more
accurately that, as regards the spirit of holiness (in virtue of
' which he was already from the first potentially the son of God)
I he was instituted (or destined) to be son of God in power from
^ the time of his resurrection from the dead ; that is to say, that what
I he already was from the beginning in himself, but in inward
I fashion only, and not in outward manifestation, that he became
/in the complete actuality of an existence in power, no longer
' hampered by any weakness of the flesh, from the time of his
resurrection, which clothed his pure spiritual inward part with a
corresponding body formed of a supernatural substance. Thus the
resurrection of the Eedeemer was his actual institution into the
full possession of the divi'ne sonship, inasmuch as this required not

THE SON OF DAVID AND THE SON OF GOD. 129
only a holy spiritual existence inwardly, but also outwardly an
existence in power and heavenly Lordship ; but that inner side i
was nevertheless from the beginning the real ground of that r

divine sonship, which was, as it were, stUl latent and immane
until it was externally realized after his resurrection. Accord
ingly we must not weaken the force of the word opia-OevTos by
supposing that it merely indicates a proof or evidence for the
perception and recognition of men; opi^eiv nowhere has this
meaning, but it is always an actual making of something, by the
intervention of an act of the will, whether the effect of this act
takes place at once, or not until some future time : in the former
case it is equivalent to instituting, in the latter equivalent to
destining to something ; either of these meanings is equally appli
cable in this passage, and both, in fact, result in the same sense ;
yet inasmuch as in any case the effect of the act of the Divine
wUl with regard to the person of the Eedeemer is connected with
the moment of the resurrection, the latter forms the intermediate
cause (and not only the logical ground of perception) of the
realization of a di"vine sonship. But we must be equally on our
guard against so far exaggerating, on the other hand, the force of
opia-OevTO's — e^ dvao-Tacreios, as to understand by this expression,
that the person of Jesus was in no sense, that is to say not even
inwardly, during his life on earth, the son of God, and that this
idea refers only to the external establishment of the power of
Christ when exalted to his heavenly Lordship. If it were so,
the passage would certainly stand in glaring and unintelUgi-
ble contradiction to the clearest passages in other parts of the
Apostle's "writings, as we shaU shortly see, in which the divine
sonship indicates a characteristic of the person of Jesus inherent
in it from its (pre-existent) origin, and therefore a metaphysical
characteristic of its essence, and not merely the establishment
of his theocratic power. But this limitation of the meaning of
the divine sonship is not only contradicted by these other pas
sages, but also by the words Kai-a Trvevpa dyiuio-vvys iu the passage
before us; fpr these words plainly declare that the (external)
K

130 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
institution of the Eedeemer into the full possession of the divine
sonship from the time of the resurrection, had its real ground in
a principle of divine sonship which already inwardly existed
before this time, namely, in the spirit of hoUness, which, accord
ing to what has been stated above, we must conceive in no
merely ethical sense, but as a spiritual entity, which was actual
from the beginning in the sense of pre-existent. The decisive
words opia-devTos — Svvdpei, therefore, can only be rightly under
stood, if each of the more definitive expressions, KaTo, -n-v. &y. and
e^ dvacTTao-ews, be aUowed its due force, the former as indicating
the inner real ground, the latter as a statement of the external
means to the complete realization of the di"vine sonship ; or, in
other words, the one exhibiting the essential and onginal pri'n-
ciple of the divine sonship, which consituted the pre-existent
personality of Christ, the other the beginiung in time of its out
ward manifestation.'"
- Since, according to the foregoing view, the Pauline Christ is
in his essence spirit, to which essence his existence in the supra-
mundane sphere alone completely corresponds, the more precise
consideration of this Christology must, in accordance with the
Apostle's view, start from the heavenly condition of Christ, on
the one hand as the exalted one, and on the other hand as
existing before the world, and pass from this to his earthly
Ufe. ' The explanation of this passage here given is essentially the same as that of
Weiss, p. 291 ; R. Schmidt, pp. 119, 157. BaiM; p. 189, still adheres to the older
rendering of bpiaOevTOQ =" proved." Holsten, p. 426, and note on p. 181, thinks
that the passage contains essentially the Christology of the Jewish Christians (though
with traces of that of Paul), and consequently finds a contradiction between this and
the other teaching of Paul, and a concession to the ideas of the Jewish Christian
reader. This is, however, a very hazardous supposition, and, as I think has been
shown, one that is by no means demanded by the passage. Meyer's exposition here
has a dogmatical bias; he too understands optaBivToQ i^ dvaar., contrary to the
meaning of the words, as the logical ground of knowledge, instead of the actual insti
tution : lastly, it is an utter mistake to suppose that the Trvevpa ay. is the human
TTVEvpa as containing the holy Logos which became flesh in him, and that so the "spirit
full of holines3"= fiUed with the holy God or Logos !

CHRIST IN HEAVEN. 131

Christ in Heaven.
That the Apostle held the true nature of Christ to be not
reaUzed untU his exaltation by means of the resurrection, is
proved especiaUy by the important passage, 1 Cor. xv. 45 f
For there can be no doubt that ver. 45 at least does not refer to
the mode of Christ's existence in the world or before the world,
but to that condition of the exalted Christ which began with the
resurrection. This interpretation is supported above aU by the
context, for in it the nature of the body which is raised is dis
cussed, and in the very preceding verse the spiritual body of the
future Ufe is contrasted with the " natural " (i e. animated) body
of the present earthly Ufe. This qualitative difference between
the present and the future body is here referred to their respec
tive authors and originators. Our body in this life is animated
by a soul, because it is of the same essence with that of Adam,
the father of the race, who was made (at the creation) a living
soul only ; but our future body will be a spiritual one, because
it will be of the same essence with that of Christ (not of course
the earthly Christ, but Christ glorified by the resurrection), who
was made a quickening spirit. The word JyeveTo, which is under
stood in the second clause, must necessarily refer to the point of
time at which the genus of the spiritual body, or the body which
was raised, came into actual ^existence, as the eyevcTo of the first
clause relates to the point of time at which the genus of the
human animated body came into existence; and as the latter
was the creative act of God, by which Adam became a living
soul, so the former was God's act of raising from the dead, by
which Christ was endowed with a spiritual body, and thereby
placed in a position to become for humanity also a life-giving
principle, the originator of the heavenly humanity. This render
ing (and no other) explains how it can be said in ver. 46 that the
" natural" was the earlier, and the spiritual the later ; both refer
to the mode of the existence of the body of men (in this life
K 2

132 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
after the manner of Adam, in the future life after the manner of
the risen Christ) ; whereas, if the reference were to the being of
Christ in itseK or in its pre-existence, we should require the
contrary statement, that the spiritual (the pattern of humanity)
was before the natural (earthly humanity). This .qualitative
difference between natural and spiritual humanity is, however,
referred in ver. 47 to their different origin; the former is earthy
(fleshly), because derived from the earth, the latter is spiritual,
because derived from heaven. As Adam, and men descended
from Adam, could only become Uving soiUs because they had
their origin in the unspiritual, un-godUke essence of earthy
matter, so was the last Adam quaUfied to become a quickening
spirit for humanity because he had his origin in the sphere of
the spiritual divine Ufe, in heaven. Here, however, we cannot
avoid thinking of the origin of the person of Christ from a
heavenly pre-existence ; for as i^ o-vpavov in this verse is given
as the grownd of the second Adam having become spirit (Ik y^s
supplying the ground of the first Adam being earthy or natural),
so it cannot refer to that condition of the exalted one of which
the resurrection was the ground, but must refer to a heavenly
condition which preceded the resurrection, and consequently his
whole earthly Ufe, therefore to the condition of the heavenly
-Jrre-existence. Christ was enabled by his resurrection to become
the second Adam, and the originator of a spiritual humanity,
because he had always in himself been so, becaus^he did not
owe his origin to merely natural humanity^ but brought from
heaven and put into it the quickening spiritual principle which
had hitherto been "wanting to it ; in short, because he was essen
tially and originaUy (and not only from the time of his resurrec
tion) a heavenly man..? This shows how exactly this passage
agrees with that which was before mentioned (Eom. i. 3 f ), and
completes it, inasmuch as here also the realization of the Trvevpa
^oiOTToiovv is, on the one hand, connected with the moment in
time of the resurrection (lyeveTo, ver. 45) ; whUe, on the other
hand, this becoming in time is referred to a being before aU time

CHRIST IN HEAVEN. 133
as its real ground (e^ ovpavov, ver 47).'' The peculiarity of Paurs[_
Christology consists precisely in the holding together of these
two points of "view. At the same time, the passage before us
shows that it is from the conception of the exalted one that he
starts, and that pre-existence is a secondary idea, to which he is
led on by the need of finding in a timeless being the ground of
the existence in time.
This is conflrmed by Eom. viii. 29 : God predestinated his
elect to become arvpp6p<f>ovi Ty's eiKovo'S tov vlov a-UTOv, ek TO etvai
avTov TpuiTOTOKov iv TroXXok dSeXtpok. This being conformed to
the image of the Son of God,. to which Christians are predesti
nated, must be the same as that whieh is indicated in the next
verse by the word So^d^eiv as the final end of the divine act of
favour, that is, the being" glorified m the heavenly state of exist
ence ; and similarly, according to ver. 23, the vlodea-ta which is
stiU to be waited for, will come with the airoAvTptoo-is tov o-dpaTos
¦ypiav — that is to say, with the putting off of the fleshly and
putting on of the heavenly body, or with the resurrection. With
this is connected also the divine purpose, that Christ should
become " the first-born among many brethren." As Christians
attain to the vlodea-la (in the absolute sense which is not yet
realized here) through their resurrection, so they become by this
means later-born brothers of the first-born; thus Christ is the
first-born Son of God, as having gone before to lead the way for
the others in the resurrection from the dead; as aTrapxy t5v
KeKoip,ypevoiV, 1 Cor. XV. 20; as TrpoiTdTOKOs e»t tcov veKpZv, Col. 1. 18.
^ Compare Weiss, p. 293. His exposition entirely agrees with that which has been
given here, with one exception : he conceives the words o SaiTcpoQ dv9p(jiTroQ t?
ovpivov to indicate that the second man as to his origin is from heaven, but not also
that he had already been there as such (man). This he considers an arbitrary assump
tion, while it appears to me to be an inevitable inference : on this subject more will
be said hereafter. Therefore R. Schmidt (ut supra, p. 116 f.) appears to me to argue
more consistently than Weiss when he declares that there is no reference at all in
ver. 47 to the origin of the person of Christ from a heavenly pre-existence ; but Weiss
agrees with me in showing that this is contradicted by the context. I agree, again, with
both these commentators that this passage contains no reference to Philo's doctrine of
ideal humanity, which likewise cannot be inferred from my view of ver. 47, but, on
the contrary, is quite alien to the entire context of the passage ; of this more below.

134 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
Thus in him also the completion of the vloTysys connected with
his resurrection, in the same way as for the Christians the com
pletion of their vlodeo-ia foUows upon their resurrection. But, as
in the case of the latter, at least the airapxij Trve-vp.aTO's, and indeed
TTvevpaTos vloOea-'ia^ is already in them during their earthly Ufe of
faith (ver. 23 compared with 15), so also Christ by no means
became by his resurrection for the first time -uios Oeov ; he was
always so in himself (KaTa Trvevpa dyioio-vvys) ; but only by his
resurrection did he become the operative principle by which
' men are converted i^to children of God, and thus the first-bom
among many brethren.
/ That the exalted Christ is the pattern for Christians to copy,
and at the same time the operative principle of their formation
after that pattern, is also said in 2 Cor. iii. 18: "We are changed
to the same image from (his) glory to (our) glory (since it comes
to us from him), as might weU be expected from the Lord, who
is spirit." The most pregnant expression for this essence of the
exalted one, in himself and in his relation to the community, is
to be found in ver. 17, 6 Kvpws to Trvevpd iariv, his Lordship
depends on his being spirit, w"^hich is also the very essence of his
sonship. Because he is exalted by h^s resurrectiQli above aU
earthly limitation and weakness, and instituted into the pure
ideal existence of an dvdpmro'S Trvevp,aTiK0S or iirovpdvios, of a vlos
6eov iv Svvdpei, SO by the same means he has obtained the dignity
and dominion of a K-vpios over the Christian community, and
under God over the whole creation. Although his Kvpioryi
extends primarily over the community, whose head he is, yet
all other creatures, both those in heaven and those on the earth,
and those under the earth, must do him homage (PhU. U. 10 f) ;
for we know that aU things must work together for good tp the
community of them that love God (Eom. viii 28), and the hope
and the longing of the whole creation is to obtain a part in the
freedom of the glorified children of God (ib. ver. 21). 1 Cor. x. 26
may also be quoted in support of what has been said, in which
passage, although Tod Kvpiov is a translation of the Jehovah of

CHRIST IN HEAVEN. • 135
the Old Testament, yet it is without doubt applied here to
Christ. This connection of ideas is exhibited in 1 Cor. iii 22 f ,
TrdvTo. vp,iav'i(rTi, vpek Se XpiarTov, XptcrTos Se deov.
But the exalted one is the pattern of the community only /
because he is at the same time, as pure 7rv€ij/.ta, the perfect image S
of God; and he is Lord of the world only inasmuch as he is the
perfectly obedient instrument of the Father. As the faithful are
changed into the image of Christ by the reflection of his 8d^a on ,
their Trpdo-coTi-ov (2 Cor. iU. 18), so Christ is etKtbv toij deov because
the Sdga Toiu Oeov appears on his Trpdo-wTrov (iv. 4, 6). Because
the briUiant light which is everywhere the manifestation of the
Trvevpa (2 Cor. Ui. 8, and above), and forms a special attribute of
the majesty of God, belongs to Christ the exalted one; the
essence of God himself, so far as it is capable of manifestation,
is revealed and made visible in him, and the knowledge of
Christ obtained by means of the gospel thus becomes at the
same time knowledge of God. But this being the very image of
God is so far from being equal to Him, that, on the contrary,
Christ's Lordship over the community and the world implies his
unconditional subordination to God. As we are Christ's, so
Christ is God's (1 Cor. iii. 23) ; as he is head of the community,
so God is KecjiaXy XpicrTov (xi. 3). By God he _is, exalted to be.
Lord, to the honour of God he exercises his Lordship, and into
God's hands he gives it back at last (PJiil. U. 9, 11 ; 1 Cor.
XV. 24, 28). ^~
Thus Christ as the exalted is, in the eyes of the Apostle.'y'
essentially the Lord who is spirit, spiritual or heavenly man, )
and as such the pattern of Christian humanity; at the same
time, the very image and Son of God, spirit of his spirit, and j
light of his Ught ; finaUy, Lord and head of the community, in /
the service of God the Father. But certain as it is that this
picture of Christ was originally taken from the conception of
the risen and exalted one, it is no less certain that it did not
remain thus confined. The picture of the exalted one threw back
its reflection, not upon the earthly existence (which was rather,

136 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
as existence in the flesh, externally the exact opposite to the
condition of the exalted one, being a condition of humiliation
and weakness), but rather into the blank vacuity of his timeless
existence in supra-mundane regions before his appearance in
time ; that which was brought into being at a certain point of time
by the exaltation required, in order to become fvxed in the Christian
consciousness as unconditional certainty and necessity, a deeper
foundation in the timeless being of the heavenly world, in pre-
existence. There ought never to have been any doubt that this
was Paul's teaching, for it is contained, sometimes directly,
sometimes indirectly, in various passages of every one of the
Epistles. When it is said in Eom. vUi 3, Gal. iv. 4, " God sent his Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh, born of a woman and placed under
the law," the explanatory words indubitably prove that the
writer is here speaking, not of the sending of the earthly Jesus
in the discharge of his office, but of the sending forth of a being
who up to that time had not been an earthly man, but who, in
consequence of this sending, took upon him the form of sinful
flesh by being born of a woman, and was placed under the law,
and who therefore pre-existed up to that time in a state of
fleshless or spiritual being, and of lawless or son-like relation to
God. What can be meant by these explanations, which would
have been quite superfluous if applied to an ordinary man and
a Jew, K they do not here refer to a subject regarding whom the
statement of them would not be superfluous — to a subject, there
fore, who had pre-existed in another form of being before he
was born? It is, however, a real subject, a concrete personaUty,
which enters upon these different conditions, and not a mere
abstract principle which is only real in the Divine thought,
without subsistency of its own.^ For how could it be said of a
1 This view is opposed to Beyschlag, Christologie des N. T. (p. 243) ; he thinks
"the heavenly man as pre-existent could only be a second person by the side of the
Father, a personality independent of God the Father, if Paul ascribed to him in his
pre-existence all that belongs to a real man, therefore Trvevpa and adp^ (!), and a
development of life dependent on both these ; but this would be so absurd a couoep-

CHRIST IN HEAVEN. 137
principle, that it was sent in sinful flesh, and born of a woman,
and placed under the law ? Was it the principle of spiritual
quickening- which was made subject to the laws of material
being and growth (and if so, of course also to the law of death) ?
Or was the principle of divine sonship and of freedom subjected
to the restraint and curse of the law ? These are evidently pre
dicates which cannot possibly be affirmed of an ideal principle,
but only of an empirical subject who is limited by individuaUty.
The two passages which declare the appearance of Christ on
earth to have been his own act and deed, by which he gave up
a higher existence which had preceded it, point to the same con
clusion, 2 Cor. viii. 9 and Phil. U. 6. (Of the latter more will
be said hereafter.) The former treats of Christ's work of favour,
" That he wlio was rich, becam,e poor for your sakes, that you might
be made rich hy his poverty." It is impossible to refer this to the
Self-denial of the historical Jesus; the aorist OTTcoxevo-e alone would
show this, for it denotes an act done once for all, the ceasing
of the condition indicated by TrAovo-tos uv, and cannot refer to
tion, that no one would ascribe it to the Apostle, even if it were not expressly
excluded by the statement that the Son of God took upon him ffap5 at the time of his
earthly birth. Now if Paul conceived the pre-existent to be a heavenly man, and if
he could not have conceived the heavenly man to be a real man, then the only alterna
tive is, that he conceived him to be an ideal man." Of course this ideal man must
have been a. real thought of God, in whom God thought Himself as an alter ego;
"only it must be understood that this mental reality by no means yields us an indepen
dent personality over against God (for where is there any basis for its existence for
itself independently of God ?), but simply the real principle of one, by the implanting
of which in the aap^ the real personality first comes into being. " So says Beyschlag.
That no personal subsistency is possible without matter (o'apl) is a very bold philoso
phical thought of the most modern stamp, for the inquiry into the correctness of
which this is noplace; but how in the world comes a "believing" commentator to
make so modern a dictum of philosophy into a canon of his biblical exegesis ? And to
think of quietly ascribing it to Paul, as if he had never spoken of aiipara tTrovpavia
and TrvEvpdriKa, and of the incompatibility of this very <rdpi with the kingdom of
God, of his future sKdiip-^aai Ik ro5 adparoQ, and even of an earlier momentary elvai
Xi^p'iQ ToU awparoQ (xii. 3) ! The fact is, that nothing could be more utterly at
variance with Paul's mode of thinking and that .of his whole age, than to attribute to
him the notion that personal subsistency depends on fleshly existence. And especially
with reference to the Christology, it is precisely that identity of the principle arid the
concrete person, so confidently denied by Beyschlag, which is the salient point of the
dogma of Paul, a/nd of all its fv/rther development.

I

138 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
a state which continues contemporaneously with irAowtos Jv.
This ttAovo-ios, again, is evidently to be taken in the same sense
as iva vpek TrXovT-qa-yTe : UOW since the latter undoubtedly refers"
to the heavenly dignity which is to be attained by means of
Christ, so also the corresponding expression, the being rich of
Christ, which is opposed to his becoming poor, relates to the
possession of the heavenly dignity which he gave up by enter
ing into the form of flesh. This is the only interpretation which
makes the passage agree with its context, without doing violence
to either ; for it is plain that the Corinthians were not meant to
lay to heart the absence of needs to be satisfied, or virtuous
poverty, but the duty of self-sacrificing love is to be impressed
upon them by the example of Christ, and thus it is not Christ's
natural condition of poverty which is to be exhibited here, but a
voluntary act of becoming poor, or of offering up a possession
which he had Vefore held ; but this can only be understood with
reference to the giving up of the pre-mundane dignity.^
This passage contains at the same time an indication of the
manner in which the Apostle may have represented to himseK
the condition of Christ in his pre-existence, "viz., as a being rich,
that is to say in heavenly dignity, in that 6d|a which is the
attribute of Divine Majesty, and the final end to which the elect
children of God are destined (Eom. viii. 30). As the exalted
Christ, by means of the possession of this S6^a, is said to be etxwv
Toij Oeov (2 Cor. iv. 4, 6), so it is perfectly intelUgible that the
pre-existent Christ also, with reference to this form of appear
ance in the image of God, is described as ev p.op^'y Oeov V7rdpx<av
(PhU. ii. 6). This by no means impUes that he himseK was
also God '(^cos o Adyos) ; on the contrary, the Pauline notion
of being in the image of God, as we have already seen, dis
tinctly includes within itself that of being the pattern of hu-
' KostUn takes a different view, Johann. Lehrbegr., p. 310 ;he translates, "thongh
he was rich (in spiritual treasures), he became (at the same time materially) poor."
The right view will be found in Babiger, de Christol. Paulina, p. 38 f. Weiss,
Neutest. Theol., p. 296; R. Schmidt, Paulin. ChristoL, p. 144; and i^g«£j^om-
mentary.

CHRIST IN HEAVEN. 139
manity.^ Paul certainly sees the actual pattern of Christians
rather in the exalted than in the mundane or the pre-mundane
Christ, but only for this reason, that for him the pattern is not
a mere passive ideal, but an operative principle, a pattern which
forms the copy of itself, and Christ became such for the Chris
tian community for the first time at his exaltation (see above).
But as certainly as he who became at his resuri'ection the
"first-born" among the sons of God, was yet for that very
reason in himself from the beginning the son of God, and as
such was sent here from heaven (Gal. iv. 4, comp. Eom. "viii 29), so
certainly may he who at his resurrection became a " heavenly
man'' and the pattern of heavenly humanity, for that reason
also have been in himself from the beginning a heavenly man,
and as such have come here from heaven. And this is exactly
what the Apostle says in the plain words, o Sei;repos dvOpmros
i^ ovpavov, 1 Cor. XV. 47. For it has already been shown that
these words must be referred to the heavenly origin of the
person of Christ ; but if this be the case, then we cannot without
¦violence reject the idea that this human person who had his
origin from heaven, had also pre-existed in heaven as man, that
is to say, as " spiritual man," as the same subject, and in the
same form of existence, as that in "^hich he continues to live
again in heaven as the exalted one; so that the pre-existent
may be indicated by the same name as the post-existent 6 SeiJTepos
dvOpwTTos, 6 K-vpio's 'lycrovs XpicrTos (1 Cor. vUi. 6). The attempt to
avoid this by supposing that Christ is only called the second
man from heaven inasmuch as in coming down from heaven he
took upon him human nature as an additional element to the
^ Compare Phil. iii. 20 f. " Christ will change our body of humiliation into one
made like to the body of his glory." What else can we understand by this auipa ttjq
SoSvs avrov than that very pop^ri deov in which the exalted one as well as the pre-
existent was clothed ? But in that case this pop(p-ri 9eov also contains nothing which
lies outside of the notion of the eUuiv rov viov deov, Eom. viii. 29, or that of the
Seirepog dvQpniTroQ i% obpavov, whose image we shall all one day bear (1 Cor. xv.
47—49).

140 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
divine nature which he had before, is evidently unsatisfactory ; i
for in that case the subject "man" would not be that which
came from heaven, but only that which came from the earth
and was united to that which came from heaven ; the difference
between that which derived its origin Ik y^s and that which
came i^ o-ipavoS, would in that case relate not to the first and
second man, but to man on the one hand (to Adam as weU as
to the humanity of Christ), and on the other hand to God ; but
this would give to the whole passage an entirely different mean
ing from the only one which the words of this verse and the whole
context admit of We abide, then, by the conclusion that Paul
conceived Christ as a spiritual man not less in his pre-existence
than in his post-existence. And the way in which he came
so to conceive him becomes quite plain to us if we look at the
source whence the whole idea of the pre-existence is derived ;
it is the reflection back into the past of the mental image under
which the exalted and glorified Christ was presented to the
imagination of Paul and the whole Christian community as now
living in heaven.
The explanation of these doctrines, then, does not require us
to drag in fragments of Jewish and Alexandrine philosophy, such
as that of the "heavenly ideal man" or "Adam Cadmon." If it
cannot be denied that this idea has a certain relation or simi
larity to that of the Pauline doctrine regarding Christ, it can as
' Rdbiger appears to understand the passage in this sense, ut supra, p. 34 f. The
whole of his argument, not ouly here, but throughout what is in parts a very careful
and instructive investigation of Pauline Christology, is infected by the fundamental
error of applying categories which ai-e wholly alien to the dogmatic thought of Paul.
'Where does Paul speak of " divine nature," or " human nature " ? He speaks of
spirit and of flesh, of the son of God, the image and form of God, of the form of the
flesh and of man, of the first and second Adam, the earthy man that is of the earth,
and the heavenly man that is of heaven ; but of all these conceptions, which are quite
consistent with each other, not one coincides with the later categories of "divine and
human nature." This argument holds good also against Grimm, who finds the divine
nature of the pre-existent taught in Phil. ii. 6 — 11 (Z. f, w. Th., 1873, p. 61),
because BeoQ and dvBpunrog form a direct opposition. But the opposition is rather
formed by pop04 deov and opoiwpa dvBpdTrasv, denoting not the essential nature, but
the form.

CHRIST IN HEAVEN. 141
Uttle be proved that the latter was in any "w^ay influenced by it.^
The passages which are commonly reUed upon for this purpose
really say nothing to the point. 1 Cor xv. 45 must, as we have
seen, be referred to the resurrection, by which Christ became a
quickening spirit and the originator of a new humanity, not to a
primitive coming into existence, of which Paul never speaks at
all ; besides, Christ is here called the " last Adam," the " second
man," whereas, according to the Jewish theory of the " heavenly
Adam," he ought, on the contrary, to be the first (" Cadmon").
If we look into the matter more closely, we shaU see that the
meaning and origin of this description of Christ is in. Paul's
mind something very different from that philosophic notion. It
is the historical significance of Christ as the originator of a new
spiritual development of humanity, in which righteousness and
life bear rule instead of sin and death, and the determining prin
ciple of which is no longer the natural and sensuous, but the
divine and spiritual. The significance of Christ as the originator
of this new spiritual humanity is pregnantly expressed by the
name of the " second" or " last Adam." The name, therefore,
does not denote an essential characteristic of his personality;
neither in 1 Cor. xv. 45, nor in Eom. v. 14, is this directly
contained, though it is indirectly impUed certainly, inasmuch
as the principle of generation of the new humanity appears
personified in its originator. But because this new humanity/
owes its reahzation to the historical Christ, to his death and
resurrection, therefore the name taken from this historical fact
belongs primarily to the historical Eedeemer, not to the pre-
existent. It was not untu the origin of the historical Eedeemer
had been ante-dated and thrown back to a period previous to
his beginning in time, that, in consequence of the identity
of the two subjects, the designation of the historical was ex
tended also tp the pre-existent Christ, so that o SeiJTepos dvOponros
^' In this I agree "with Weiss (p. 294) and R. Schmidt (p. 118), in opposition to most
of the later commentators (Beyschlag, Hilgenfeld, Hausrath, Holtzmann, Holsten, and
others).

142 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
came to be also the designation of him who came e^ ovpavov, and
so of him who was ev ovpav!^ (ver. 47) ; just as the purely
human name 'lya-ovs is also without hesitation transferred to
the pre-existent by whom, tmder God, aU things were created
(1 Cor. viU. 6). As it is impossible that a being intermediate
between God and the creation, derived from PhUonic speculation,
should have been endowed with the name of a historical human
individual, so it is equaUy impossible that the name of a " second
man" or "Zas^ Adam," which can only be explained by the 7m-
torical consideration of Christ, should have any meaning when
applied to the ideal man of PhUonic speculation. On this ground
alone we will venture to beUeve that this designation of Christ
by Paul was an original product of his own Christian speculation.
It is stiU possible that he may have combined this independently
formed conception, in a supplementary way at least, with that
of the ideal man of the Jewish schools of Alexandria. Only no
distinct indications of his doing so are forthcoming. Apart from
the fact that in this tenet of Alexandrine phUosophy there is
no suggestion of the entrance of the ideal man into historical
actuaUty, and thus the very essence of the PauUne Christology
is wanting, there are no points of contact of any definite kind
between the .pre:historifial,,_Christ and _ the ideal ma,n of the
Alexandrine j)hilosppliy. WhUe Paul, extending the designation
of the historical Christ to the pre-existent, thinks of this latter
also as discharging the office of Mediator of the di"vine reve
lation, no agenc£^of this kind is anywhere ascribfid-.tQ_.tilfi.id.eal
man^^^KiUo. The part of Mediator is here, on the contrary,
assumed by the Logos. This notion— and only this — could there
fore suggest itself to Christian speculation as a help towards the
fixing of the Christological idea in a philosophical form. After
the time of Paul, this soon happened ; but Paul himseK draas
^s .Ch-risti^P i'^ea.s froni the orijfiTiality of bis nwii Christian
spirit, not from the dicta of an alien phUogoplpiy. It is certain,
at least, that the proof of the foreign origin of his ideas has stUl
to be found.

CHRIST IN HEAVEN. 143
It remains that we notice those passages in which Paul
ascribes mediative functions to the pre-existent Christ. The
operations of Christ did not commence, according to Paul, when
he was sent in the flesh; but the Son of God who was destined
to fulfil the purpose of the Divine decree of salvation, was,
before the time of his appearing on earth, the Mediator and in
strument of the divine revelation to Israel. Of this an indica
tion, though certainly a somewhat obscure one, is to be found in
1 Cor. X. 4 : the Israelites drank in the desert from a spiritual
rock which foUowed them, "'but this rock was Christ." The
explanation that the rock only represented Christ is inadmissible,
for in that case irrTi and not yv must have been used ; and, more
over, by the epithet " spiritual" both rock and water are declared
to be objective supersensuous realities, so that we cannot think
of a natural rock, to which a typical significance could only be
appUed by the subjective contemplation of it. We cannot doubt <
the meaning of the Apostle here to be, that the proofs of the /
Divine favour were conveyed to Israel by the pre-existent
Christ (who as spirit was united to no definite form of flesh) ;
but it is useless to ask how this was effected.
But the part of Mediator was ascribed to the pre-existing /
Christ, not only in the historical revealing of salvation, but also (^
in the creation of the world itseK. This is distinctly stated in
1 Cor. "viii 6 : " We have one God, the Father, from whom all is,
and we (are created) for Him, artd one Lord Jesus Christ, through
whom all is, and we through him!' The words St' ov to, TrdvTo. cannot
be Umited to the sphere of redemption, because they must have
the same meaning in the second clause as in the first, where this
Umitation would be very forced ; and because, moreover, through
the addition of Kai ypek Si avrov, the sphere of Christian redemp
tion is represented as a particular and a narrower one within
the general sphere of creation (to TravTa), from which it foUows
that the latter is applied to the world in the metaphysical sense.
But this juxtaposition certainly shows at the same time that the
idea of Christ's agency in the creation of the world did not grow

144 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
out of metaphysical speculation in the Apostle's mind, but was
simply an extension of the mediatorial position held by Christ
as the Eedeemer in the scheme of salvation. For the Christian
consciousness, Christ is the one Lord over aU, to whom all
things, even the powers of the invisible world (gods and lords
of the heathen, ib. ver. 5), are subject ; and this religious convic
tion (the same as that which is expressed in other words in
Eom. viu. 37 — 39) finds its expression in the theological doc
trine of the agency of Christ in the creation of the world.
This contains also the inference, which was self-evident to the
Apostle, but is only too often overloaked by commentators, that
the instrument of creation is precisely the same subject as the
instrument of redemption, namely, "the one Lord Jesus Christ"
the self-same personality of Christ which, as it appeared in the
flesh, was Jesus the son of David, the historical Eedeemer, and
who again through his resurrection became a pure spiritual
man, and the son of God with power. By the appUcation here
of the two predicates, St' ov to. TrdvTa and Si' ov ypeh, thus
directly and in equal measure to the one subject, Jesus Christ
(the two-fold name also here deserves attention), any separation
between the pre-existent son and agent of Godwin the creation,
and the historical redeemer and mediator of the atonement, is
distinctly precluded. It is just the identity of the person which,
for the dogmatic conception, forms the thread on which to string
the various predicates and bind them together into a_ single
picture of the salvation ; although the unity of this picture must
of necessity part asunder again for inteUigent thought, since the
predicates which it presents together are in themselves quite
heterogeneous, that is to say partly ideal, relating to the abso
lute principle of salvation, partly empirical and capable of being
directly predicated only of the historical Mediator of salvation.^
^ It is clear from the above analysis of this passage that Weiss and Baur are both
mistaken in presupposing the incompatibility of the two predicates, heavenly man and
instrument of creation, and consequently eliminating the former (Weiss) or the latter
(Baur) from Paul's conception of the pre-existent Christ. It is only necessary to pay

CHRIST IN HEAVEN, 145
If we compare the passage just noticed with the Christological
declarations of the Epistle to the Colossians, i. 15 — 19, we shall
find that the difference is not so great as it has been often repre- '
sented. In the latter, Christ is caUed the "first-born before
every creature," through whom all things in heaven and on the
earth, visible and invisible, especiaUy aU the powers of the in
visible (spirit) world were created ; but this is just the meaning
of 1 Cor. "viU. 6 ; and even the pointing out of the spirit world
especially as a . sphere created by Christ, and entirely subordi
nated to him, has a certain analogy to the passage in the Corinth
ians, inasmuch as in the latter, by the connection between
verses 5 and 6, the unique position of Christ as the instrument
of creation is asserted with special reference to the Oeol koI
Kvpioi of the heathen, and so to the realm of derqons. In
other points, ho"wever, tiie_passage in the Colossians certainly
goes beyond that in the Corinthians ; the world, according to
the former, has not only been created by the agency of Christ,
but " in him and for him,'.' which seems to imply that Christ
¦was the world's centre, the point from which the powers and
the development of the world originated, and to which they
return as their end. But this is not agreeable to Paul's older
doctrine, for only of God himseK does he say If avTov Kal 6t'
a^Tov Kal els avTov to, Trdvra (Eom. xi. 36) ; even the Lordship of
Christ is not, according to him, an end in itseK, but is to serve to
the Sofa of God, which is exclusively the final end ofthe universe
(ib., Phil, ii 11) ; nay, it is at a future time to be given back
again to the Father, in order that God may be to irovTa ev Trairt.
The expression ere awov (Xpto^Tdv) to. TrdvTa eKTia-Tai in the Colos
sians can hardly be reconcUed with this strict assertion of mono
theism by the unconditional subordination of Christ to the
Father. But verse 19 in particular diverges ' most decidedly
from the Pauline Christology. The expression TrSv to TrXypiapa
is, according to the paraUel passage, U. 9, the fulness of the God-
attention to the psyohglogioal genesis of the Whole conception, in order to be convinced
that those predicates are quite compatible with each other for such a mind as Paul's.
L

146 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
head, the concentration of aU the powers which constitute the
Divine nature. Paul never says that these dweU in Christ, not
even in Phil. U. 6, where the pop4>y Oeov refers only to the form
of his appearance, the a-wpa t^s So^ys (see above) ; but that this
fulness of the Godhead should have taken up its abode in the
earthly Christ (for so we must understand Col. i 19, on account
of its connection with ver. 20), is directly contradictory to that
which we shall shortly see to have been the older Pauline view
1 of Christ's becoming man. And since in the very last letter of
Paul, namely, that to the PhUippians, the view of the earthly
Ufe of Christ as a condition of emptiness and humiliation ia
insisted upon with the -greatest distinctness, we cannot here
have recourse to the conclusion that Paul himseK developed and
expanded his Christology in the direction of John's teachiug.
Now if we are unwilling to pronounce the Epistle to the Golos-
, sians altogether spurious, there appears to be scarcely any other
way out of the difficulty than to suppose that this, as weU as
other passages of this Epistle, was tampered with at a later
period. We shall therefore recur to this at a future time.

The Appearing of Christ in the Flesh.
As the pre-existence of Christ was-in the mind of the Apostle
only a secondary conception, being but the reflection' of his
intuition of the exalted one, and assumed as a background for
that intuition, we cannot wonder that he teaches us so Uttle, in
any definite shape, regarding the passage from it to the earthly
Ufe of Christ. All that we can lay hold of consists of a few
indications only. According to Eom. vUi 3, Gal. iv. 4, it is
God who, after the completion of the time (of preparation), sent
his son in the form of sinful flesh, which was done by means of
his being born of a woman. According to 2 Cor. "viU. 9 and
Phil. ii. 7, it is Christ himself who becomes poor, empties him
self of his possessions, in order to descend from the condition of

THE APPEARING OF CHRIST IN THE FLESH. 147
being rich, of possessing a heavenly Lordship, of being in the
form of God, to a condition of poverty, and humUiation, and of
existence in the visible shape of man, and the form of a servant.
These two passages contain essentially the same idea, only it is
more expanded in that from the Philippians; and both alike
were written with a hortatory object (not in the interest of
transcendental Gnostic speculation); in one, the Apostle im
presses on the Corinthians the duty of self-sacrificing love, by
the example of Christ, who became poor for our sakes ; in the
other, he impresses on the Philippians the duty of humiUty and
self-forgetfulness, which seeks not its own, but that of others;
and as an example of this humble, self-forgetting disposition,^
he holds up to them the example of Christ, "who, being in the
form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal ivith God, hut
emptied himself in taking on him the f(yrm of a servant, that is to
say, he was hcrrn in the likeness of men, and was foumd in the con
dition of an (ordinary) man'.' It has been already remarked on
the words iv pop^-y deov v7rdpx'»v, that they mean nothing else
than the eiKcbv and So^a. deov. The only difficulty is in the words
o^x dpTraypov yy-fjo-aTO to eivai laa Oe^. It IS the first cauon 01 all
sound criticism that a passage must be explained first of aU by
itseK and the context, and then by the views contained in other
parts of the author's writings; and only when both these re
sources have failed, by external references and aUusions. Let
us set aside, therefore, aU explanations of these words drawn
from foreign theories, whether from Gnosticism or from the Old
Testament history of the faU,^ and endeavour to explain them
' Himseh, in his article entitled " Untersuchungen zum Philipperbrief " (Z. f. w.
Th., 1873, p. 77), makes the groundless assertion that the view taken in this
passage of Christ's becoming man is un-Pauline, because it is made to " appear
as >". voluntary resolve on the part of Christ, the primary object of which was a
purely personal one." And yet the sole aim of the whole passage is to recommend
unselfishness, the. not rd eavrCiv aKOTrelv, by the example of Christ, who in the free
(but not therefore arbitrary) act of becoming man, gave the greatest example of unself
ishness. It is not easy to understand how any one can find anything un-Pauline in
this view, which is exactly that of 2 Cor. viii. 9.
' The former, as is well known, is the explanation of Bow, the latter that of
Ernesti. I consider it needless to attempt a fuller refutation of either of these, for,
l2

148 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
from the context alone. They are opposed to eKevuo-ev eavrov,
that is, to the self-sacrificing mode of action, of which Christ is
, held up as an example ; accordingly, dpTraypbv ¦yyya-aTo to ehai
laa Oeif, if Christ had done it, would have faUen under the cate-
• gory of TO eavTuv eKaa-Tov a-KOTreiv ; it would have been an act of
selfish arrogation (opposed to TaTreivo<f>poa~vvy and Tct hepov a-KOTretv,
, vers. 3, 4). But this is just the obvious meaning of the words
aprraypov ijyijcraTo : ^ they express iu a figurative manner the dis
position and mode of action of one who in selfish arrogance only
TO eavTov a-KOTret; for it is of the esseucc of robbing and the
robber not to trouble oneself about the welfare of any one else,
but with inconsiderate selfishness to seek one's own advantage.
What Christ might have striven after in this selfish, grasping
manner, if he had wished it, is expressed by the words to etvai
la-a deQ; they must therefore indicate something beyond and
according to my principles, the ground of such attempts at explanation vanishes as
soon as it is shown that the passage can be explained from itself. Compare RiiUger,
ut supra, pp. 77—85 ; Hilgenf eU, Z. f. w. Th., 1871, 194 f. ; Grimm, ib., 1873, 45;
Schmidt, p. 176.
1 The literal translation of the words is rapinam, i. e. rapiendum putavit, did
not consider the being equal with God a thing to be seized by an act of robbery ; but
the expression apTray^iv riyrjaaTo is used instead of ijpTraae, in order to show that '
the essential point here is the mode of thinking, the disposition, of which Christ gave
an example. The objection that dpTraypog is not equivalent to apTraypa, that which
is robbed, but to dpTrdZ,eiv, robbing, would, if it were vaUd, alter the literal transla
tion, but not the general sense of the passage. In that case, the being equal with God
would be not the object of the robbery, but the means to it, which Christ possessed in
virtue of his fiopiprj Beov ; and thus to laa Be(p etvai would come to have the same
meaning as iv popf^ Beov inrdpxeiv. The object of the robbery would then be the
sovereignty on earth, the recognition by men of the dignity of the Messianic kingship.
The sense would be as follows : Christ would not, as he might have done had he
chosen, use the power, which he possessed in an equal degree with God, as a means of
usurping a position which was destined for hira indeed, but which, according to the
intention of God, he was to attain by the path of humiliation and of suffering. I
formerly adopted this explanation of Meyer's (see the article on Pauline Christology in
Hilgenf eld' s Z. i. w. Th., 1871, p. 620 f.), principally on the supposed ground that
apiraypoQ could only be taken as equivalent to actio rapiendi, not to res rapienda.
But the possibility of taking dpTraypoQ as equivalent to Spiraypd is established beyond
doubt by many analogies (compare Grimm on this subject, Z. f. w. Th., 1873,
p. 38 f. ) ; and thus the necessity of this explanation disappears. But I have corae to
regard it as highly improbable, especially beoause Paul, after what he has said else
where, can hardly have ascribed to Christ an actual elvai lea 0e<p.

THE APPEARING OF CHRIST IN THE FLESH. 149
above that which he had already had, the pop(l>y Oeov ; and this
can only be the dignity of supreme Lordship and equality with
God, the absolute, perfect sovereign Majesty, which belongs to
God alone, and to no other, not even to the Son who was the
very image of Him as regards the form in which he appeared.
If this is so, these words contain an indirect confirmation of that
distinct subordination which we have repeatedly remarked as
a pervading feature of the genuine Pauline Christology. The
sense therefore is, that the heavenly Christ was so far from
wishing to usurp like a robber, that is to say, in selfish arro
gance, the dignity of supreme Lordship and equal sovereignity
with God, that he, on the contrary, never thought of doing so,
but did the opposite to this — he emptied himself (instead of
coveting that which was greater and higher) of that which he
(justly) possessed (namely, of the pop<j>y Oeov), and by so doing
proved his self-forgetting humility, in laying aside the form of
God, and taking upon him the form of man, i. e. of a servant.
The transition, then, from the pre-existence to the life on earth
consisted negatively in giving up the form of God {eKevuia-ev
eouTov), and positively in taking upon him the "form of a ser
vant ; '' this is the general expression for the condition of abase
ment on which Christ entered ; it indicates the contrast between
the So^a of the free Son of God, which he had given up, and the
lowliness of the earthly appearance which he had assumed,
which was so far from according with the nature of a Son of
God. But the means by which this transition was accomplished
are stated by the following passage : ev opompaTi dvOp&rwv
yevopevos, "being born in the likeness (outward form) of men,"
which was proved by the fact that he henceforth " was found in
fashion as a man '' (as every other ordinary man). The words ev
opouopaTi dvOpwTrov yevopevos have the same meaning as is ex
pressed in Gal. iv. 4 by yevop,evov ix yvvaiKos, and in Eom. viii. 3,
by Trep,\pas' iv bpoKapari a-apKos dpapTias. For the outward form
(ppoibjfia) of man, the external fashion {o-xypia) which marks an
earthly man, is, according to the general Pauline view of things,.

150 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
no other than the crZpa Tys rrapKos, the material or earthly corpo-
rality of the avOpoTros x°''^'<°'^ «« 7^*, which is opposed to the
spiritual corporality (the a-Zpa TrvevpariKov or tijs So^ijs, 1 Cor.
XV. 44 ; PhU. Ui. 21).^ The passage of the Philippians, therefore,
does not, any more than the other two, contain the doctrine of the
Docetists in the strictly dogmatical sense ; it does not mean to
say that Christ's appearance as man was a mere empty shadow ;
on the contrary, it consisted, according to this passage also, of a
real human body of earthly a-dp^ ; only this fleshly corporaUty
was in the case of Christ merely the form in which he appeared,
only the element which constituted the outer side (the o-xypa,
the e'^o) dvOpoiTTos), not the essential and dominating principle of
the entire personaUty ; for this, as well after as before its appear
ing in the flesh, was irveu/^a. ^
Hence it is plain that the Son of God who appeared in the
flesh, or the historic Jesus, is precisely the same personality as
that of the Son of God in heaven who was to be sent. A per
sonality did not come into being for the flrst time by means of
the " sending " (the sending would in that case be really equiva
lent to caUing into Ufe or creation) ; nor was the heavenly per
son of Christ the spirit thereby united to the earthly person of
Jesus the son of David, in such a way that the historical person
of Jesus the Messiah came into existence by their union.^ We
1 This interpretation essentially agrees with that of Weiss, p. 426, and R. Schmidt,
pp. 163 — 179. And I especially endorse the opinion of the latter that we " certainly
are not justified in describing the expressions made use of in the Epistle to the Philip
pians as impossil^le from the genuine standpoint of the Apostle, or as essentially going
beyond the substance of the declaration in 2 Cor. viii. 9." But in that case I do not •
understand why this declaration of the Epistle to the Philippians, which is essentially
identical with the genuine Pauline Christology, is separated from that declaration and
joined to that of the Epistle to the Colossians, regarding which Schmidt himself allows,
that " here the conceptions of Paul have certainly undergone a further development '
(p. 197). And how does this rightly observed relation between the dogmatic Christo
logy of these two Epistles agree with the hypothesis, supported (though not very
decidedly) by Schmidt, of the genuineness of the Epistle to the Colossians, which, if
genuine, must be older than that to the Philippians ?
' The former is the view of Beyschlag, which has already been mentioned ; the
latter the opinion of Holsten (ut supra, p. 423), which is also thrown out as a con
jecture by Meyerhoff (Epistle to the Colossians, p. 66).

THE APPEARING OF CHRIST IN THE FLESH. 151
have, on the contrary, already proved from 1 Cor. vUi. 6 that the
pre-existent, who is designated by the full name of the historical
" Jesus Christ," must also be identical with the latter as to his
entire personaUty, and is consequently neither a merely virtual
personaUty, nor merely one haK of the historical two-fold person
Jesus Christ. Moreover, in Eom. i 3 f , it' is the one person of
the DIOS Oeov that is, not split into two personalities, but only
regarded under the two aspects, which are to be distinguished in
it as in every human person, namely, flesh and spirit. The
identity of the subject being thus complete, it is only the form of
existence which can have been changed by means of the sending,
the (Tiap,a Tys crap/cds took the place of the a-Zpa Tys So^ys. The
question how this took place is inadmissible, because it is one
on which Paul never reflected, and because it would be impos
sible to answer it a priori At best we may perhaps, without
going beyond the range of the Apostle's conceptions, find an
analogy in the change of the earthly body into the resurrection
body. As in this case to ^Oaprhv Kal dvyTov is laid aside, and
d4>0aptTia and dOavaa-la is put OU, SO the Converse takes place on
the entrance of the pre-existent into the flesh ; we have in both
cases a miraculous metamorphosis, which evades any intelligible
analysis. » It is, however, further to be remarked that the body!
of flesh assumed by Christ was produced, according to Paul, by {
natu/ral procreation ; for not only does he nowhere allude to a
supernatural conception, but he denies it indirectly by caUing
him the son of David according to the flesh, which clearly pre
supposes the natural paternity of Joseph the son of Da"vid./
Besides, a supernatural conception of Jesus would possess no ,
interest for him, because the higher nature of Christ did not '
depend in his estimation upon a miraculous birth, but was the
result of his heavenly pre-existence, by which it was established
on a much surer basis ; for a person consisting essentiaUy of
heavenly spirit stands on a far higher level than an essentially
earthly person only caUed into life by the causal act of God's
creative spirit. The latter view did not appear among the Jew-

152 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
ish Christians until after the time of Paul, and no doubt as a
means of avoiding an appUcation of Paul's doctrine concerning'
Christ which at that time was thought to be dangerous. The
" being made 'man " therefore, according to the view of Paul, is
the assumption of an earthly human body of flesh by the heavenly
human person of the pre-existing Son of God, Jesus Christ And
here all those questions which have formed the subject of dog
matizing in a later age, regarding the way in which the " divine
and human nature " were united, lie quite out of the range of
vision ; nay, the question which lay nearest to hand, and which
as a matter of history really gave the impulse to the develop
ment of the Christological doctrine, namely, whether Jesus Christ
had a human soul, has no possible answer from the standpoint
of the Pauline Christology. We cannot escape from this anti
nomy; on the one hand, it is to the pre-existent spiritual essence,
the principle of life which constituted the ego, that the person
ality attaches, and a second principle of life which came into
being for the first time at the birth of Christ, an earthly human
soul, could not co-exist by the side of this without destroying the
unity of the personal life;'' on the other hand, the o-ap^ which
Christ took upon him could not be dead matter, but must as
organized body have already been endowed with a soul.
Lastly, the question of the sinlessness of Christ is very closely
connected with the above. Here too we ultimately encounter
an insoluble antinomy. By means of the Trvevpa dyiu>u~uvys, which
constituted his personaUty (Eom. i 4), Christ was free from per
sonal sin ; not merely from sinful actions, but from any personal
inward experience whatsoever of sin as his own ; he was dpaprlav
p,y yvo-vs, 2 Cor. V. 21. Notwithstanding this, he partook, accord
ing to the flesh, or according to his e^w dvOpayiros, of the universal
human principle of sin, for he had as the material of his body ^Ae
same o-otp^ dpaprtas as all other men. This is still disputed, no
doubt, by most of the commentators, who explain the decisive
passage in Eom. viii. 3, iv op.oiu>paTi a-apKos dpapTias, as if it
^ Gompave Zeller, uber Neutest. Christologie, in Theol. J.ahrb. 1842, Pt. 1.

THE APPEARING OF CHRIST IN THE FLESH. 153
ineant that Christ appeared only in a " likeness of sinful flesh,"
that is to say, in a body which resembled indeed the body of
other men so far as it consisted of flesh, but was unlike them in
this respect, that his flesh was not like that of all others, sinful
flesh, the abode and principle of that eiriOvpetv which is sinful
because contrary to the spirit. But this is evidently a misinter
pretation of the passage, which involves two errors, a mistrans
lation of the word opompa, and an inadmissible separation of the
two ideas, o-ap^ and dpapTias. As regards the first, it is beyond
question that if the words had merely been iv opoidpaTi a-apKos,
no one would have hesitated to translate them simply "in
fleshly shape," that is to say, in a shape or form of appearance
which was the same as that of all human flesh, and in fact con
sisted of flesh. Similarly, ev opoidpaTi dvOpd>Trb)v in Phil. ii. 7
means that shape or form of appearance which belongs to all
men, and does not indicate merely some kind of resemblance
(which would be the doctrine of the Docetists pure and simple),
but the complete identity of his appearance with that of other
men. Moreover, opoiiopa always,^ when used abstractly, de
notes sameness, or the relation of positive congruity, and pre
cisely not the incongruity of the things compared ; and where
it is concrete, it denotes the appearance, shape, image, form, in
which a being becomes apprehensible by the senses. How is it
possible, then, that in this passage the word should suddenly
come to mean precisely the want of identity between the a-dp^ of
Christ and the ordinary o-ap^ a;aopT4as?''"Here as elsewhere it
must necessarUy mean either " sameness " (abstract), or, which
seems to me simpler, "shape" (concrete); and in that case o-apKos
dpiapTias denotes the material of which the human form of Christ,
like that of other men, consists. But that both these notions are
inseparably connected, that the dpapTia is not a mere accidental
' Compare my article in HilgenfelWs Zeitschr., 1871, p. 523 f . ; and Overbeck in
the same periodical, 1869, p. 200 f. ; and especially Holsten, who previously (in his
treatise on the meaning of the word Dap$) gave with decisive reasons the right inter
pretation of the passage we are considering. Hamsrath and Lildcma'n^ have also
adopted his explanation.

154 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
quaUty of the o-ap^, but an essential one, one therefore without
which it would no longer be actual but only apparent rrdp^, has '
been already shown in treating of the Pauline anthropology
(Chap. i). Lastly, we must remember that, according to the
whole context of this passage, and of Eom. vi. — viii, the pre
sence of apapTia in the o-ap^ of Christ is so strictly a logical pos
tulate, that the denial of it destroys the whole argument of this
portion of the Epistle, and cuts away the foundation of Paul's
peculiar doctrine of the doing away with the power of sin in the
flesh through the death of Christ (see the preceding Chapter).
Accordingly we may regard it as a weU-estabUshed fact that,
according to Paul, the flesh of Christ, like that of other men, was
sinful flesh, the abode and the principle of that sinful hriOvpia,
which consequently could in principle be destroyed in his death.
But the iTTiOvpia of the o-dp^ was not in the case of the Pauline
Christ, as in ordinary men, that of his personal ego ; for his ego
was, as we have seen, not merely \l/vxy fc3o-a, which is subject to
the determination of the <rdp^, but it was Trvevp,a ayioMrvvys, to
which aU fleshly imOvpeiv is entirely aUen. Because Christ was
not dvOponros i//vxikos, but from the beginning avOpamos TrvevpaTiKos,
¦ — not Ik yijs xo'^oS) hut i^ o-vpavov, — therefore he continued, in
spite of his o-ap^ apapTias, to be personaUy one dpapTiav py yvoCs.
Only it must be admitted that to our minds the insoluble
question presents itself. What are we in that case to think of as
the subject of the dp,apTia of the flesh of Christ, if it was not his
ego, his soul, as that to which his indivisible personality attaches ?
Or how can the o-ap^ pure and simple, entirely separated from
the personal principle of life, to which it serves as an organ,
have dpapTia ? Or how can a concrete ego exist in a fleshly hfe,
without feeUng it as its own life, at least so far as to experience
its iTTiOvpieiv as its own ? And this leads us further back to the
question. How is it possible at all that a personal spirit could, as
such, have a bodUy birth, in such a way that the indi"vidual be
gotten and born as a man should be the same concrete subject
which subsisted before as pure spirit, and that the individual

THE APPEARING OF CHRIST IN THE FLESH. 155
body should thus be, not the basis of an individual spirit now in
process of development, but the mere wrappage of a spirit which
was already full-formed from the beginning, and is only infused
into it from "without ?
. It is easy to see that the inconceivabiUty of these ideas to our
\ modern psychology has tempted certain commentators to get rid
of the difficulty by giving up the identity of the earthly and the
4 pre-existent subject, making the latter an impersonal principle,
\ and allowing the personality of the historical Jesus to begin
with his birth in time. Although this, as we have seen, is not
justifiable as an exposition, yet it is without doubt correct as a
suggestion of what we have to regard as the idea of the Pauline
doctrine of Christ; only when once we begin to separate the
idea from the figurate conception in which it is presented, we
should go through with it to the end, instead of halting half-way,
as most of these commentators do. The difficulties of the Paul
ine Christology (in which the whole Christology of the Church
of after ages was already contained, as it were, in a nut-sheU)
may certainly be traced back to the fact that it asserts an ideal
timeless principle to be immediately identical with an empirical
individual born in time. That Paul went altogether beyond the^
\ empirical individuality of the man Jesus, and made an absolute
spiritual principle the main point of his Christology, constituted
j the peculiarity and the originaUty of his doctrine of Christ, by
which, scarcely less than by his doctrine of the law and faith,
he broke through the limits of the Judaistic conception of Chris
tianity, and secured for it its ¦ absolute spiritual character. For
this ideal principle of the personality of Christ was to him, as
we have seen, nothing else than the spiritual man, the perfect
image of God and the pattern of raan, the picture of the Son of
God, to the realization of which men, as potential children of
God, were from eternity destined, and the realization of which in
humanity began in principle in the historic Jesus Christ, as the
"first-born among many brethren" (Eom. viu. 29). This is that
Son of God, whom God revealed in him (PatU) that he should

156 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHBIST.
preacli him among the Gentiles (Gal. i. 16) ; whose glory as the
image of God is recognized when God allows the light of the
gospel to shed its enlightening rays on our hearts (2 Cor. iv.
4 — 6) ; into whose likeness we ourselves are changed, in that we
become spirit of his spirit (2 Cor. iii. 18); nay, who himself Uves
in us, who are spiritual men, and is the life of our spirit (Eom.
viii. 10; Phil, i 21 ; Gal. ii 20); whom to know in ever fuUer
practical knowledge, to lay hold of, and to be found in him, is
the Christian's highest desire (PhU. iii. 8 f ). In short, this ideal
principle of the Sonship of God, the eternrd Son of God, the Lord,
who is the spirit, forms the absolute object of faith for Paul, with
which his subjective spiritual life (for the very reason that it is
an absolute spiritual object) could unite itself in complete mysti
cal communion. Thus this higher Christology is essentially part
and^garcel_of thejmjstical depth and idp.a.1 power nf tbg Pauline
faith. But_this is only one side. The other side consists in the
fact that this ideal principle was so regarded by the Apostle that
in his eyes it is always immediately identical.,"with the empiricaL
person of JheJiigtflrig..^Bedegjmer^. .Jesus ^of, Nazareth. In him,
especially in his death, he saw the historical cause of his own
redemption, the source of his own spirit of adoption ; on him,
therefore, were concentrated aU his feelings of grateful love and
piety (Gal. ii. 20 ; 2 Cor. v. 14). By this means it happened,
and it was almost ine"vitable that it should happen, that the
historical instrument of salvation became himself the absolute
object of salvation ; the intermediate cause of the consciousness
of adoption became the absolute principle (operative ideal) of the
adoption as children of God ; and thus the absolute reUgious idea
was fused together with the individual appearance of him who
embodied and prepared the way for it, into the absolute and yet
at the same time individually determined and visible ideal. And
this combination was no less rich in results than it was unavoid
able ; the historical individual element, which culminated in the
act of love on the cross, gave to the image of Christ, as it pre
sented itself to the community he founded, its living and pal-

THE APPEARING OF CHRIST IN THE FLESH. 157
pable features, its heart-moving warmth, its power to lay hold of
and to captivate the affections ; but that this heart-stirring pic
ture should beconie the abstract of the absolute truth, the bodUy
manifestation of the fulness of the Godhead, the unconditioned
source of aU religious and moral satisfaction, — in a word, that it
should become the absolute object of salvation and ground of
beUef of the community, — was only rendered possible by the
raising of the individual and temporal into the ideal and eternal,
by the identification of the historical person with the absolute
principle of the Sonship of God. As this identification sprang
necessarily from the religious spirit of Paul, so it wiU evermore
be indispensable to the reUgious IKe of the community ; for this
Ufe requires in an equal degree the presence of both these
moments or aspects in the object of faith, (1) unUmited spiritual
ideality, and (2) envisagement in a definite indi"vidual form that
appeals to the feelings. And in the immediate intuition or un
reasoned perception of practical faith and pubUc worship, these
two moments always harmonize perfectly weU, and the more
easily, the less the immediacy of reUgious feeUng and vision is
interfered with by reflection, whether of the orthodox, apologetic
kind, or of the rationaUstic school which seeks to explain every
thing. For it is certain that as soon as thought begins to reflect
more precisely and accurately on the several features of this pic
ture of Christ, which originated, as we have seen, by the fusion
of empirical individual elements with others that were ideal and
absolute, it cannot faU to perceive the heterogeneity of these
elements, and the impossibility of their co-existence in one and
the same subject. Then the understanding usuaUy attempts to
repress either one side or the other, in order to avoid logical con
tradiction. But aU these attempts to reason out the matter, made
from the standpoint of reflection, are foUed by the fundamental
presupposition on which the whole rests, and so urge thought
further and further on, untU the solution of the riddle is found
in the genesis of the whole doctrine concerning Christ.
With this clue, aU the several points of this Christology be-

158 ¦ THE PERSON OF JESUS CHBIST.
come easily inteUigible. If the historical Eedeemer be once
identified with the idea of the man who is the very image of
God and the representative of adoption as chUdren of God,
which realizes itself indeed in time, but is in itself timeless, then
that concrete personality must partake of the eternal nature of
this idea, must therefore have had a timeless existence in supra-
mundane regions before it existed historicaUy on the earth, or,
in other words, must have been pre-existent, and have come
down from heaven upon the earth. And as that idea could ordy
realize itseK in the historial life of humanity, but yet dwelt m
human nature from the very beginning as a real potency, and as
the operative ground of its humanity, so also must the concrete
substantiation of that idea, namely Christ, have been not only
the historical instrument of the new spiritual creation, but also
the primordial instrument of the creation of the natural world.
Further, K the historical Christ is only the appearing in time of
that pre-existing ideal, then it is perfectly seK-e"vident that abso
lute sinlessness belongs to him, for this plainly attaches to the
notion of the ideal ; accordingly the doctrine of the sinlessness of
Christ is a simple consequence of Christological dogma, and for
this very reason belongs to the domain of dogma, and not of his
tory. But here it has already become apparent that the hetero
geneous elements out of which the Christology has gro"wn up,
cannot coalesce to form the real unity of a person ; absolute sin
lessness belongs to Christ as the substantiated ideal of the spiri
tual man, and to Christ as the empirical man U"ving in the flesh
belongs the sinfulness which is inseparable from the essence of
aU flesh. These are simply two contradictory predicates which
cannot be affirmed of one and the same subject.
There is yet another point on which the want of cohesion
between the two elements of the Christology is strikingly
displayed at the very outset of Paul's doctrinal system. So
long as the historical Jesus was regarded as the point of
departure, his resurrection appeared as the transition into his
pure spiritual existence, consequently as the reahzation of the

THE APPEARING OF CHRIST IN THE FLESH. 159
essence of a Son of God and pattern of manhood ; and therefore
Paul not only repeatedly connects the divine Sonship of Christ
with his resurrection, but also in most instances holds up the
risen one as the pattern for Christians (comp. Eom. vi 4, 10 f ;
2 Cor. 4, 10 f ; Col. 3, 1 f ). On the other hand, so long as the
historical Jesus is regarded as the appearing of the eternal pre-
existent Christ, there is no longer any need that he should
become, through the resurrection, that which he had already
been before he appeared in the flesh ; from this point of view
therefore the resurrection could no longer be regarded (as is the
case however in Eom. i. 4) as his institution into the full pos
session of the di"vine Sonship, but as a simple return to that Sofa
of the Son of God which he had long possessed, and only tempo
rarily laid aside. This is the necessary consequence of the doc
trine of the pre-existence, a consequence which we see already
distinctly drawn even in the Christology of John. In Paul, who
has not yet drawn this consequence, we find the dogma concern
ing Christ in that stage of its evolution where the higher Chris
tology is already, in the substantiation of an eternal Son of God,
in process of developing itseK out of the historical view, but does
not yet react upon the latter. The historical and the ideal
element are ioiued indeed for the first time in the Christology of
PauLbut as yet so little _5?jQughttp^ether that their want of co
hesion is stiU every"where apparent.

CHAPTEE IV.
JUSTIFICATION BT FAITH.

Since Paul looks upon the object of salvation as indi"visibly
concentred in Christ, the appropriation of salvation also becomes
for him a single act of faith, namely, the gi"ving up of the heart
to Christ, by which the salvation given in him is acquired com
plete in all its elements. Now in so far as Christ is above all
things the Mediator of reconciUation, faith in him becomes, first
of all, appropriation of the reconcUing love of God ; it justifies
the sinner, and places him in the condition of a child of God, in
which he is no longer an object of the anger of God (avenging
justice), but of his love. But since Christ, as the Son of God, is
at the same time the image of the holy God, and himself the
holy Trvevp,a, faith in him places the believer at the same time in
the communion of his holy irvoff/ia-lKe, and is thus consequently,
in the man who was hitherto fleshly, the cause of a new Ufe
in the spirit, in which the pattern of the Son of God reaUy
exhibits itseK, as in a copy, as a new moral personal Ufe. Thus
faith is the single root, as well of the change of the objective
relation of man to God, in justification and adoption, as of the
renewal of the subjective personal Ufe of man, in sanctification ;
but faith, not as an abstract human act, or a subjective human-
disposition, but as a laying hold of Christ, as the act of uniting
the human heart with the favourable wiU of God revealed in
Christ.

FAITH. 161

Faith.

Paul has nowhere expressly explained the notion of faith .
and without doubt for this reason, that the original sense in
which he uses the words Tria-Teveiv, Tria-Tis, was in no way peculiar,
but the sense in which they were ordinarUy understood. 1 Cor.
XI. 18, Kal p,epos Tl Tri<TT£v(0 : Eom. "vi. 8, Tria-Tevopev oti Kal a-v^-y-
(Topev : X. 9, cav Tricrre-ua-ys iv Tij KapSi<f crov, oti 6 Oeos d-VTov yyeipev
iK veKpmv, a-mO-rjo-y : in these passages, ina-Te-veiv evidently means
nothing more than beUeving, in the sense of regarding as true,
being persuaded of something, and that ou grounds which are not
of a logicaUy binding nature ; for K they were, the conviction
would no longer be beUef or faith, but pimply knowledge. In
this sense "faith" is used especiaUy of such conviction as does
not depend on sensuous perception, and is even the direct oppo- '
site of ocular demonstration, or ordinary experience by means of
the. senses. 2 Cor. v. 7, Sta Tria-reios yap TrepvrraTovpev, o-u Sid eiSovs,
which means that our Ufe in the body is absence from the Lord,
because he does not manifest his Ufe in the realm of visible
appearance and actuality, but only in the region of faith (not in
the realm of the real, but in that of the ideal) .^ Similarly in
Eom. iv. 18, it is related to the honour of Abraham, that he Trap'
iXTriSa iTT iXTriSi iTrta-Tevrrev, that he doubted not the promise of
God, in spite of aU experience to the contrary, but gave glory
to God, and was strong in faith, and had the firm assurajicQ
(TrXypocjiopyOeis) that God was able to d6 that which He had pro
mised, however impossible it appeared in the light of previous
experience. According to these passages, Paul's faith, like that
of the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 1), is a being convinced of
something beyond the senses, without or even against the evi-
^ This interpretation is the only one which corresponds with the context, and gives
throughout the true meaning of the words. OA TrspiTraTov/iev Sid eidovQ indicates the
very want that still afiects our life in the body, and makes it an iKStjpeiv dTr.b tov
Kvpiov, and is closely connected with the wish ixSriprtaai sk row aiiparoQ. This is
overlooked by those who would understand Sid eiSovQ to mean, under the principle of
mere outward show, the, deceitful world of appearances.
M

162 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
dence of sensuous experience. Only, the idea of Paul contains
something more than this general sense ; the passage last quoted
shows that it has its true object in God, or more particularly in
his revelation of salvation, whether by way of promise or of
saving act. The faith of Abraham, according to Eom. iv. 3, con
sisted in this, that he iTria-Tevcre T$ OeS, i. e. put faith in God, had
confidence that He could and would make good his word; and
thus far, as an act of confidence in God, it was a Sowat S6^av 6e<^
(ver. 20). Whenever we " beUeve a man about anything," the
ground of our conviction lies in our confidence in our authority,
and this is an ethical act of personal respect and heartfelt trust'
in the truthfulness of another. Just so, according to the authori
tative passage, Eom. iv., reUgious faith is holding for true without
logical ground, but on the ethical ground of trust in God and con
fidence in God's tntth, power, and honour, which impUes the
due .feeling of reverence towards God, the "giving Him. the
glory," and therefore the key-note of reUgion. The expression,
TTitTTe-veiv eis, or oti Oeov, Eom. X. 14, iv. 5, 24, has essentiaUy
the same sense as this n-to-Teueiv flew ; it means to have confidence
(i e. take confidence) in reference to God, or, in other words, to
beUeve in God.
Now the specific Christian or justifying faith is identical "with
this religious faith according to its psychological form, and analo
gous to it with regard to its object, as Paul unmistakably teaches
in Eom. iv. As the faith of Abraham was an undoubting as-
.surance in the promise of God, which was contradictory to
appearances, so Christian faith is a " trust in relation to God, who
raised Christ from the dead," and " who justifies tlie ungodly"
Eom. iv. 24, v. ; that is to say, in the first place, a trustful hold
ing it to be true that God raised Christ from the dead, and thus
wrought a miraculous manifestation of his favourable wUl, ana
logous to that event the future happening of which was the
object of Abraham's assurance ; secondly, a trustful acceptance
of the fact that the favourable "wUl of God, evidenced by that
miraculous act, wUl henceforth be fulfiUed in every sinner who

FAITH. 163
believes in the equaUy paradoxical act of justifying the un
godly. These perfectly plain passages show beyond a possibUity of
doubt wherein, according to Paul, the ttio-tis Xpia-Tov, or Tria-Tk-veiv
fts Xpia-Tov, consists. It is faith in Christ in the sense of tritst-
ing in the favourable will of God revealed in Christ, in the righ
teousness that comes from God through the mediation of Christ
(Eom. iii. 22 — 26 ; Gal. U. 16 f ). Christ is certainly not the
object of faith in the same sense as God ; it is not he in whom
faith or trust is placed, to whose personality this trust attaches,
for Paul nowhere speaks of a Tria-Te-ieiv Xpia-rQ as he does of a
TTia-Teveiv Oe<^. But he is the object of faith so far, that in him,
especiaUy in his death and resurrection, the favourable will of
God, which is the real object of religious trust, has been re
vealed. He is the object of faith only so far as he (that is to
say, his death and resurrection) supports and is instrumental in
producing the specific Christian faith in God (namely, the trust
in the historicaUy revealed favourable will of God). Now, in so
far as this faith in Christ refers, in the first instance, to matters
of history (the death and resurrection of Christ), it is undeniably
a theoretical act of holding for true, a being convinced of the
reaUty of the resurrection of Christ, upon which depended, in
the mind of Paul, the significance of the death of Jesus as a
Messianic expiatory sacrifice, and consequently the truth of the
favourable will of God. This is not only an obvious inference
from the whole Pauline doctrine of redemption, but Paul himseK
says, with the greatest emphasis, that the belief in the miracu
lous resurrection as a historical fact, was for him ^n integral
part of his notion of faith: "If Christ be not risen from the dead,
your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins," 1 Cor. xv. 17; "If
thou beUevest in thine heart that God raised Jesus from the
dead, thou shalt be saved," Eom. x. 9. In order rightly to under
stand the pecuUar stress thus laid by Paul on the resurrection of
Christ as the specific object of Christian faith, we must re
member that Paul's own faith in Christ had no other starting-
M 2

164 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
point than the assurance by means of the vision that the cruci
fied one was alive. This was not the case with the immediate
disciples of Jesus, whose faith had proceeded from trust in the
personaUty of their Master ; nor, with the theological school of
John, in whose eyes the resurrection was only one ofthe nume
rous manKestations in which the existence of the Logos in Jesus
was outwardly attested; the faith of this school could not, there
fore, be referred to that single fact, but to the divine sonship of
Jesus in general (John xx. 31). But the last-mentioned passage
(Eom. X. 9 f.) shows that "with Paul also the faith of the Chris
tian does not simply take the resurrection of Christ as a mere
external event of history, and therefore is not merely a theo
retical act of holding something for true — KapSiif Tna-Te-ierai, iav
TTia-Te-uo-ys iv Ty KapSi^ (rov. If it is the heart, the seat of the hfe
of feeling, in which and with which we must believe, then faith
itself is evidently also a matter of feeling, a specific state of the
emotional nature, as " trusting" is, in the sense developed above;
and K the confession that Christ is the "Lord" be the outward
counterpart of this faith of the heart (ibid, lav opoXoyya-'ys iv t$
(TTopaTi a-ov K-upiov 'lya-ovv), then faith must be the inward recogni
tion of Christ as the Lord, therefore a subjection of the wUl to
the dominion of Christ. Consequently faith may be described
also as an act of obedience, ibid. v. 16, im-aKoveiv tiJ evayyeXlifj as
equivalent to Trio-Tevetv : and ver. 3, wroTayTjvat Ty SiKaioa-vvrj TOV
Oeov, as the opposite of t^v ISlav SiKaioa-vvyv fijTeiv: also 2 Cor.
X. 5, hraKoy Xpicrrov, under which all human ratiocination, that
contradicts the evangeUcal knowledge of God (here especially
the dialectic of the Judaizers) is to be brought into captivity.
The expression vrraKoy Tria-Tem in Eom. i 5, has precisely the
same meaning, where Trta-Tem is not the genitive of the subject,
but of the object, and denotes the principle of Christian faith, to
which the Gentiles were to become subject by the preaching of
Paul. But this "becoming subject to the principle of faith" is
plainly only another name for "becoming beUevers," and accord
ingly TTurreveiv here also denotes vrraKoy, an act of obedience. But

FAITH. 165
in what sense is the PauUne faith caUed "obedience"? Not in-
some such sense as a moraUy good disposition, intention, and
endeavour to perform the wUl of God, or the fulfilling of the law
in principle. This would entirely pervert the PauUne notion of
justifying faith, although not only rnodern theologians, but (as
we shaU presently see) even the earliest foUowers of Paul, have
given this moral application to the notion. But the PauUne
faith is an act of obedience exclusively in a religious sense,
namely, as an act of self-determination, that consists in renounc
ing everything of our own, so far as it could stand in opposition
to the favourable wiU of God towards us, or form a ground of
self-glorification, whether in the shape of natural advantages, or
moral acts or claims, or even inherited opinions and prejudices
flattering to our self-love, and giving ourselves up whoUy to the
favourable "wUl of God. Thus it constitutes the opposite to tijv
tSiav StKaioo-uvijv fijTeiv (Eom. X. 3), or Iv frapKi Treirot^evai (Phil.
iii 4), and is therefore identical with the truly humble spirit
which wishes to have nothing and be nothing of itself, but, on
the contrary, to receive everything from God, and which wiU
rather consider all its own advantages as damage and loss, in
order to obtain instead of them Christ, and consequently the
righteousness which is of God (PhU. iii. 7 f ). In this absolute
surrender of the whole man to God, faith is certainly the most
complete fulfilment of the wUl of God, but, be it well under
stood, not (in the first instance) of that "wiU which demands the
fulfilment of the law, but of the wUl which bestows favour, of
that wiU which has substituted for the old economy of law, with
its demands and performances, the new economy of grace with
its gift of favour, and now requires nothing from men with
respect to this new religious principle but the behaviour which
corresponds to it — a trustful acceptance of the gKt of favour
offered by God. This is something specifically different from a
morally good disposition, from wUling the good in principle in
the moral life, for its aim is not doing at all, but receiving, hot
the moral perfection either of the person himself or of tlie world.

166 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
but religious satisfaction — the setting of the human heart in the
right relation to God, and the blessing to be expected therefrom;.
it is, in short, the key-note of aU' reUgious feeUng, not that dis
position which forms the basis of the moral wUl. This must be
carefully borne in mind in order to the right understanding of
Paul's idea of justification.
What Paul says about the origin of faith quite agrees with
the above. Owing to the historical nature of the object of faith,
faith can only come 1^ dKoys, Eom. x. 17, from hearing the
announcement of the gospel. It is so far dependent on beiag
handed down hymen (irSs dKova-ioa-i x^pts K57pi;(ro-ovTos; ibid. ver. 14)';
just as the Apostle himself in preaching the gospel first of aU
deUvered what he himself had received (from men) — the facts
of the death, burial, resurrection and appearances of Christ
(1 Cor. XV. 3 f). Nay, regarded from this point of view, faith
impUes also a certain confidence in the truthfulness and trust
worthiness of the men who handed down the gospel, as the
"witnesses of God," who were set down as "false witnesses"
through lack of faith intheir testimony (ibid. ver. 15). Notwith*
standing this, however, faith is by no means grounded on the
word of men, any more than what is historical forms, as such,
the chief part of its object; but as this is only the temporal
form in which the favourable wiU of God to man attains its
outward ma,nifestation, so that which produces faith is not the
human word of historical announcement, but the word of God
finding expression through this means. The Xoyos dKoys is to
be accepted, not as the Aoyos dvOpum-iov, but KaOiisJa^iy dXydZs, as
A,oyos Oeov, 1 Thess. ii. 13. In particular, the, Xoyos tov o-Toupou
preached by Paul is to the Jews an offence!; and to the Greeks
fooUshness, but to the called (who are ^estined to faith and
salvation by the counsel of God, and actually caUed to this
by the preaching of the gospel) it is ^eou Swa/its Kal Oeov
(ro<f>ia, 1 Cor. i." 18 — 24. The preaching of Paul does not consist
in persuasive words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of
the spirit and of power. Therefore the faith of the Corinthians

FAITH. 167
rests not Iv cro^iti, dvOpdmoiv dXX' iv Svvdpei Oeov (U. 4 f ) And K
we ask how far the word preached shows itseK as the power of
God, Eom. i. 16 f leaves us in no doubt on this head; — it is
because in it the righteousness which is of God is revealed as a
consequence of faith for the purpose of faith (of awakening faith) ;
that is to say, because it shows to man, who stands under the
"wrath of God, the only possible way of attaining to righteous
ness before God, and thereby to being made a partaker of salva
tion (a-oiTypia, ver. 16). It is God himself who has committed to
us the word of reconciliation, and who caUs to men -through
the mouth of his ambassadors, "Be reconcUed with God!"
(2 Cor. V. 19 f). It is as this message of assured reconcUiation,
of the offered righteousness of God, that the gospel of Christ the
crucified is the power of God, on which that faith depends which
awakens faith or human trust in the God who so reveals HimseK.
Thus it is once more made clear to us how justifying faith does
not merely consist of a beUef in the truth of miraculous events
narrated by man, which could only be brought about by the
convincing force of human testimony and by the art of human
persuasion ; but whereas that forms only the external husk, the
real kernel of faith is the trustful surrender of the heart to the
favourable wUl of God, as it presents itself to us in the word of
reconcUiation. Now if faith is, as above, trust awakened in the human heart
by the offer of favour contained in the gospel, it immediately
becomes a bond which connects God and man; in that trust
there is directly involved a grateful love, which places man in
a community of Ufe with God and Christ. As the giving up of
the heart to the love of God and Christ, it is not merely the
acceptance of the message of salvation, but the being incorporated
with the object of salvation itself in a mystical unity of love a'nd of
Ufe. Pauline faith has in this attained to that mystical depth,
by which, as a complete and central appropriation of the object
of salvation, it was capable of becoming the complete and exclu-

168 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
siye subjective means of salvation^ (rrtaTei SiKaiova-Oai xw/O's ^pyMf,
which Luther rightly renders "by faith alone"). -This mystical
notion of faith is expressly contained in Gal. ii. 20, a passage no
less clear than profound. Here fg Iv ip,ol Xpia-Tos is paraUel to
ev TriiTTei ftu T^f ToC vlov tov Oeov, toi! dyaTry<TavTos pe Kai irapaSovTOS"
eavTov wrep ipiov, and both expressions denote the same real com
munity of the Christian's life with the divine principle of sal
vation, the immanence of the latter in the human personal life..
'Ev xto-Tei fcS is not opposed to ^-y iv ip,oi Xpio-Tos, as K the former
were merely the condition of the latter and presupposed by it^ —
this is an abstract separation between man and the object of
salvation, which is most decidedly excluded by the words fu
Se 0-UKeTi iyd and XpirrTiff crvvecrTa-vpotpiai m this very passage..
On the contrary, the only distinction between the two clauses
is, that the one denotes the condition of the Christian with
reference to its objective (immanent) principle, the other ynth
reference to the subjective psychological means bywhich it is
brought 'about And this passage is especially, instructive for
this very reason, that it allows us to see the irmer point of unity t
between faith in the sense of trustful acceptance, and the deep
mystical notion of faith. This unity lies in the grateful love
which is absolutely inseparable from entire trust ; and we can
now understand why Paul, above all others, arrived at this deep
notion of faith. The reason was^ that to him the object of salva
tion didnot consist of a mere external good— for example, an object
of hope like the coming of theMessiah'skingdom-— butwas directly
presented to him in the person and in the loving act of the
Mediator of reconcUiation ; consequently the faith that had this.
"¦ See the beautiful exposition of the Pauline notion of faith in Biedermatin,
Dogmatik, § 279.
" Contrary to the view of Weiss, p. 329. The misunderstanding of this mystical
moment in the Pauline notion of faith is the cause of a defect which is painfully felt
in Weiss's exposition of the doctrines of Paul, in spite of the appositeness of par
ticular parts of it ; the truly organic interdependence of' the various moments. of the,
Apostle's i:6ligi6u& speculation, and the living movement by which they are developed
out of one another, is turned into a dead juxtaposition of scholastic doctrines.

FAITH. 169
for its object was able to attain to a depth that was quite be
yond the reach of the Judaized faith of a James. Man attaches
himseK in loving trust to Christ as his Lord, and thereby
becoines one spirit with him. (1 Cor. "vi. 17, i^ KoXXiLpevos tZ
kvpio} ev TTvevpd ia-Tiv.) Christ, the personified revelation of the
Divine favour, then becomes the ruling principle of the personal
life of man, which is thus completely taken up into Christ's
saving work as into its own vital element. (PhU. i. 21, ipol
yap TO ^yv Xpio-Tos.) Since faith is the recognition of Christ
as the Lord, it introduces us into his famUy, and thereby at
once into mystical union with him; for "to be Christ's," and
"to have the spirit of Christ in one's self," are inseparable
(Eom. "VUI. 9, ei TIS Trvevpia XpicrTov ovk e'xei, OVTOS ovk 'eorriv a-vTOv).
Nay, so little is true faith possible without the indwelling of
Christ in the beUever, that the latter is expressly stated by
the Apostle to be the criterion of the former (2 Cor. xiii. 5, —
the . certainty of being in the faith depends on the percep
tion that Christ is in you; compare Eom. viU. 9). Here it
» is made perfectly clear' that faith is, as regards man, the form,
which if it is not to be empty form, i.e. unreal appearance,
must have the object of salvation, not outside of itself as a
mere' object of knowledge, but in itseK as a U"ving principle.
This mystical notion of faith is also a remarkable characteristic '
of the Epistle to the Philippians : becoming a believ^ is here
represented (Ui, 12) as a "being laid hold of by Christ," as
striving "to win Christ;" being a believer as "being found
in Christ," as practical " knowledge of Christ,^' and more defi
nitely knowledge of " both the power of his resurrection and the
fellowship of his sufferings by being made conformable to his
death" (ibid. vers. 9, 10). Faith is, apcording to this, a practical
acquaintance with Christ, which iiompletes itself by personal
appropriation; a being made, conscious of what the saving
power of the resurrection ajtd the death of Christ really, means,
which can only take place in the mystical communion with the
sufferings of Christ, and being made conformable to his death.

170 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
In short, justifying faith (compare ver. 9) is here the subjective
taking into our inmost self of the principle of salvation in all
its moments, as exhibited to us by way of example in (the
historical) Christ.
But when Paul had once come to make faith a laying hold of
and appi'opriating the principle of salvation for our own principle
of life, he had come very near to the final step of apprehending
it as the development of this principle in the whole course of the
life of salvation. This is certainly an enlargement of the notion,
and it must be distinguished from the original idea of justifying
faith. For in this "wider sense faith is no longer a merely
passive attitude, but a spontaneous active power. Inasmuch as it
has for its own contents the Trvevp,a dyiov, Trvevp,a Xpio'TOv, Trvcij/ta
foioirotovv, it must necessarUy exhibit itself as a living impulse
and power of good in every phase of personal life, in feeling, ia
moral conduct, and in the perception of truth, both religious
and moral. It is by means of faith that God fills us with aU
manner of joy and peace (Eom. xv. 13). Faith it is which proves
its active power by (brotherly) love (Gal. v. 6). Faith gives
steadfastness to our convictions, at once reUgious and moral, as
to what is moraUy permissible, and the conviction of Christian
freedom in things indifferent, which is grounded in faith, may
therefore itseK be designated as n-to-Tis, and the want of this
inward freedom as do-Oeveiv Ty ma-Tei (Eom. xiv. 1, 22 f ).
The fuUer discussion of this subject belongs to the next
Chapter, where the same states wUl present themselves to us as
the effect of the spirit; which only shows that "faith," in this
wider sense, denotes the same Christian principle of Ufe as
" spirit," only the former from a subjective, the latter from an
objective, point of "view.^
^ Baur, N. Tie. Theol., p. 175, appositely remarks in connection with this subject,
" TTiOTiQ is indeed the necessary presupposition of Trvevpa, — inasmuch as wvevpa is
obtained k£ dKoiJe TriareiaQ, — but is at bottom related to it only as form to matter,
and in Trvevpa alone comes to be the living actuality of the Christian consciousness
filled with its positive content." And again, p. 176, "What is said of spirit, may
also be said of faith."

JUSTIFICATION. 171
It is consistent with this "view, that faith according to Paul
admits of degrees, and of increase and decrease. Christian self-
esteem is to be measured, e/cao-Tij) cos d Oeos epepia-e perpov Tria-reois
(Eom. xU. 3). As in the passage before quoted an da-Oeveiv Ty
iria-Tei (certainly in distinct relation to the perception of faith)
was spoken of, so also there is an unusual strength of faith, a
heroic degree Of it, which is capable of the most extraordinary
actions (this is what we are to understand by the x^P'O"/^"* of
jr«rT6s, 1 Cor. xU. 9, and by faith which can remove mountains,
xUi. 2). Faith, being this Christian life which is susceptible of
different degrees, can also grow (cf 2 Cor. x. 15, dv^avopevys tijs
jricrretos vpSv). And because the possibility of its diminution is
not excluded, there is an ever-recurring need of admonition to
the faithful, o-T-yKere Tif Tr'ujTei (1 Cor. xvi 13), which with such
expressions as dvSp'i^ea-Oe, KpaTaiova-Oe, evidently relates to the
strengtheiUng of the whole religious and moral life, and not
merely to holding fast the assurance of justifying favour. All
these appUcations of ttio-tis go beyond the original notion of
justKying faith, though they are essentiaUy connected with it,
and naturally flow out of it. Their one root is the trustful sur
render of the heart to Christ as the mediator of reconcUation,
as the principle and the pattern of divine sonship. Hence pro
ceed, on the one hand directly, the being placed in the condition
of children of God by justification and adoption; and, on the
other hand indirectly, the subjective quickening by the spirit of
sonship, the "Uving in the Spirit" Since these are only two
moments which are comprehended in their unity in the central
mystery of faith, faith may be regarded equally weU as the con
dition of justification and (from another point of view, of course)
as li"ving in the Spirit. Justification.
For the meaning of the word SiKaiovv, we must not refer to the
classics, but oiUy to its use in the Septuagint and in the New

172 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
Testament, especially in the Epistles of Paul themselves. In
the Septuagint, the word is applied to judicial acquittal and
declaration of innocence ; e. g. Exod. xxxiU. 7, ov SiKaidia-eis tov
dcre/3y eveKev Su>po)v : Dcut. XXV. 1, lav SiKaiworoicri tov SiKatov Kal
KaTayvZa-i tov dcre^oCs : and also to judgment other than judicial,
in the sense of recognizing as just or righteous ; e. g. Ecclesias
ticus XvUi 2, Kvpios povos SiKaiwOya-eTai : Job XXxUi. 32, el e'uri
(Toi Xoyoi, aTroKpiOyTi p,oi, OeXio yap SiKaiioOrjvai ere. ^SiKamOy y
(ro4>ia. Matt. xi. 19, has the same meaning; and SeSiKaiapevos,
Luke x"viii 14, is used in the Pauline sense. Now that Paul
uses the word, as it is used in all these passages, to mean a judg-
¦ ment of acquittal, is shown in the first place by the opposition
in whicli it stands to lyKa\e?v = to accuse judicially, in Eom.
viii. 33, and to KaTaKpipa = condemnation, in Eom v. 18. That
it denotes a, judicial act is further shown unmistakably by Eom.
iii. 4, OTTOis SiKaiO)0-rjs iv Tois Adyots rrov, Kal vtKya-ys iv Tif Kpivea-Oai
o-e. It is evident that there can be no question here about any
kind of "making righteous," because God is the subject; the
point of the quotation is the recognition of the righteousness of
God in a sort of judicial proceeding between Him and the sinner.
In Eom. U. 13, oi 'n-oiyTol TOU v6p.ov SiKaitaOya-ovTai is opposed to
ocrot ypapTov, Sid vopov KpiO-fjcrovrai in ver. 12 ; as the latter is a
judicial condemnation, the former is a judicial acquittal, where
every idea of " making righteous " is excluded ; for the doers of
the law have no need at aU to be made righteous, for they are so
already as doers ; the recognition of their righteousness is the
only thing that has any meaning here. The fact that in this
instance judgment of acquittal foUows as the consequence of a
corresponding real character on the part of the person justified,
certaiiUy establishes a difference in the circumstances of this
and the Christian SifcatoiJv, but not a difference in the meaning
of the word itseK.
In addition to these indirect proofs, we have also a direct one,
in the explanation, both in positive and negative terms, which
Paul himself gives of his notion of SiKaioSv. In Eom. iv. 2 £, he

JUSTIFICATION. 173
explains SiKawvv by Xoyi^earOai SiKaioa-vvyv, or tticttiv els SiKaiocr-uvyv,
negatively /i^ Xoyl^ea-Oai dpapTiav. But Xoyi^ea-Oai always denotes
an ideal act of judging, considering, regarding, not a real act of
making into something ; and therefore Aoy. SiKaioa-vvyv means to
ascribe, or give credit for righteousness to some one in an apt of
judgment, negatively not to ascribe sin, to regard it as not there ;
Xoyi^ea-Oai tticttiv els SiKaiocrvvyv means to take couut of faith, so
as to attribute righteousness ; or to ascribe righteousness on the
ground of faith, because faith is there. Now whether this be an
analytic judgment, which simply recognizes the righteousness
which is there, or a synthetic judgment, which corresponds to a
righteousness which is not yet in existence, is certainly not indi- "
cated by the word Xoyt^ea-Oai, but the context clearly shows that
the latter only is meant. In ver. 5, God is said to be SiKaidv tov
dcrej3y — that is, one who declares him righteous who in himself is
not so, but the opposite, namely, an da-e^-ys ; consequently this
SiKaiovv or Xoyi^ea-Oai SiKaiocrvvyv is uot recognizing righteousuess
that is there, but ascribing righteousness that is not there to the
man who is in fact godless. The same is very distinctly implied
in the antithesis of Xoyi^ea-Oai KaT 6<j>eiXypa, and Aoy. KaTa x'^jO"'-
To him who went about with works, sought his strength, his
praise at the hand of God in works, wished to be regarded as
righteous on account of his works, his wages (supposing that he
were right, and that it were possible to make such a claim)
would be due as a debt — that is, he would be treated according
to his deserts, as that which he really is, and on which he could
found claims of recognition ; he would thus be declared righ
teous, and treated as such, on the ground of his being actuaUy
righteous. But the antithesis requires that the Xoyi(ea-Oai KaTo,
xdpiv tZ p,y ipya^opevio Tria-TevovTi Se be a judgment whicli ascribcs
righteousness, not on the ground of the man's being correspond
ingly righteous, but on a presupposition of the opposite— namely,
his being godless ; a judgment, therefore, the ground of which is
not in the man at all, not in his real character, or his moral
worth and merit, but exclusively in the favour of God, which is

174 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
thus a Saipea xa/o'Tos. The whole point of Paul's doctrine of jus
tification — its moral paradox and its reUgious ideaUsm — Ues pre
cisely in this ideality of the judgment of justification ; in its
being grounded, not on any real moral character of the man, but
only on God, on his favouring wUl and his ordinance of favour.
This imputed " righteousness " is the very opposite of that which
is the usual meaning of the term, and which to the Jew in par
ticular was its sole meaning, namely, a subjective moral condi
tion of conformity "with the wUl of God expressed in his laws.
It denotes an objective religious principle — the right relation
between God and man, which, restored by God himseK, presents
itself to the reUgious consciousness of man as something objec
tively given, as a new revelation of God, and which when it is
subjectively appropriated, but not before, proves itseK to be also
a moraUy renovating principle. It is this objectivity of the
notion of righteousness that was the specifically new element in
the teaching of Paul, and his chief weapon against the Judaistic
party : to misunderstand this is to displace the foundation of the
whole gospel of Paul.
The Apostle has framed some peculiar expressions for the
righteousness imputed to man through justification, which
clearly indicate what the new idea is. He caUs it the SiKaiocrivy
Oeov or eK Oeov, and SiKaioo-livy Sid TricTTeios Xpia-Tov, Eom. i. 17,
iii. 22, X. 3 ; 2 Cor. v. 21 ; PhU. iU. 9. It is impossible to under
stand by this a quality or power of God ; in that case it could
not also be called SiKaioa-vvy eK Oeov, nor "would it be conditioned
and brought about by the ttio-tis Xpia-Tovi least of aU could it be
said that we men arrive at SiKaioa-6vy SeoC in Christ (2 Cor.
V. 21); this passage, taken together with iK Oeov and Sia Triorems
in the texts quoted above, forces us to think of a gift which
comes from God, and which is to be received on the part of man
by faith; compare Eom. v. 17, Sloped ttjs SiKdioa-vvys. But neither
is it possible to understand by it a quality of -man, a moral con
dition or moral power in him ; for the expression, " righteous
ness of God," would be far too unusual and misleadiflg a term to

JUSTIFICA TION. 175
apply to the human quaUty of being righteous ; moreover, the
predicate aTroKaX-urrTeTai, i. 17, would be inappUcable; for a human
quality may doubtless be caused by God, but certainly not
" revealed ;" and further, the revelation of SiKaioa-vvy Oeov is here
opposed to that of 6pyy Oeov (vcr. 18), which in any case is an
objective power exercised on man, that can indeed be subjec
tively felt by him, but has not its seat within him. The other
expression, tij SiKaioa-6vy tov Oeov o-ix vireTdyya-av, X. 3, also com
pels us to think of an objective power, and not a subjective
quality in man, for a man may take up and form in himself a
quality, but cannot " subject " himself to it Now if by the
SiKoioo-vvy Oeov of Paul we can understand neither a quality of
God nor a quality of man, bpcause it appears at one time as
something which comes to man, and at another time as some
thing which stands over him, and is established by God for him,
then there is nothing left for us but to understand it as the true
relation between Ood and man, which, being ordained by God, pre
sents itself to the conscioiisness of man as a new religious principle,
as a new regulator of his religious behainour, and to which man J
has to submit himself, by allovjing his attitude towards God to be
determined by this diinnely ordained principle. Thus it is caUed
SiKaioa-vvy deov or iK Oeov, because that true relation cannot be
established by man, but only by the favour of God, by means of
the institution of redemption (SiKaiovp,evoi Siapedv T-y auroiT xdpiTi
Sid Tys dTToXvTp&reios Tijs Iv XpicrT<f 'lytrov, Eom. iU. 24); but the
Sue. Oeov is received by man Sta jrto-Tews Xpia-Tov, because faith
alone, as im-aKoy XpioToi) or ivayyeXiov, submits itself to the
favourable wiU of God, as it is revealed in Christ, and enters
into the ordained relation of reconciliation, of peace with God.
By this subjection of himself to the principle of favour ordained
by God, the believer comes to stand in the true relation to God
(SiKaios KaTOJo-TaO'ya-eTai, V; 19); the favourable wUl accompUshes
itself upon him, in declaring him to be righteous in consequence
of his believing (SiKaiovTai iK Trla-Teias or 5r«rTis Xoyi^eTai eis
SiKaiocrvvyv) ; he counts henceforth in the judgment of God as a

176 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
righteous man — that is, as a man who stands towards God as
he ought (^iKaiovrai ivomiov OeoS or irapa tij> Oe(§, Eom. Ui. 20 ;
Gal. Ui 11); and this new relation to God, thus entered upon
and ratified, then reflects itself upon the subjective consciousness
in the feeling of peace, of unbroken harmony with God {SiKam-
OevTes ovv eipyvyv 'exopev, V. 1). The objectivity of the SiKaiocrvvy
Oeov is in no way disprovfiid by 2 Cor. v. 21, but, on the con
trary, receives fresh confirmation. For here the thought, that it
is in Christ we attain to the SiKamaivy Oeov, is the correlative to
Christ's having been made dpapria for us by God : now it is in
disputable that the latter can only be meant in an ideal sense,
that God has regarded Christ as a sinner, and treated him as
such (made him the object of his avenging justice); therefore
the former must be understood in a corresponding sense, that
God regards us in Christ (by virtue of our belonging to Christ
through faith in him) as righteous, and treats us accordingly,
although we are as far from being so in reality, as Christ was
from being a sinner. And this imputative notion of StKaioo-uvij
OeoS is required by the connection with the preceding passage,
for the expression is paraphrased in ver. 19 by py Xoyi^opevbs
avToTs Toi TrapaTTTiipaTa avToiv. Accordingly, the " righteousness of
God in Christ '' is that condition of freedom from guUt which is
brought about by not reckoning sin as condemning guUt, or by
judicial justification. The objective nature of righteousness and
sin, according to Paul, could not be more strikingly expffessed
than it is in this passage, where both appear as types of
character, or parts which can be separated and transferred to
other persons and exchanged one for the other.
This analogy of imputed righteousness with imputed sin
brings us to a passage of great importance in its bearing upon
this doctrine — a passage in which sin and righteousness are con
ceived as types characteristic of the race of natural and Christian
humanity, represented, in connection with the history of the
entire world, by Adam and Christ Eom. v. 12 — 21 concludes
that section of the Epistle which begins at i. 17, and which de-

JUSTIFICATION. 177
velops the StKatooTjvij Oeov, which is there stated as the theme for
discussion. The objectivity of this righteousness is finally corro
borated here by the paraUel that is drawn between it and the
simUarly objective sin of Adamitic humanity. We have already
(in the first part of Chap, i.) discussed the introduction, and one
member of the parallel (especiaUy vers. 12 — 14). Here we have
to do with the further carrying out of the comparison with re
gard to points of difference and of identity, vers. 15 — 19. First
of aU, vers. 15 — 17, the difference between the two members of
the parallel (the relation of sinful humanity to Adam, and of
justified humanity to Christ) is set forth in greater detaU, in
order to prepare the way for carrying out the positive analogy,
which is the real object of the whole parallel. This difference is
partly qualitative and partly quantitative. As to the qualitative
— from Adam judgment went forth to condemnation, from Christ
the gift of favour to justification (Kpipa els KaTdKpipa — x"P"^/*'*
eis Sijiaioipa, ver. 16); in the former case, the irapairTOj/^a or the
T-apaKo-y of One issued in the death of many, the dominion of
death over the race; in the latter case, the Sixaioi/ta or the vTraKo-y
of one issued in the dominion of many in IKe (ver. 17); and as
to the quantitative difference — in the former case, condemnation
extended from one over aU, simply without their personal co
operation (incurring guUt); but in the latter case, the gKt of
favour unto justification extended from one to aU (" all," that is
to say, according to the intention of God), not only without their
personal co-operation (deserving it), but, on the contrary, under
presupposition of ("in spite of") many transgressions (Ik ttoXXZv
TrapaTTTii>p,dTii}v, ver. 16), OU wMch account the gift appears as not
only personally undeserved, but indeed, in consideration of the
personal unworthiness of the recipients, as too great, so that
there is an " excess " of favour beyond the justice that judges (17
Sloped iv x^jO'Ti iTrepicrcrevcre els tovs ttoXXo-vs, ver. 15, and Trepitra-eia
T^s x«/0'Tos, ver. 17). But besides this qualitative and quantita
tive dissimilarity of the two members, the positive analogy, which
forms the principal subject of discussion here, consists of the
N

178 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
similar relation of the respective races to their progenitor. In one
member of the parallel, as in the other, the fate of the whole
multitude — without regard to individual differences between the
several persons — is entirely determined by the act of the one
progenitor, which forms the ground of a divine judgment on the
whole multitude which depends on him, whereby they are
placed, in the one case, in a state of sin and of death, and in the
other, of righteousness and life. The religious status of these
two races is fixed immediately 1^ Ivos eis rrovTas, consequently
without personal co-operation (of guUt or merit), in the one
case as that of sin, in the other of righteousness (apapT<oXa\
KaT€KpiOyorav — SiKaioi KaTacrTaO-ycrovTai ot TroAAot, VCr. 19). . The
tertium comparationis, therefore, lies in the pure objectivity of
the religious status, both of natural (Adamitic) and of Christian
humanity. Neither sin and the dominion of death in the case of
the former, nor righteousness and Ufe in the case of the latter, is
in any way caused by individuals; both, on the contrary,. have
their origin in the Divine wiU, which displays itseK as wrathful
wUl in a judicial sentence of condemnation, and as favourable
wUl in a judicial sentence of justification, passed upon the
whole; the occasion of which sentence is the act of the pro
genitor of the race, the misdoing of Adam, and the righteous
doing of Christ. But in this pure objecti"vity, neither sin nor
righteousness can be thought of as personal behaviour or a moral
quaUty, which would necessarily imply free action on the part of
the individuals ; both indicate the general relation in which the
race (without individual freedom) finds itseK placed towards
God, the principle ordained by God himself, which determines
the religious character of the race, and by which the religious
consciousness of the individual is conditioned k priori.
As, then, the sin of natural humanity and the dominion of
death, which is inseparable from it, do not depend on the free
act of the individuals, since they are, on the contrary, fixed as
the character of the race previously to any act of the individuals
(which character is seen in the act of the race performed by its

JUSTIFICATION. 179
representative, Adam), so likewise righteousness and life do not
depend on the free act of the individuals, but are given to the
whole coUectively, as a divine gift of favour in Christ, and are
acquired as an actual possession by those who accept this gift of
righteousness (t^v Trepicra-elav T-^s x<''P'TOS Kat T'^s Sutpeds Tys SiKaio-
a-uvys Xap,pdvovTes, ver. 17). The subjective effect of this, then, is
a sovereign possession of life (,8acnAei;o-ova-iv Iv ^uij — as an evident
contrast to the preceding 6 ^avaTos l^ao-tAeuo-e: instead of involun
tary subjection to the sovereign dominion of death, we have here
the sovereign possession of life). It is only with reference to this
its subjective effect in the possession and regal enjoyment of eternal
life (^<oy aliovios, ver. 21), that justification is caUed in ver. 18 a
SiKaiioais ^loys, and by no means in the sense of making the life
righteous by a moral renovation, which would neither correspond
"with the immediate antithesis KaTdKpipa, nor be consistent with
the context and the line of thought of this entire section of the
Epistle, in which, as we have said, the development of the idea
of the StKaioo-wij Oeov, propounded in i 17 as the theme, is
brought to its crowning point. The fundamental thought of this
section is comprised in the dogmatic notions of the imputed
sin of Adam and the imputed righteousness of Christ; although
these words are not actually used by the Apostle, yet the sense
of his expression, 1^ Ivos eis TrdvTas, certainly amounts to this.
What this idea of imputed (ideal, objective) righteousness is,
may be shown indirectly by the consideration that Paul makes
a very marked distinction between it and moral renovation or
"sanctification" (dytao-/.ids). For instance, in 1 Cor i. 30, Christ
is made for us a-o^ia, SiKaioervvy Te Kal dyiaa-pos Kal aTToX-OTpioa-is.
Here dyiaa-pos denotes the renovating and purifying influence of
Christ upon our moral life, or the fact that the real condition of
our Ufe is in process of approximation to the moral goal of
dyiioarvvy ; Consequently SiKaioa-vvy cannot Ukewise denote this
moral side, but must refer to what is presupposed as necessary
to the moral process, the state of justification, the relation of a
man to God as one who is reconciled, from which the process
N 2

180 JUSTIFICA TION S Y FAITH.
of sanctification follows, and attains to its end in the final
aTToXvTpuKns, which is the object of Christian hope. We find
precisely the same distinction in Eom. vi 19: TTapaa-T-yq-are to,
peXy vpiov SovXa Ty SiKaioa-vvy els dyiaxrpov. The members are to
be placed at the service of righteousness, as the present condition
of Christians — that is to say, so used as beseems the state of
favour in which the justified stand ; but the end here aimed at
is moral perfection, to which Christians are graduaUy to attain
in the moral process of Ufe, i. e. sanctification. And in ver 16,
eis SiKaioiT-vvyv is not to be understood as equivalent to ei's
ayiaa-piov, for the moral character is expressed by SovXov etvai
waKoJjs ; but cts SiKaioa-vvyv is the counterpart to cts Odvarov in
the other clause, and refers therefore to the final result, of the
moral process — justification at the final judgment ; so it retains
here also its judicial sense, though with a different meaning from
that of the justification which constitutes the commencement of
the state of favour. 1 Cor. vi. 11 also agrees "with this distinc
tion of justification and sanctification: TavTd (gross sinners) Ttves
1JTC* dAAd dTTcAovcrotr^e, dAAa yyida-Oyre, dAAa ISiKaieo^ijTe. The
order in which the ideas succeed each other here is certainly
different from that of 1 Cor. i. 30 ; but this ~does not justKy a
different interpretation of their meaning, because this change in
the order is quite accounted for by the immediate occasion of
this passage : in contrast to the former grossly sinful Ufe of the
Corinthians, it was very natural to present the sanctifying effect
of their becoming Christians both in negative terms, dircAoiJcrao-^e,
and positive, ¦yyido-OyTe; the former denoting purification from
their former state of sin (in baptism), the latter the beginning
of a new direction of their Ufe that was holy in principle (deter
mined by the spirit of hoUness); and ISiKaiio^ijTe is added, not as
K it were the consequence of sanctification, which would be con
trary to aU analogy, but because it was a necessary part of the
full statement of the effects of God's favour.
From the judicial sense of the word SiKatow, from the objec
tivity of the SiKaioo-uv^ deov, and from the decided distinction

JUSTIFICATION. 181
between justification and sanctification, it follows that we must
necessarily imderstand by Pauline justification, not a continuous
process in man, but an act of God, performed once for aU. And
this logical conclusion is also confirmed by all the passages which
refer to the subject, the bearing of Eom. v. and vi. upon this
point being especially significant. It is upon the -consciousness
of being justified, as an established fact, that peace, hope, and
the joyful certainty of salvation rest (SiKatw^evTes ovv elp-jvyv
2xo/*ev, Iv x^P'"'"' ea-TrjKapev, Kavx<opeOa iTT IAttiSi, vers. 1, 2 ;
SiKaiftj^lvTcs vvv — crtoOya-opeOa diro Tys dpyjjs, Ver. 9 ; KaTaAAayevTcs
aroiOya-opieOa, ver. 1 0 ; Kavx<opevoi iv Oe!^ Sid — XpiuTO v, Si ov vvv T^ v
KaTaAAay^v iXd^op,ev, ver. 11). The possession of favour, of
which justification is the ground, is not the less an established
fact because it stiU leaves room for the hope of future glory, as
weU as for the possibUity of the favour of God being again lost ;
if justification itself is only a a-oiO-yvai Tif lAiriSi (Eom. viii 24),
because the final a-toOya-ea-Oe ttTTo rrjs dpyTjs ^ is until the end an
object of hope (v. 9 f), yet it is nevertheless a being completely
raised out of the state of sin under the law, and being placed
in the state of righteousness under the favour of God (vi. 14 f ).
And for the very reason that this being under favour is for the
Christian presupposed as an established fact, the moral warning
may be attached to it, to yield himself in his active Ufe also to
the service of righteousness and of God's favour, to put into ope
ration and to preserve the objective established relation of the righ
teousness of faith, in the subjective progressive righteousness of life.
The latter is a process, but the movement which constitutes it
could never take place without the existence of the former. In
the real moral condition of every one, relativity in each one of
its moments is unavoidable ; but a relative state of being justi-

^ AiKaiomvrj in Eom, vi. 16, ei's SiRaionivriv (opp. ecQ Bdvarov), and Gal. v. 5,
eXTriSa SiKaioavvric aTrcKSexopeBa, refers to this final awBiiaeaBai, or the definitive
sentence to be expected at the final judgment, unless perhaps in the latter passage
eKTrida denotes the' hoped-for fruit of (present) SiKaioavvti —that is to say, the eternal
blessedness which foUows from being justified.

182 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
fied, a standing partly under favour, which would consequently
also be a standing partly under the curse of the law, is an im
possibility. Consequently, the " process of justification " which
presupposes this relativity of successive states of being justified
is an u|ter absurdity.
- If, ii.<|twithstanding its absurdity, many commentators have
fallen, into this error, the cause of this is to be found in the fact
th^phey have considered justification to be dependent on the
su^ctive operation of the Spirit in man, or on faith, as beiag
already the real salvation life, or at least the active power of it,
instead of only the passive act of appropriating salvation. The
salvation life is of course a process, and therefore K justification
in its PauUne sense were dependent upon it, then justification
also could only be conceived as coming to be, as " the result at
any moment of the stage of Christian development attained at
that moment"^
But Pauline justification has its ground, as "we have seen, not
in man at all, in no corresponding righteousness or good moral
character, and so forth, but it is groundless as far as man is con
cerned (Scopedv SiKaiovpevoi), and has its ground in the favour of
God, its intermediate cause in the redemption work of Christ
[ry avTov x^ptTt Sid T5js dxoAvTptocrecus To{! Iv XpuTTif Iijo-oij, Kom.
iii 24). Moreover, faith is, with regard to justification, no
thing more than receptivity (opyavov XyTTTiKov), by no means the
efficient cause of it. This we have already recognized -as the
fundamental idea of the classical passage, Eom. v. 12 — 19,
namely, that as sin carne upon aU men from Adam, so righ
teousness came from Christ on aU, without their personal act or
deed, only under the condition in the later case that they Sapeav
^ Lipsius, Paulin. Rechtfertigungslehre, p. 47. The author has, however, long
since given up the view he has there developed, of which fact I was ignorant when
writing the article ou Paulin. Eechtfertigung (Zeitschr. f. wis. Theol. 1872, IL). Bat
the view which is here combated has many other defenders. Even Ba-wr has shared
it (cf. N. Tie. Theol. p. 175): "The whole process of justification is only completed in
the'Trvevfia which fulfils TriariQ; the highest expression for Paul's.idea of justification
is the vopoQ rov jrve-uparog rfJQ Jwijs," &c.

JUSTIFICA TION. 183
rys xdpiTos Xap/3dvovcTi, i.e. under .the condition of faith. But
faith does not make the StKatoo-iJVTjv Oeov — in that case it would
be again an tSta 8tKatoo-i;vi7, of which it is precisely the opposite
— but it "subjects itself in obedience" to the righteousness in
stituted by God in Christ, and offered in the gospel. This is
established from the time of the expiatory death of Christ, as an
objective principle for mankind in general; so soon, therefore, as
the individual accepts this new principle in faith, it becomes
valid for him — he is justified. So far, then, is justification from
being a process which advances gradually with the life of faith,
that it would be much more in accordance with the Apostle's
meaning to regard it as the act of God, concluded once for all in
the expiatory death of Christ, and preceding the faith of each
individual.^ It must, however, be confessed that this view does
not exactly correspond with Paul's way of representing it, for he
makes justification an act which repeats itself in the case of each
individual believer, as is very plainly shown by the expressions,
ofs p,6AAei Xoyi^errOai tois 7rto"TeuoDO"tv (Eom. iv. 24), and StKatoi
KaTaa-TaO-fjo-ovTai ot TroAAdi (v. 19), according to which justification
is not already actuaUy completed for aU immediately in the
death of Christ, but only the possibility of it is given for all,
whUe its realization depends in each instance on the individual,
and is therefore at the present time stUl future for the greater
number. This latter conception, however, certainly approaches very
nearly to the truth, inasmuch as Paul's justification is nothing
else than the individual application of the Christian principle of
reconcUing favour, the revelation of which has been made objee-
^ So Ritschl, Altkath. Kirche, p. 93 : "Justification is an act performed once for
all, and is not capable of repetition; this judgment of Grod is completed in the death
of Christ for the whole of the faithful collectively, and not in any other act, for each
individual as such. But the new birth by the Holy Spirit, the consequence of justifi
cation, is essentially a predicate of the individual, and of all as individuals." P. 92 :
"The certainty of the individual believer regarding the new birth by the Holy Spirit
is direct; the individual has not the certainty of justification directly, but only by
arguing back from his new birth to his belbnging to the multitude who are declared
righteous in the obedience of Christ. "

184 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
tively in the reconciling death of Christ, and the appropriation
of it subjectively in the act of faith. Now if this reconcUing
death clothed itself, in the mUid of the Apostle, in the form of a
vicarious punishment, it is quite in acccjrdance with this view
that the individual appropriation of. the reconciliation should
present itself to him again ia'the form of a, judicial act of God—
an act of " acquittal, declaration of righteousness, and adoption."
This form, closely connected as it is with the Jewish mode of
thought, is precisely that in which the Christian consciousness of
reconciliation assures itself of its being set free from its former con
dition under sin and the law. It is true that the same idea had
already been more simply expressed in the discourses of Jesus,
especiaUy in the parables sho"wing the love of God to sinners,
but here the whole apparatus of dogmatic argument was want
ing, by means of which, in the case of Paul, the Christian con
sciousness of adoption had to be accommodated to the standpoint
of the Jewish law. For Paul makes the reconcUing favour of God
clothe itseK in the categories of a judicial act which is reaUy
the exact opposite of it ; and this makes the ob"vious paradox
of his doctrine, culminating in the conception of a God who SiKotos
cj'v SiKaitov ia-Ti tov da-e^y.^ But this paradoxical form was the
very best that could have been adopted, in order sharply to
mark out for the religious imagination the central Christian idea
of the free initiative of the Divine favour, and to guard it in its
undiminished ideality against the attempt, which is ever apt to
be made from the standpoint of moral reflection, to represent the
Divine favour as conditioned by human morality, and so to take
away the unconditional Divine initiative which belongs to its
essence. It is precisely this which found the most pregnant
expression in the conception of a transcendent and completed
act of pronouncing righteous prior to all moral renovation ; and
therefore this" conception always presents itself to the Christian
' Cf. Biedermann, Dogm, § 290 : "Paul has retained this expression precisely in
order to indicate in the mpst striking manner that the standpoint of the laitt is raised
to the higher standpoint of favour."

JUSTIFICATION. 185
consciousness, whenever it apprehends itseK in its fundamental
opposition to the standpoint of the law, as the palladium of the
full assurance of salvation ; the Christian wishes to possess re
concUiation with God, not as something which is always coming
into being, and which is relative, but as an already existing, ac
complished fact; and can thergf ore,, pnly conceive it as grounded
on something which is necessarUy presupposed by the life of
salvation which is always in process. And, in truth, the Chris
tian principle of reconciliation, as proceeding historically from
Christ, was something purely objective, preceding aU moral Ufe
on the part of the subject h, priori as its ground, and not depen
dent on it as a consequence, and also not in any way to be
caused by faith, but merely to be appropriated, by being received
into the heart. Consequently, justifying faith, in the eyes of
Paul, is not a good moral disposition, but — apart from the con
sideration of any moral state — the religious act of acceptance of
that Christian principle of reconcUiation. And it is a quite un
essential difference, affecting only the form in which the matter
is represented, whether that principle appears as the saving truth
announced in the gospel of Christ — in which case justifying faith
is the trustful acceptance of this truth (assensus et fiducia) ; or
whether it is identified with the person of the Mediator of recon
cUiation, and envisaged directly in him — ^in which case justify
ing faith is a laying hold of Christ, and being included in a
mystical communion with him (unio mystica); though even then
it is not to be regarded directly as a moral disposition, but as a
wUling acceptance of the object of salvation, for a personal pos
session, as an act of maKoy in the reUgious sense.^ On this latter
* Even the mystical notion of faith, then, does not directly contain, as Weiss de
clares (p. 329), "the moral moment of giving one's self up to the new direction of life
represented in Christ;" faith is directly nothing more than the surrender of ourselves
to Christ as the reconciler, or to the reconciling favour of Glod revealed in him, and
only as this is faith justifying ; but this certainly contains also the point of attachment
for the .development of the new life, because Christ is not only the reconciler, but also
the Trvevpa ICuiottoiovv. The passages quoted above which speak of "justification in
Christ," tell decisively against Weits's view of justifying faith : compare what has

i,*

186 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
view of justifying faith are founded the expressions SiKaiioOyvai
iv Xpia-Ti^ (Gal. U. 17), tva evpeOio iv avT<^ — ex<ov — ryv iK Oeov
St,Kai6(Tvvyv (PhU. iu. 9, cf X. 12). These passages plainly forbid
us so to separate justifying faith from the mystic faith which
binds us to Christ, as to make the latter only the consequence of
the justification which had preceded it ; but faith is justifying
precisely because it apprehends Christ as the reconciler — that is
to say, apprehends the principle of reconciUation envisaged in
Christ, by which means this latter is transformed into the sub
jective state of being reconciled, freed from the curse of the law
— a transformation which presents itseK to the imagination as a
divine act of favour to the sinner who believes in Christ

Sonship.
The new religious condition in which man sees himself placed
by justification is the status of sonship. It also is stUl, in the
first instance, an objective reUgious idea, and denotes the new
relation of the justified man to God, not yet the new moral hfe.
This is evident from the mere fact that it rests on the divine act
of vioOea-ia, i. e. adoption, taking into sonship, which, Uke that of
SiKaiioa-is, with which it is in fact entirely identical, is a judicial
act in foro Dei. The act of showing favour, in winch God ex
tends his favour to the sinner, is justification, inasmuch as the
sinner is acquitted of the guilt of sin, and adoption, inasmuch as
he is placed in the new relation to God, and is no longer an ob
ject of the divine anger, but of divine love. Now three moments
go to make up this condition of sonship — two as immediate con
sequences of the vioOea-ia, in which the new relation of man to
been said above, p. 169. It is quite in the Pauline spirit that Al. Schioeizer re
peatedly insists that it is merely a difference in the mode of expression whether salva
tion be described in the sense of a thing, as redeeming favour, or in that of a person,
as Christ, since both mean nothing else than the religion of redemption offered in the
gospel ofChrist. Cf. Glaubenslehre, III. 183,. 212, &o.

SONSHIP. 187
God at once displays itseK, and one as the future right of a son.
The former are, being freed from the law, and being endowed with
the spirit of sonship, and the latter is the future inheritance; and
we find them so mentioned together in the passage which is the
chief authority on this subject. Gal. iv. 5 — 7. Because the
vloOea-ia is fuUy realized in the KXypovopia, but the latter consists
essentiaUy in the future vvvSo^aorOyvai Xpto-Toi, in the final glori
fication which is an object of hope, therefore the vtoOea-ia itself
may be described as an object of hope and expectation : Eom.
"VIU. 23, ¦uto^co-iav aTTeKSexopevoi Tyv aTroAvTpuo-iv ToiJ o-topaTos — cf.
ver. 17, CI Tc^va, Kat KXypov6p,oi pev Oeov, crvyKXypovopoi Se Xpio-ToiJ,
cra-cp a-vpTrdtrxopev, iva Kal arvvSo^aa-0!op,ev. This future hope is
meanwhUe guaranteed to us by the pledge of the spirit of the
son of God which belongs to the state of sonship, and which is given
to us at the present time, which we have received by virtue of
our adoption, and which, in the subjective consciousness of son-
ship, attests to us the fact that we are sons (Gal. iv. 6, oVi 81 ia-Ts
vtoi, l^aTretTTCiAev o Oebs to Trvevpa tov vlov a^TOiJ cts Tds KapSias
vpiov, Kpd^ov Aj3/3d 6 TTaTyp ; Eom. viU. 15 f, IAd/3eTe Trvevpa
vioOearias iv cf Kpd^opev A-fi^d 6 iraTijp' awo to Trvevpa rrvppaprvpet
tQ TTvevpaTi 'yplov, oti itrpkv TCKva Qeov). The Spirit bestOWCd On
Christians is here called irveupa vtoOea-Cas, not as if it were the
cause by which sonship is effected— this would contradict the
declaration of Gal. iv. 6, Sti ia-Te viol, e^aTrea-reiXev, &c. — but because
it belongs to those who through faith in the Son of God have
become children of God (Gal. Ui. 26), as the new principle of IKe
which alone accords with their new status, and that so essen
tially and inalienably, that the existence of this spirit as the
impeUing force of the subjective Ufe may be considered as the
certain criterion of the objective truth of the state, of sonship
(Scroi TTvevpMTi Oeov dyovTai, ovtoi elrriv viol Oeov, Eom. vUi. 14). Of
this spirit more wUl have to be said in the next Chapter ; but
here we have stUl to deal with the point, which occupies the
first place in the notion of sonship, because it characterizes this.

188 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
state negatively by its opposition in principle to the former one,
viz. the freeing from the law.
In Gal. iv. 5, the immediate purpose of the sending of the Son
of God is thus indicated: iva tovs vwo vopov i^ayopda-y, iva t'^v
vto^co-iav dTroXdj3(op,ev, and the consequence of this, dio-Te ovKen et
SovXos, dAA' vids. The coming in of sonship thus presupposes
exemption from the law — that is to say, as is proved by the
context, from the demands of the law, which by their external
training had exercised a guardianship over humanity (that is, the
people of Israel) whUe in its minority. The validity of these
demands of the law was from the beginning estabUshed only for
a certain period of time, namely, dxpi Tys TrpoOea-pUs toi! TraTpds
(ver. 2). Its abrogation, moreover, like that of the curse of the
law (iu. 13), required a vicarious submission to it by the Son of
God, who although he was really, as a son, free from the SouAeta
tuv cTToixettov TOU Koo-pov, was nevertheless put under the law, in
order that he might, by voluntarUy satisfying its claims, redeem
those who tUl then were under the law. Hereby alone was given
the possibiUty of the coming in of the period of sonship or of
faith. Inasmuch as we now, by faith in the Son of God, become
likewise sons, of God (iU. 26), we enter by this very means upon
the enjoyment of the right of adult sons to freedom from govem
ors, tutors, and guardians, under whom of course only minors
are placed, who as such are in the position qf servants. Having
thus become sons through faith, we are no longer SovAoi, no
longer SeSoi;Atop.evot I'TTo Ta cTToixeta tov K6a-p,ov, under the law, so
far as it has to do with externals, as with the course of the
heavenly bodies which constitutes years, months, and days. And
because iu this epoch of full age and of freedom, ushered in by
faith in the Son of God, both those who were formerly Jews are
freed from their legal worship (iv. 3 and 5), and those who were
formerly GentUes are freed from their nature-worship (vers. 8
and 9), and thus the limit which hitherto separated these two
sections is done away with in their common Christian freedom.

SONSHIP. 189
therefore it is now said that within the Christian community ovk
cvi louSatos o^Sc EAAtjv, o-vk evi SoOAos ovSc iXe-vOepos — jrdvTCS ydp
vp,eis eis CO-TC Iv XpuTTif 'lycrov, Ui. 28. This equality and unity
of aU beUevers on Christ in the freedom from the law which
belongs to them as sons, is a main point of the Apostle's teach
ing, which is in an incomprehensible manner overlooked by
those who would limit Paul's cardinal dogma of Christian free
dom from the law to GentUe converts. Those who had tUl then
been GentUes had not e"vidently to be redeemed from that law
to which Christ became subject — that is to say, the Mosaic law ;
therefore verses 4, 5, like iU. 25, o^kcti vtto TraiSaycoyov iirpiev, can
only refer to those who. were formerly Jews. In v. 1, piy TrdXiv
(vy<^ SovXeias ivexecrOe, the word irdAiv most probably impUes that
among the persons addressed there were some who had been
formerly Jews, although the contents of the next verse have
reference immediately to Gentile Christians. In chapter iv.
21 — 31, the Apostle compares Christians as born after the spirit,
with Isaac, who was born, in consequence of the miraculous pro
mise, the free son of a free mother; and, on the other hand, those
who are under the law, "with the unfree son of the bondwoman
Hagar, born in the ordinary course of nature, who is thrust out
by the son of the free woman, because the son of a servant can
not inherit with the son of a free woman. " So then we are not
, chUdren of the bondwoman, but of the free." "We" who are free
from the law can only mean the whole body of Christians ; for
if it meant only the GentUe converts, then it is clear that the
Jewish Christians, together with the Jews, would be among "the
chUdren of the servant," who had lost the inheritance! A simUar
aUegorical proof of the abrogation of the law in Christianity is
found in 2 Cor. Ui. The evanescent brightness on the face of
Moses indicated the merely temporary significance of the law ;
in order that the chUdren of Israel might not perceive this,
Moses veUed his face, and this.veU stUl Ues upon the Old Testa
ment, so that its true sense, its destination, namely, to be done

190 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
away with in Christ, remains concealed ; but by turning to
Christ, this veU is removed — " where the spirit of the Lord is,
there is freedom." It is precisely for the Jew that this argument,
like the foregoing one, would have significance ; for it proceeds
from his standpoint, and deduces the transient validity of the
law from the law itself; it is the Jew, and no other, who by his
conversion to Christ is to learn to recognize the fact which has
hitherto been hidden from him, that the law is only a letter
which kiUs, and therefore has an evanescent brightness, but the
spirit of Christ is living and makes men free. In Eom. "vU. 1 — 7,
the abrogation of the law is deduced from the (certainly very
lame) analogy of marriage, from the bonds of which, by the
death of one party, the other becomes free. In the same way,
those who were formerly bound to the law have become free
from these bonds, by having themselves died to the law by their
communion "with Christ who was put to death, so that they can
give themselves to a new lord and master, "in order that we
may now serve in newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness
of the letter." And the Apostle says this expressly to those
"who know the law" (ver. 1) — that is, to Jewish Christians. To
all this must be added what the Apostle says of himself, that he,
through the law, was dead to the law, and crucified with Christ,
by whose cross the world was crucified to him, and he to the
world (aU connection with the position and the opinions which
he formerly held as a Jew was severed) ; that he no longer
preached circumcision, and had to suffer persecution on that
account ; that he had become to those without the law as one
without the law ; and then again (on the very ground, observe,
of being in principle outside the law), to those under the law as
one under the law (compare Gal. U. 19, "vi. 14, v. 11 ; 1 Cor.
ix. 21); ahd if all this be put together, there cannot remain the
shadow of a doubt that the Apostle Paul absolutely and com
pletely denies in principle that the Mosaic law has any vaUdity
or binding force whatsoever "within the Christian community.

SONSHIP. 191
This dogmatic principle is aU that we have to do with here; how
far it was modified in practice by moral considerations of love
and prudence wUl be discussed later on. In any case, the abro
gation of the law was to him a main point of Christian know
ledge (1 Cor. viU. 1 — 7 ; 2 Cor. iU. 4, 6), and to his adversaries
the chief offence in his preaching of the crucified (Gal. v. 11).

CHAPTEE V.
LIYING IN THE SPIRIT.

The antinomianism of Paul's doctrine of faith has laid it open
to misunderstanding and misinterpretation both by friends and
foes, as if the beUever in Christ were, according to Paul, reUeved
from all the demands of moraUty and could indulge in sin with
out any restraint, as his caprice might dictate. The necessity of
refuting this false inference induces the Apostle to show how the
principle of a real renovation of Ufe, of cleansing from sin, is
involved in that very union of the beUever with Christ which
makes him a free chUd of God; how the inward law of the spirit
of Christ now takes the place of the outward law which has
been done away — an inward law which no J.onger enslaves, but
makes us for the first time reaUy free, and brings to actual ac
comphshment that which the outward law could only demand.

The Beginning of the New Life.
In Eom. vi. 1, the Apostle meets the objection — May the ber
Uever then remain in sin, that the favour of God may be aU the
more powerfuUy manifested? — by the emphatic denial, py
yevpiTo! and goes on to give the foUowing grounds for the re
futation of a fundamentally erroneous inference: "How shaU
we that are dead to sin wish, to live in it? Or do you not kno^
that aU of us who have been baptized to Jesus Christ, have been

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. 193
baptized to his death? We have therefore been buried with
him, through baptism to his death, in order that as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also
should Uve a new life; for if we have grown one with him
by copying his death, we shall also grow one with him by
copying his resurrection; being assured of this, that our old man
was crucified with him, in order that the body of sin might be
done away, so that we might no more (be obliged to) be the
slaves of sin; for one who is dead is lawfully freed from (the
sovereignty of) sin. But if we have been crucified with Christ,
then we beUeve that we shall also live with him ; knowing that
Christ having been raised from the dead, dies no more, death
has no power over him. For in his death he died to sin once
for aU, but in his life he lives- to God. So do you also consider
yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus
our Lord." The Apostle therefore regards baptism as an enter
ing i^ito communion with Christ as one who died and rose again,
by which means his death and resurrection become ours also,
that is to say, repeat themselves in us in a supersensuous, but
none the less real way.
How this happens with regard to the death of Christ, cannot
be doubtful. Inasmuch as participation in him by baptism is
assumed to be an accomplished fact, this " dying with him "
must consist in a spiritual process, namely, in that process by
which a man becomes a Christian, one who belongs to Christ
and his community. As Christ put himself out of all relation
and connection with sinful flesh by the death of his body {r-g
dpapTic}, aTrkOavev), SO man,' by entering through baptism into that
state in which he belongs to the crucifled one, withdraws from
the connection of his life with flesh and the world, which had
existed up to that time ; the world is crucified to him, and he
to it (Gal. vi. 14) ; that is to say, its life and being, its possessions
and opinions, have no more power over him, and his life, wealth,
and honour have nothing more to do with its domain, which is
that of the vain and external. But besides this, the stUl closer
0

194 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
connection of the self with its own flesh is by this means done
away with in principle ; " those who Iselong to Christ have (by
the very act of entering into this state, that is, in baptism)
crucified their flesh, with aU its passions and desires" (Gal. v. 24),
i. e. they have taken away its free activity and sinful energy,
have reduced the principle which hitherto ruled them into a
state of powerlessness, like that of a person who is crucified, and
given it up to the process of gradual extinction. The intended
result of this crucifixion of the old man is the doing away with
the body of sin (i. e. the body in so far as it consists of the o-dp^
dp,p,pTias, and is therefore the abode of sin), in order that we
should no longer be the slaves of sin; in brief, therefore, the
real liberation from the dominating power of sin (Eom. vi. 6).
We must remember that this KaTapyeia-Oai of the o-S/ia dpapTias is
only connected with the a-va-TavpioOyvai which occurs in baptism
as its intended consequence, and does not absolutely coincide
with it. This indicates that the dying of the old man is a
process that goes on continually, and which has in the act of
baptism only made a beginning in principle (though certainly a
decisive beginning), just as the death of the body is induced by
the act of crucifixion, but not in that instant accompUshed But
in principle certainly the old man is dead in him who is baptized;
he has experienced in his own person the accomplished fact ofthe
death of Christ, by surrendering himself in faith to Christ, and
becoming a member of Christ (baptism) — according to the canon,
" if one has died for all, then are you all dead ; " that is to say,
the death of that one becomes a common principle for the whole
body of those who have the enjoyment of him by' appropriating
him to themselves in faith, and their life is henceforth guided
by the determining influence of this principle, so that they now
only know and feel and will themselves as dead to their former
principle of life.
But it is a less simple matter to answer the other question,
how far the new life of the risen Christ repeats itself in that of
the Christian. According to the analogy of " dying with him,"

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. 195
the idea of the spiritual or ethical U"ving with Christ is so
obvious, that the greater number of commentators up to the
present d_ay see nothing but this in the passage before us. But
this is decidedly incorrect. Since in ver. 5 dAAd Kai r^s
dvaoTaareois ieropeOa is Opposed tO a-vp,<]>VTOi yeydvo/icv T$ opoiiopaTi
Toi) OavdTov, the change of tense clearly proves that this copying
of the resurrection of Christ does not simply correspond in time
with that of his death, i. e. with the moment of baptism as the
beginning to be a Christian ; if we would give its due force to
the future as distinguished from the past tense which has gone
before, we must apply the words only to the resurrection after
this life, which is stUl future. But this is fuUy estabUshed
beyond the possibiUty of doubt by ver. 8, et drreOdvopev rrvv
XpicTT^ TTi<TTe-vop,ev OTI Kal (Tv^Trjcropev a-uTif ', here the commuuiou
with the Ufe of him who has risen again is presented to us not
merely as something future, but as also an object of our believ
ing trustfulness, therefore of our hope and expectation, the
reaUzing of which wUl be by no means dependent on our own
action, but wiU be effected in us or presented to us by God ;
this is the only sense of Tria-Tevopev which accords with the use of
the word elsewhere. But in that case we must not understand
<n;fijcro/*ev to refer to our present new moral Ufe ; that would of
course depend on our own moral activity during the present
time, and therefore could in no way be an object of beUeving
trustfulness ; it refers, on the contrary, to the communion of life
with their risen Lord which beUevers are to hope for on the
other side of the grave. Only, certain as this is, it is equally
undeniable, on the other hand, that in ver. 4, tVa Kai -ypeis iv
KaivoTyri ^toys TTepiTraT-qa-iopev, and in ver. 11, Xoyi^ecrOe kavTovs fwvTas "
Tif Oeif iv Xpia-Tif 'lycyov, can only be understood of the present
new moral IKe of Christians, of which the context of these
passages mainly treats. If we observe, however, that this new
moral life of the present is put forward as something intended
and required (iva . . . TrepiTraT-ya-iopev, and Xoyi^ea-Oe), but the eschato
logical living with Christ as something to be believed, we may
0 2

196 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
find the key to the difficulty. The Apostle evidently under
stands the living with the risen Christ, which is the result of
communion with his death, first of aU in the actual sense of the
eschatological IKe of the resurrection; it is an object of faith to
him as such; but this object of dogmatic hope forthwith changes
into a determining principle of the ethical Ufe of the present,
which latter, by the very fact of its being dominated by that
principle, becomes itself a new life, and so in truth the pre
sent anticipated beginning of that future Ufe. The eschatological
living with Christ changes itself, therefore, in the mind of the
Apostle into the ethical new life of the Christian present; the
KaivdTi7s ^(oys remains no longer a mere object of hope, but
becomes the rule and the element of the spontaneous activity
of life. Given Paul's mystic faith, this could not be otherwise.
The Christian has already inwardly experienced in baptism the
death of his Master, and entered into communion, in the bonds
of faith, with him who died in order that he might be Lord over
all, and that they who live might no longer live to themselves,
but for him who died and rose again for them (Eom. xiv. 9;
2 Cor. V. 15). This "living no more to themselves, but Uving
to Christ and God," which is required by the death of Christ,
and implied in the communion "with his death in baptism, is
therefore already in fact the beginning of a new Ufe, which shares
with the resurrection-Ufe of Christ the specific character of being
devoted to God, and therefore can no longer be specificaUy dis
tinguished (as to its essential inward quality) from the real
future resurrection-life of the Christian. But we must remem
ber, as having an important bearing on the Apostle's whole
t,one of thought, including his ethical views, that the Triarevopev
OTI a-v(-ya-op,ev, i. e. the certain faith in the eschatological U"ring
with Christ, is stUl the foundation on which the ethical reflection
first rears itself; so that the latter is not something which merely
ought to be, but has from the commencement its ground in that
which is, to faith (if not also to sight), already established in
existence. The believer knows himself to be already one "with

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. 197
Christ, and therefore in the ideal possession of eternal life (the
idea of Eom. v. 1 — 11), whence the duty of Uving a new life
foUows, for him, as a simple logical consequence. The moral
" newness of life " is now no other than the self-evident external
acti"vity of that which is, to the religious mind, a good already
existing by faith, the ideal possession of " Ufe " in the absolute
sense. The moral consciousness is here no longer entangled in
the abstract standpoint of the law, but reposes on the conscious
ness of reconciUation, of absolute inward peace and satisfaction.
Baptism is therefore, according to the passage before us, the
beginning of the new life, inasmuch as it places man in a mysti
cal connection with Christ, by virtue of which he knows that his
old Ufe is dead with Christ, and that the new life of Christ is
appropriated by himself, not only as an object of hope, but also
as a present inward possession. On man's entering by baptism
into that state in which he belongs to Christ, the bodUy dying
and rising again of Christ accomplishes itself in him, as a virtual
act of his soul, as Uberation from that sphere of IKe in the flesh
and the world in which he has hitherto Uved, and entrance
into the sphere of Christ's life, which henceforth completely
envelops him, as in a garment (Xpio-Tov IvSvo-ao-^e, Gal. Ui. 27),
which becomes the element in which he lives and moves, so
that he is Iv Xpurrc^. This formula is Paul's specific and most
significant expression for being a Christian, and is applied to
particular relations, states, and actions, so far as they are con
nected with Christianity, and denote something that belongs
to the Christian IKe. Thus "churches in Christ" (Gal. i. 22)
are simply equivalent to Christian churches; "dead, asleep in
Christ" (1 Cor. xv. 18; 1 Thess. iv. 16) to dead Christians;
"fathers, brothers, fellow- workers in Christ" (1 Cor. iv. 15;
Col. i. 2 ; Eom. xvi. 3) indicate that these are not the natural
and ordinary relations as usuaUy understood, but that they
belong to the sphere of Christian IKe ; the Apostle's fetters at
Eome " are manifest in Christ," that is, as fetters which he had
to bear, not for an ordinary offence, but as a Christian and for

198 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
being a Christian (PhU. i. 13) ; "ways in Christ" (1 Cor. iv. 17)
are Christian modes of behaviour with special reference to lead
ing the life of the Christian community; and in particular the
several spiritual conditions, gifts, and powers which are peculiar
to the Christian, are presented in their special Christian charac
ter by the expression Iv Xpia-Tc^ ; for instance, IKe (Eom. viu. 2),
God's love or favour (Eom. viii. 39 ; 1 Cor. i. 4 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 24),
glory, comfort, and hope (Eom. xv. 17; Phil. U. 1, 19, iu. 3),
freedom (Gal. U. 4), hoUness and perfection (1 Cor. i 2 ; PhU.
i 1 — 4, 21 ; Col. i. 28), wisdom, and also infancy, that is imripe-
ness of understanding (1 Cor. iU. 1, iv. 10).
But the gist of this formula Iv XpurTif is nothing else than
. Paul's mystic faith, in which the beUever gives up himseK, his
own Ufe to Christ, and possesses the Ufe of Christ in himself:
he in Christ, and Christ in him; he dead with Christ, and
Christ become his Ufe, — these. are inseparable and convertible
ideas, expressing one and the same relation of unity between
man and the divine object of salvation; and this relation of
unity is nothing else than faith itself. In fact, it is impossible
to point out any difference between Paul's mystical notion of
faith as coUected above (p. 169 f), and that which we find here
as the communion of Ufe with Christ brought about by baptism.
And this view is supported by the connection between vers. 26
and 27 of Gal. Ui.; that all who are baptized to Christ have put
on Christ, is made the ground of the assertion that aU beUevers
in Christ, as such, by means of this faith of theirs, are sons of
God. According to this, to have put on Christ, and to have
become a son of God, are one and the same thing.. Now as the
latter is simply brought about by means of faith (ver. 26), bap
tism, which is the means of bringing about the former (ver. 27),
cannot be anything specificaUy different from faith, and must
therefore be related to faith, as the phenomenal form to the
spiritual substance ; and for the very reason that baptism is the
externally completed entrance into the connection with Christ
by faith, it may be considered as the ground of recognition of

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. 199
that existing communion with Christ, the real ground of which
is faith. If we add to this, that the sonship of God, which
depends on the union with Christ by faith (Sid Trto-Tcios Iv Xpca-Tif,
ver. 26), is, accorduig to iv. 6, the condition of receiving the spirit
of the Son, it foUows plainly enough that recei"ving the spirit is
not the ground of communion with Christ, but, on the contrary,
communion with Christ, of which faith is the ground, is the
logical prius of the receipt of the spirit of sonship. This is at
all events in perfect accord with the remarkable fact (which
has however remained generaUy unnoticed) that in Eom. vi,
although the new Ufe of the baptized in their communion with
Christ is spoken of from the beginning to the end of the chapter,
this is nowhere grounded on fhe reception of the spirit; nay,
not a single syllable is uttered about Trvevpa at all ! How is it
possible to explain this on the supposition of that which is
ordinarily taken for granted, that the communion of life with
Christ depends upon the reception of the spirit in baptism, and
consequently this (and not faith) is the root of the mystical
doctrine of Paul ? We shall therefore be justified in considering
this assumption, general as it is, to be incorrect, and in seeing in
the remarkable fact just noticed a decisive confirmation of that
which we have already found as the result of our analysis of
Paul's notion of faith; namely, that the mystical element of
PauUnism depends immediately and exclusively on his notion j
of faith. Because faith was actually to Paul that deep and fuU
act of the devotion of the whole heart which he describes in'
Gal. U. 20, therefore, and for that reason only, was he in this act
conscious of mystical union with the absolute object of salvation.
But when he wishes to remind his Christian readers of the fact
of their communion with Christ (whether as the ground of their
Christian freedom and equality, Gal. iii. 27 f , or as a motive for
their Christian moral life, Eom. vi), he naturally called to mind
that external tangible and visible act in which the inmost
heart's act of faith was concluded and sealed — the act of baptism.
In this mysticaUy deepened notion of faith, the most special

200 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
peculiarity of Paul, there was contained further the possibility
and the incentive to deepen and modKy a doctrine which was
not originally pecuUar to Paul, but was traditional in the primi
tive Church, the doctrine of the Messianic Trvevpa which the
Christian receives by. virtue of his baptism (Acts ii 38). The
Christian community understood by this Messianic Trvevpa
nothing essentiaUy different from the Old Testament prophetic
spirit of revelation, the general communication of which had
been already promised in Joel as a characteristic of the last
time. This spirit is represented as a supersensuous substance j ri
•of the higher divine ' world which comes upon man (by being '
poured out), and produces in him supernatural gifts andmira-'
culous effects, such as seeing visions, speaking with tongues,
and powers of heaUng (cf Acts U. 16 — 19, x. 46, xix. 6). Now
Paul also starts from this same conception, as when he also
alleges these miraculous gifts and powers as essential evidences .
xtv
and characteristics of the Christian Trvevpa (1 Corjl2; Gal. iii 5).
Only this is no longer, for him, the only nor the essential func
tion of the Christian TTvevp,a ; on the contrary, the principal thing
appears to him to be this, that the divine Trvevpjx, becomes in thej
Christian the constantly operating principle of his whole life of
faith, which manifests itseK not only in prophesying, but in aU
kinds of Christian knowledge; not only in working miracles,
but in every Christian duty; above all, in that which is the
foundation of aU goodness, in love. In short, the Trvevpa is
changed, in the mind of Paul, from an abstract, supernatural,
ecstatic. Apocalyptic principle, to an immanent, reUgious, moral
principle of the life of renovated humanity, to the nature of the
Ktttv^ KTiaris. By this means Christianity was estabUshed as a
new historical principle in independence of the Jewish reUgioU;
and at the same time a bridge was constructed from the ecstatic
phenomena of the enthusiasm of the primitive Church, to a
constant historical development of the Christian community.
How then did Paul arrive at this view of Trvevpa, which made
an epoch for the whole course of Christian speculation? It

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. 201
might be supposed (and it appears to be the ordinary assump
tion) that Paul had from the heginning a peculiar notion, a
deeper and more spiritual one, of irvev/*a. But this is not the
case. Even the Pauline irvcC/ta is in itself a transcendent physi
cal essence, a supersensuous kind of matter, which is the oppo
site of- the earthly sensuous materiaUty of the a-dp^. As the
latter is the weak, perishable, impure, relatively sinful element
of the world, of that existence which is not divine, and is there
fore excluded from the kingdom of God, so the Trvevpa is the
strong, enduring, pure, and holy element of the di"vine existence,
of heaven, and therefore has also the power to make alive, and
to purKy or make holy (comp. especiaUy the contrast drawn in
l^Cor. XV. 42 — 50). It can therefore only relatively be caUed
immaterial, in so far as it is not earthly and sensuous materiality,
but heavenly, supersensuous matter ; hence its close affinity to
that which was considered by the ancient world as the most
subtle earthly material, the air, of which the etyinology of the
word TTvevfia itseK reminds us, and light, the brightness of which
(Sd^a) is to be regarded as the permanent form of appearance of
the TTvevpa. It is a material notion that the Trvevpa was poured
out into the heart like water (Eom. v. 5), that it streamed in
Uke a ray of light (2 Cor. iv. 6), even changed the bodies of those
in whom it dwelt into brightness (2 Cor. iU. 18), nay, that it
could itseK, Uke o-dp^, become material for bodies (o-iopaTa, equiva
lent to forms with Umbs) ; for Paul represents the bodies of the
risen as such iriopaTa TrvevpaTiKd, consisting of the heavenly Ught-
substance of different degrees of brightness (1 Cor. xv. 40 f ).
Now this supersensuous substance originally belongs to God,
and then to Christ the Son of God, in such wise that it consti
tutes their divine essence (he was in the form of God), and is
presented in a concrete form in them ; but it does not form a
separate personaUty in each of them. It is true that the spirit
more often appears as an acting subject with consciousness and
wiU ; he dispenses his gifts as he wiU (1 Cor. xii. 7), searches
the depths of the Godhead (U. 10), intercedes for us with God

202 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
(Eom. vUi 26), and bears witness with our spirit (v. 16). But
if it be granted that this personification is something more than
a mere mode of speech, that it is an essential part of the Apostle's
conception, yet this is stiU far from being a distinct idea of a
separate personality ti- God and-'^f Christ In the personifica
tion of the spirit in 1 Cor. xii. 11, it is stUl God (see ver. 6) who
does everything ; and the spirit who searches the depths of the
Godhead, in 1 Cor. ii. 10, is stUl only the ego of God, which dis
tinguishes itself from itself, that is to say, is self-conscious ; in
Eom. viii. 16, 26, the indwelUng spirit of God, or of Christ, is
not distinguished from the indweUing Christ himseK (comp.
vers. 9 and 10) ; in 2 Cor. xiU. 13, it is true that the Koiviovla tov
ayiov TTvevpiaTos is put by the side of X"/"" Xpiarov and dyd;nj
Oeov, but not as if these were three independent, co-ordinate
moments, of which each had an independent personal cause; but
they are related to each other as cause (dydjn; Oeov), means (x«pts
Xpio-Tov), and effect (Kotvuvta t. dy. TTvevpaTos) ; for thus the mani
festation of the favour of Christ, proceeding from the love of
God, arrives at its subjective conclusion. If we add to this
the expressions, the spirit is sent by God (Gal. iv. 6), is given
(Eom. V. 5), adnunistered (Gal. Ui 5), received by man from
God (Gal. iii 2 ; 1 Cor. ii. 12), and possessed as one's own
(1 Cor. vi. 19 ; Eom. viU. 9), we cannot faU to see in the texts
thus brought together a wavering between the notion of the
spirit being a thing and being a person, which plainly shows
that the latter notion is not fixed. The divine Trvevpa exists
as concrete substance (excepting in God himself) only in the
exalted Christ, for o Kvptos to Trve£p,d Io-tiv (2 Cor. Ui. 17).
In aU these terms, so far as they relate to the nature of the
Trvevp,a itseK, nothing is as yet implied which is peculiar to Paul.
But the connecting link is already contained in the last-named |
point, according to which the Trvevpa does not belong to the
Messiah as a mere donum superadditum, as an endowment of
his office (as it was stiU regarded in fact by the Jewish Chris
tians), but substantiaUy constitutes the person of the exalted

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. ^ 203
Christ (as it also does that of the earthly Christ, at least as
regards its inner side ; comp. p. 128). From this point, that
fundamental "view of Paul which regarded faith and baptism as
a real union with the crucified and risen Christ, formed the
transition to the pecuUar Pauline doctrine of the Trvevpa, as we
have seen it expanded in Eom. vi. If the faith which completes
itself in baptism is a giving up of the man to the dead and risen
Christ, so that he belongs to him, and has inward communion
of Ufe with him, and if this risen Christ is in his substance
heavenly rrvevpa, then it is a plain inference, that the Christian
consequently, by faith and baptism, becomes a partaker of that
heavenly TTveC/ia; and as this n-vcu/ia is now in Christ the principle
of Ufe which forms his person, so must it necessarUy become
also in the Christian, who KoXX<op,evos t$ Kvplio ev Trvevp,d Io-tiv
(1 Cor. vi. 17), a consl!l,ntly immanent principle of the new per
sonal life, of the Katvos d'v^ptoiros. Accordingly we have to explain
the peculiar PauUne doctrine of Trvevp,a by the flowing together
of two streams of thought — on the one hand the traditional
doctrine that we receive in baptism the (miracle-working) Mes
sianic Trvevpa, and on the other hand the original Pauline doctrine
of faith as the heart's act of trusting, loving union with Christ
the reconcUer and the holy Son of God, KaTd Trvevpa dyiiocrvvys ;
hence it was that the dogmatic form, the fixed idea, and also the
deep religious mm'al content, were derived, which soon widened
into a river of speculation ; jjere also was the source of the inner
most affections and most personal life of Paul. How much
more congenial to the Apostle's mind the latter of these views
was, and how much more essential he thought it than the first,
may be inferred from the fact, that he places the reception of
the spirit in direct connection with beUeving three times (Gal.
iU. 2, 5, and 14), but with baptism only once, and that indirectly
(1 Cor. xu. 13, iv evi TTveupaTi 'ypeis cts cv criopa i/BaTTTurOypev) : on
the ground of this fact "we are quite justified in assuming that
Paul for his part had accepted the traditional doctrine" of the
reception of the spirit at baptism ; but we must be on our guard

204 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
against aUowing to this .point so central an importance in Paul's
doctrine of salvation as is generaUy given to it, by setting bap
tism as a communication of the spirit, by the side of justKying
faith as a second principle of salvation. If this had been the
Apostle's opinion he must have declared it, and therefore must
have distinctly made the reception of the spirit depend on
baptism, as justification and sonship were dependent on faith.
Instead of this, however, he connects on the one hand with
faith the reception of the spirit and sonship in an equal degree,
ahd on the other hand in an equal degree baptism and faith with
the mystic communion with Christ. What, then, reaUy becomes
of that specific significance of baptism, which is generaUy attri
buted to it at the present day ?
What has just been said will receive further confirmation K
we now turn our attention to the changes which are produced ia
man by the divine rrvevpa. The most general effect of the Trvevpa
appears to be ^omj. As the attribute of living essentiaUy belongs
to it, so its effect is essentiaUy ^cooTroieiv, in the most comprehen
sive absolute sense of the word, as comprising "within itself dif
ferent moments. Among these, however, the transcendent phy
sical or eschatological idea of " Ufe " occupies imdoubtedly the
first place in the Apostle's mind. Thus in the important passage
where he is speaking of Christ himself, he is said to have become
(in the resurrection) a Trvevpa ^loorroiovv, 1 Cor. xv. 45. This
fwoTToietv, according to the context of the whole chapter, can only
refer to Christians being put in possession, through Christ, of
imperishable heavenly life, and being raised from the death
which they must die as chUdren of Adam, to the new (eternal)
IKe, bearing the image of him who is. risen (that is to say, his
glorified spiritual body). In this sense it is said in the same
passage " As in Adam (in unity of race with the originator of
natural humanity) aU die, so in Christ'(in the unity of faith
with the originator of a new humanity) aU are made aUve"
(ver. 22). Similarly, in an eschatological sense, yet so that
the ethical sense is already apparent in it, we understand the

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. 205
instructive passage, 2 Cor. iv. 10 — v. 5. The Apostle says of
himseK, that he always bears about with him in his body the
dying of the Lord Jesus, iva Kai y fw^ totT 'lycroS iv t^ o-topaTi ypZv
^avepioOy. Now, according to the context, we can understand by
this veKptoo-ts 'Iijo-oii nothing else than the constant wearing out
of his bodUy Ufe by external causes and bodUy sickness (ver. 7,
ooTTpdKiva (TKevy, and ver. 16, 6 i^io ¦fjp.iov dvOpiOTTos Sia(f>0etpeTai),
which. he both endures for the sake of Jesus, and as a repeated
setting forth of the suffering of Jesus. But what is the ^ave-
pioOyvai of the fft)-^ 'Iijo-oi; Iv T$ a-iopaTi ¦ypJov ? According to the
context it appears to me that it must be one of two things;
either, with reference to ver. 16, it must mean the renewal of the
ecTioOev dvOponros, which is paraUel to the wearing out of the e^<o
dvOpcoTTos, or, with reference to ver. 14, the rising from the dead
with Jesus. By the latter, one cannot in any case, without an
exercise of the most arbitrary caprice, understand anything but
the eschatological resurrection, since the whole tenor of the
passage from ver. 17 is purely eschatological. If we should take
ver. 10 to refer to the renewal of the ecru dvOpunros by the Ufe-
giving power of Christ, then we should have to understand
<jiavepo}Oyvai iv T^ eriopaTi as being mauKcsted, that is being ope
rative in the bodUy Ufe, during the earthly existence of the
Apostle; but as this application of the passage appears less
natural than the other — to be manifested upon our body, so that
this is itseK the object to which the <f>avep<ocris of the ftu^ 'lya-ov
refers — we must understand this latter to refer to ver 14 in
preference to ver. 16, and accordingly to signify the manifes
tation of the resurrection-life of Cbi-ist in the rising of the
Apostle's own body from the dead. Nor need the substitution
of crapKi for a-iopaTi in ver. 11 perplex us ; for although the a-dp^
itself certainly cannot rise again, yet the power of the resurrec
tion can be so mauKested upon the fieshly substance of the body,
as to change it into the new substance of the resurrection body
(cf PhU. Ui 21, p.eTacrxypaTurei). But although, according to this
interpretation, we must refer the words primarily to the escha-

206 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
tological life, yet we shaU find again in this very passage clear
indications that in the Apostle's mind this fuij, although its
<f>avepcocris stiU has the first place in his thought, has notwith
standing an inward reality at the present time, namely, in the
dvaKaivoxris of the ecrcoOev dvOpiorros already effected by the spirit
of Christ, whUe the wearing out of the l^m dvOpoyrros is going on,
and by means of it. To this end has God, in the spirit which
he has given us, imparted to us already a real earnest {dppa^m)
of the heavenly Ufe, nay, a preparatory beginning of it (o xaTcpya-
a-dp,evos '!jp,ds cts a-VTo tovto, Oeos, 6 Kal Sovs ypiv tov dppaySuva tou
TTve-upaTos, V. 5). Here we look right into the laboratory of the
Apostle's religious thought: he knows that the Ufe of Christ
wiU one day be manifested in him as that which it is, that is to
say, as absolute Ufe whose perfection extends to the body ; this
certainty he has by virtue of his possession of the spirit, which
inwardly guarantees it to him (by the witness of his sonship to
God, Eom. viii. 16) ; but in this inward certainty, guaranteed by
the spirit, of the life which he wiU one day possess, he aheady
at the present moment lives the preparatory commencement of
that Ufe — in the constant renewal of his inner man, in the true
spiritual, reUgious, and moral process of his IKe of faith. From
this we shall be able to understand how, in other passages, the
two ideas of the ^uiy, the eschatological and the ethical, inter
penetrate one another. Thus in Eom. viU., when it is said of
Christ (ver. 10), to p,ev criopa veKpov St' dpapriav, to Se Trvevpa ^loy Std
SiKaiocrvvyv, the veKpov of the first clausc must, on account of the
paraUelism, Td Ovyrd o-copaTa ip,cov, ver. 11, be understood to refer
to bodUy death, and that in the sense that the body is forfeited
to death on account of sin (as the wages of sin), and is so far, as
good as dead already, in which case the (lo-q predicated ofthe
spirit must also, in order to correspond with this physical notion
of death, be understood in a physical sense, of enduring, eternal
life. Moreover, if we understood this in an ethical sense, we
should have a tautology in Sid SiKaioo-vvyv, which, does not mean
for the purpose of righteousness, but, corresponding with Si'

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. 207
apapTiav, on account of, or in consequence of, the righteousness
which belongs to him. FinaUy, from the fact that the spirit of
the Christian is life, the inference is drawn that his body also
wiU be endowed with life (ver. 11); this physical fo)07ro«ja-ct also
presupposes, in ver. 10, the physical notion of the fuij. Now it
is not said in the verse before us that the spirit wUl at some
future time be or have Ufe, but that it is so now. This verse,
therefore, directly presents to us the significant thought, that the
fo)^ atiovtos is already present in the life of Christians on this
side of the grave, as an immediate inward possession of the
I spirit. But in what should this immanent fwij atiuvios, regarded
in a psychological sense, consist, K not in a new ethical qua
Uty of the personal life? Thus the physical or eschatological
notion of life, by taking its commencement as an attribute of
the Christian spirit in the present time, immediately changes
itself into the ethical notion of Ufe, "which latter is also to be
found in the context of the passage before us, ver. 2, rrvevpa tiJs
^oiys iv XpicTTCo, and ver. 6, (j>p6vypa Trve-ipaTOS foiij Kat elpiqvy. In
the latter case, the connection with elp-^vy points to the ethical
I notion of the Ufe which is united with God and pleasing to Him;
[ yet here also we may think of the eternal life as the final object
(tIAos, cf vi. 22) which is aimed at by the striving of the spirit.
We have already found just the same interchange of eschato
logical and ethical life in Eom. vi. 4 — 11. Lastly, there are not
wanting passages in which both these sides are held together in
inseparable unity, and so the idea of ^wy has its absolute signifi
cance; this wiU be the case in every instance where ^co'/j simply
indicates Christian salvation in general, as in the expressions,
Adyos ^(oijs = the gospel of life = salvation in Christ (Phil. U. 16),
TO Trvevpa ^cooTroiei (2 Cor. iU. 6), ^coy iK veKpZv (Eom. xi. 15).
, Having thus seen how a present ethical life arises in the
Apostle's mind out of the notion of a future physical Ufe, we
have now to develop in its several moments- the inward working
of the Trvevpa in the Christian. In general terms, it is a new

208 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
personal Ufe, a Kaiv^ ktutis, an dv^pojiros ffveu/taTiKos, w^ho has the
TrveZpa as his element, his guide, his moving principle, just as the
TraAatos d'v^pojTros has the crdp^ (iv TrvevpaTi, Kara Trvev/ia etvai,
Tfvevp,aTi ayecrOai). To go iuto further detaU, there are different
moments of the personal Ufe, which we can also distinguish in
the writings of Paul — ^the feeling heart, the thinking and wiUing
(acting) reason, which have their part in the new life of the irvevpa.
In the heart, the centre of the personal IKe, the immediate con- ,
sciousness, the love of God is poured out by the holy spirit,
so that it becomes the object of the subjective inner being and
the personal experience of the reconcUiation it has received,
consequently a ground of joyfully elated seK-consciousness, of
"glorying." The favour of God is now no longer merely an
objective relation of God to man, but it becomes a subjective
possession of man, a condition of peace with God, in which
he feels himself placed (Eom. v. 1 — 5). Peace and joy in thej
holy spirit are therefore the key-note in the kingdom of God
(Eom. xiv. 17). It is indeed a joy, the strength of which reposes
essentially on hppe (Eom. v. 2, "vUi. 24, xv. 13), because its
object stUl belongs essentially to the future (the <f>aveptoa-is rys
foijs 'lya-ov) ; nay, it not only does not exclude OXl^eis, but itis;
not raised beyond a-Tcvdfetv, the sighing expectation of final and
complete dTroAiJTpiocris. But notwithstanding aU do-^evcta which
is stUl unavoidable, the divine rrvevpa gives to ours the consoUng
e"vidence that we are chUdren of God, and its unexpressed sigh
ing and longing, which is concealed in the heart and never
comes into the clear consciousness of man, comes before God
and intercedes with Him who is acquainted with the heart
(vUi. 26 f). In the category of these a-Tevaypol dXdXyroi, or
workings of the Trvevpa which belong only to the Ufe of uncon
scious' feeling, falls also that yAuoro-j; AaAciv which the Apostle,
1 Cor.\xiv. 13 f, opposes as a Trpoa-evxea-Oai T$ TTvevpari ta the,
Trpoa-ev-xka-Oat t^ voi, because in the former the vovs is aKapTros ; it
is a mere acti"vity of the divine rrvevpia which dweUs in the heart,

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. 209
whUe the personal self-consciousness is at rest (according to our
psychology, an ecstatic state in which the Ufe of feeUng acts
independently, its excessive excitement dispensing with the
forms of conscious thought).
But the Trveopa proceeding from the heart, where its Ught first
went up (2 Cor. iv. 6), takes possession also of the vovs, the ^
thinking aud wiUing activity of the reason, and effects here also
an dvaKatvwo-is (Eom. xii 2), to the end that we may learn
to prove what the wiU of God is. The higher perception, of
which the vovs is rendered capable by the Trvevpa, is according to
this passage (and likewise Col. i. 9 f) the moral power of
judging of good and e"vU, of distinguishing that which is pleas- l
ing to God from that which is to be avoided. But especiaUy
the spirit causes the perception of the divinely purposed salva
tion, reveals that secret wisdom of God which the rulers of this (
world have not perceived," and which the natural man cannot
possibly perceive, because he is without the divine Trvevpa, which
alone knows divine things, because it searches the deep things
of God. It is this Trvevpa, however, which Christians have
received, tVa e'l&Zpev Td iiro TOV Oeov x<'-pi''rOevTa ¦rjpiv : it therefore I
produces a conscious insight into the blessings of salvation pro
vided by God (1 Cor. ii. 7 — 12). The spiritual man has pre
cisely the VOVS of Christ, that is to say, he finds himseK in pos
session of the perception of absolute truth, which perception is
no longer excluded by any Umit from the deep things of God.
This is of course only true at first in principle ; in the concrete
the Christian also has ytyvwo-Kctv ix pepovs -only, so long as he
walks in faith and not by sight ; he only sees the truth at first,
6i' icrdrrrpov iv alviypari, in the reflection of a mirror, and in many
ways veiled (1 Cor. xUi 12); but in principle he has notwith
standing the entire truth, since the perception of the glory of
Christ, as the very image of God, is lighted up in him, and this
light is reflected upon him with "open face," so that he is
changed more and more into the same image (2 Cor. Ui. 18 —
iv. 6). This Christian perception is thus one which advances in
p

210 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
proportion as the assimUation with the object of perception
advances ; it is always conditioned- by the practical reUgious
experience. For this reason the renewal of the theoretical and that of the
practical activity of the reason are inseparably connected toge
ther. If previously the O'eXeiv of the good were the highest to
which the vous could attain, which good it could not bring to
Karepyd^ea-Oai, because the ego was sold as a slave under the
dominion of sin, it has now become free from the determining
power (vd/xos) of sin and death, by the higher power (vopos) of
the spirit of IKe in Christ ; sin wUl no more have the rule over
him; he is no longer bound to the flesh as a debtor, to Uve
according to its guidance (Eom. viU. 2, xU. 6, 14). Now the
moral wiU of the spiritual man also enters, "with this state of
things, into a relation to the law directly opposed to that in
which he stood before. He was then under the law, but at the
same time so little in accord with the law (with the holy wiU of
God revealed in the law), that, on the contrary, it was precisely
by means of the law that the TraO-ypara tZv dpapTim became
operative in his fleshly members, so as to produce fruit unto
death (vU. 5) ; now he is no longer under the law, but under the
favour of God, yet, for this very reason, in the possession ofthe
spirit of sonship which corresponds with the state of favour, hy
means of which he is endued with the power and the "wiU to
bring to actual accomphshment the SiKauopa tov vopov, that is,
the moral contents of the law in love, which is the fulfilling of
aU law (Eom. vi. 14, viii 4; Gal. v. 14). On the one hand,
we have in combination bondage to the law and sin; on the
other hand, freedom from the law under the favour of God, and
the fulfilment of the substance of the law through the spirit of
love. It is important to observe this, because the whole reason
ing of the Apostle in Eom. vi 14 f rests upon the fact, that in
his mind " to be under the favour of God " is the same thing ^
^ Not as if this implied that the idea of xdpiQ suddenly became entirely different ;
it is the same as in vi. 1, aud this again with that of iii. 24— V. 21, and remains

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. 211
as " to be led by the spirit," since both are in an equal degree
the exact opposite of "being under the law;" comp. Eom.
vi. 14 with GaL v. 18. By this moraUy renovating Trvevp,a the
6iKato(rvvij which the law could never effect is reaUy produced ;
real righteousness, or the new moral character of Ufe which
is brought about by the spirit, is added to ideal righteousness, or
the right harmonious relation to God, in which the faithful, by
virtue of his mere trust in the favourable wUl of God revealed
in the death of Christ, had already been enabled to stand. In
the former sense we should understand SiKaionvvy in Eom.
viU. 10 with reference to the whole context, especiaUy ver. 4 ;
and in Eom. vi 16 — 20 we can hardly faU to see a wavering
between the ideal and real notion of SiKaioa-vvy. At first, indeed,
we must take Tg SiKaioa-vvy SovXwOyvai in the same sense as -im-o
xdpiv eivai, namely, as the state of the justified man, conformably
to which the conduct of his.life is to shape itself; but as Trvevpari,
ayerrOai is included in the notion of mrh xdpiv cfvat, and thus
xdpis itseK obtains, in addition to the significance of a reUgious
principle, that of a moral agent, so also the notion of SiKatoen'vij in
this chapter expands itself, untU the moral sense of righteous
ness of IKe, which is the effect of the moraUy renovating favour
of God, is added as a further moment to the specific Pauline
sense of the righteousness by faith, which is the effect of God's
reconciUng favour. But the former is only added to the latter,
it is not put in its place, not at least in such a way as to annul
the whole of the former doctrine of the righteousness of faith,
and to substitute for it an entirely new doctrine of moral righ
teousness.^ The real righteousness of the Trvevixa and the ideal
righteousness of faith are, on the contrary, connected with each
other as a new relation to God and a new moral vitaUty, of
dominant throughout ; only the new religious relation is here completed on its moral
side, by being indicated as the necessary ground of new moral vitality, of KaivorriQ ZcoiJQ
(ver. 4).
^ I can only consider this opinion of Imdemwrm's (ut supra, p. 16S f. and 208 — 215)
as an extraordinary mistake, the refutation of which may be found in the former
part of this work (Chap. ii. iv. v.).
P 2

212 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
which neither can take the place of the other, but which are
necessarily in need of each other to make up the whole, but iu
such a way that the religious idea always remains as the founda
tion, and (both to the Apostle and to the religious view of aU
time) the chief thing. However, the Apostle also makes much
less use of the idea of righteousness for the moral renovation of
life than he does of holiness.
But this idea also obtains in the writings of Paul a deepened
I meaning, corresponding with that of Trvevpa. The word dytos, on
the ground of its usage in the Old Testament, denotes primarily
in the writings of Paul also the being devoted to God, belong
ing to God, standing in relation to Him. Everything is holy in
this sense which rests on divine revelation (ypa<f>ai dyiai, Eom.
i. 2; vdp.os, IvToA)) dy., vii. 12), or which is connected with divine
worship (vaos tov Oeov dytds IcTi, 1 Cor. Ui. 17; Ova-ia dy., Eom.
xU. 1). So Israel also as a whole, as a theocratic community,
is compared to a holy root and to holy leaven; and the indi
vidual members of this people, inasmuch as they have grown as
branches from the root have the .predicates which belong to the
whole expressly appUed to them. And as in Israel the indi
vidual members participate in the holiness of the community of
the Hebrew nation, so the same thing is true of the Christian
community, so that the natural connection with it which is
effected by the relation of man and wife, parent and chUd,
extends the holiness which belongs to the Christian part to the
other part which is not Christian; the non-Christian husband
or wKe is made holy by the Christian wife or husband, the non-
Christian child by the Christian parents (I Cor. "vU. 14). In
this purely objective sense, which rests on the Old Testament/'
view, we must in the first instance take the standing predicate
of the Christians, dyioi ; they are this simply on the ground of
their being caUed to the fellowship of the Christian community
(cf KXyrol dyioi, Eom. i. 7 ; 1 Cor. i 2). But in this union with
the body of Christ, the Christian, we must remember, also
receives the spirit of Christ, the Trvevpa dyiov, which, as we have

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE. 213
1, seen, becomes in him the principle of a new personal life. In
I this respect the Christian is now holy, not only- on account of
his belonging to "the chosen Messianic community, but essen
tiaUy on account of his subjective possession of the principle of
hoUness, the holy spirit. Christians are dyioi in the Apostle's
eyes, not only as the kAjjtoi Kal eiriKaXovpevoi to ovopa TOV Kvpiov
(as belonging to the community which caUs itself by the name
of Christ), but essentiaUy as the 'qyiaa-pevoi iv Xpto-Ty 'lya-ov
(1 Cor. i 2), that is to say, as those whose Ufe has become holy
in principle by its communion with Christ. Thus the converted
GentUes are called a sacrifice, ¦yyiaa-pevy iv Trve-vpaTi dyi^ (Eom.
xv. 16), and the Corinthians are reminded. Ye were once gross
sinners, but now dTreAovo-oo-^e, ¦yyida-OyTe iv TrvevpaTi tov Oeov ¦yptov, —
in which words the union of the two predicates, and the oppo
sition in which they are placed to the previous life of sin, shows
that this 'rjyidcrOyTe Ueuotes not merely devotion of themselves as
belonging to God, but moral purification and sanctification in
principle, or, in short, the presence of the 7rveC/ia in Christians as
the principle of holiness.
Before we proceed to consider the development of this princi-,
pie in the process of sanctification, or in the Christian moral'
Ufe, which belongs to this part of our subject, we must answer
the question, how this new Christian Trvevp,a is related to the
natural Trvevp.a of man, which was described in Chap. i. as
occupying the middle point of indifference between the opposing
principles oi Trvevpa (in the higher sense) and a-dp^, and consti
tuting the neutral substratum of the personal Ufe. We have to
consider, with reference to this point, statements of the Apostle
which are of two different kinds; in the one, he implies that
the Christisln Trvevpa and the natural human Trvevpa co-exist and,
work upon one another; in the other, he makes no difference
between them. Of the, first kind, the most important are to/
be found in the foUowing passages: Eom. viii. 16, awTo to Trvevpa
a-vppapTvpei ti§ TrvevpaTi pov, oti i<rp,ev TCKva Oeovl and ver. 26, ti
Trpocr£v^iop,e0a o-vk oiSapev, dAA avTo to Trvevpa --inrepevTvyxdvei vrreph

214 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
ypiov trTcvoy/iois dAaA'^TOis : ix. 1, ervpp.aprvpo'ucrys p,oi rys (ruveiSri-
a-eios pov iv Trve-up,aTi ayt^. To this class belong also the passages
which speak of conditions of the Trvevpa of the Christian which
cannot be said to be conditions of the indweUing spirit of God,
which is itself strength, and Ufe, and hoUness ; such are comfort,
and peace of mind (2 Cor. U. 12, "vU. 13 ; 1 Cor. x"vi. 18), or defile
ment (2 Cor. vU. 1), or sanctification, and keeping pure (1 Cor.
vU. 34-; 1 Thess. v. 23), or, lastly, rescuing from destruction
(1 Cor. V. 5). These passages presuppose that even in the Chris
tian who possesses the Trvevpa dyiov, there is stUl a human Trvevpa
different from it, which is capable of suffering, and of defilement,
and of perishing, and is in need of the inworking of the di"vine
Trvevpa, in order to be freed or protected from aU these, and
which is thus related to the divine TrveSp,a as the receiving
to the giving subject (see above. Chap, i p. 65). But by
the side of these passages there are also others tp be found
which do not assume or even admit of any distinction between
the divine and human rrvevpa in the Christian. So in Eom. \
"viU. 10,' TO Trvevpa fco^ Std SiKaioa-vvyv, where we are compeUed hy '
the antithesis t6 a-iopa veKpov Si d^apTiav to refer, the words to
the individual Trvevp,a of the Christian, which, however, can only
be " Ufe " by virtue of its unity "with that of Gord, ^as is stated in
vers. 9 and 11, with regard to Trvevp,a Oeov and XptoTou ; further,
in 1 Cor. xiv. 14 f, t6 Trvevp,d pov TTpocre-vxeTai, and Trpaarev^opai T$
Trveup,aTi, it is the Trvevpa of the Apostle himscK which prays in
him, or with which he prays (in speaking with. tongues); but
this Trvevp,a can nevertheless be only the supernatural principle
of the x<^pl<rpaTa bestowed by God, for speaking "with tongues is
one of these. To this class, again, belong those passages in which
the Trvevpa is Connected with human virtues as their subject,
such as 2 Cor. iv. 13, to a-UTo Trvevp,a Tys rricTTeios: 1 Cor. iv. 21,
and GaL vi. 1, jrveujua jrpaoTijTOs: Eom. xv. 30, dydinj TOV TTveij/ioTos:
1 Thess. i. 6, x'^P"- '^ve-6p,aTos ayiov : and especially 2 Cor. vi. 6,
cv ayioTijTi, cv yvcoo-cx, Iv paKpoOvp,icji, iv xP't'TTOTyTi, iv TrvevpaTi ayitg^
iv dydrry, &c. In aU these passages it is certainly imuch easier \

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW LIFE. 215
to understand the Trvevpa simply as the subject of these virtues,
than (according to the common interpretation) to separate it
from the Christian subject, and make it the cause of the virtues
named in connection with it. EspeciaUy in the passage last
quoted, Iv jrvcv/iaTi ayicff, in the midst of the other Christian
virtues, must necessarily denote another spiritual condition of
the Christian, namely, his being filled with the holy spirit of
God (cf. feovTcs T<p irvcvjoiaTi, Eom. xU. 11). In aU these and
simUar passages, the separation between Trvevpa dyiov as being
objective, and the subjective Christian spirit, is not exegetical
exactness, but rather scholastic abstraction, which certainly
perverts the meaning of the Apostle. This we shall find, on the
contrary, to be, that the divine Trvevp,a and the natural human
Trvevpa coalesce in the Christian into the unity of a new subject, a
Katvos or 7rvevp,aTtKos dvOponros (they unite therefore in substance,
comp. 1 Cor. vi. 17), but yet in such a way that this union
is not absolutely complete from the beginning, but always pro
gressing merely, and therefore always in part not existing; conse
quently both substances are always in another sense distinct,
and related to each other as that which is active and giving,
to that which is passive and receiving. It is this very process
of the union of the divine and the human spirit, constantly
advancing towards the unity of a personality in the image of
God, which is ever becoming more complete, that we have now
to consider further.

The De-telopment of the Ne"w Life; Sanctification.
By virtue of man's having obtained for his own, in his union
with Christ by faith, a new principle of Ufe, the Trvevpa dyiov, the
possibiUty is given to him, and with it the moral necessity,
of framing his own IKe so as to be pleasing to God and to
resemble Him; in short, to be a holy life. There is, it is true, no
physicaUy compulsory necessity in this principle, but its reaUza-

216 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
tion takes place only through the free self-determination of man
to aUow himself to be directed by the spirit which dweUs in
him. Because, by virtue of his being a Christian, he lives in the
spirit, so he ought, and has the power, spontaneously to walk in
the spirit as his actual element, or according to the spirit as
his actual guide (Gal. v. 25, ei ^Zpev rrvevpan, TrvevpaTi Kal
t7Toix>op,ev : Eom. "viU. 4, tva t6 SiKatoi/xa tov vopov TrXypioOy iv
'ypTv Tois p,y KaTa crdpKa TrepnraTovcriv dAAd KaTd rrveUpa). Never
theless, the Apostle regards the progress of the new Ufe as by
no means the spontaneous action of man ; but as its beginning
depended on a close union of man "with Christ, in faith and
baptism, so also does its progress consist in the divine human
process of the ever more complete reaUzing of the Christian
principle of salvation, according to aU its moments, in the
spiritual Ufe of man; salvation is likewise contiauaUy said to
grounded in God (1 Thess. v. 23), "wrought out by human free
dom (2 Cor. vii. 1), and both together (PhiL U. 12, 13).
Now, to pursue the matter further into detaU, sanctification
consists in the carrying on of the same two-sided process, of
dying and rising again with Christ, which has already begun in
baptism. The Christian has already, in gi"ving himself up to
Christ as his o"wn, crucified his flesh, with its passions and
desires ; henceforth he is to mortify continuaUy the Trpd^eis toS
(TiopaTos (Gal. V. 24, lo-Tavptocrav ; cf. Eom. viU. 13, It — ^avaTovre
(^T^a-ea-Oe) ; he has put on Christ in baptism, now he is to put him
on continuaUy by walking honestly as in the day (GaL iu. 27
with Eom. xiU. 14) ; he is already in Christ, apprehended by
Christ, now he is to lay hold of him more and more, to change
himself into his image, and let Christ be formed within him
(PhU. iU. 12; 2 Cor. iii 18; GaL iv. 19); the old has already
passed away in him, and aU has become new, but now he is to
transform himseK continually by the renewal of his mind, by
the daUy renewal of the inward man (2 Cpr. v. 17, compared with
Eom. xii. 2, and 2 Cor. iv. 16). The latter passages may guard
us from misunderstanding the former ; the ^avaTovv Tds Trpd^eis

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW LIFE. 217
TOV o-co/taTos does not mean a sensuous mortification of the body
and its natural needs and functions, not an ascetic self-castiga-
tion; that would be far from according "with the free spiritual
apprehension of these externalities, which is repeatedly ex
pressed iu other passages by the Apostle (comp. especiaUy
Eom. xiv. 13 — 23, 1 Cor. "vi. 12) ; but it points to such a
restraint being put upon the fleshly externaUzations of Ufe (the
iwiOvpiai and iraO-ypaTa, "which pecuUarly belong to the flesh,
as constituting the body), that they shall not be able to gain the
mastery over the self-conscious spiritual ego ; cf 1 Cor. ix. 27,
-uironria^io to rrlopa Kal SovAayo)y(o, pi'fprios dAAois Kypv^as avTos
dSoKi/^os yevcop,ai, with which, however, the iXe'vOepos <ov iK TrdvTiov
(ver. 19) is perfectly consistent. In the same way, in vi 12,
the consciousness of the most complete autonomy is closely
united with the principle of the strongest seK-control (Trdvra poi
e^eo-Tiv, dAA ovk iyio i^ovcriacrO'ya-opai inro tivos). This warfare is
not directed against the body as such, but only against the body
as it consists of a-dp^, and aUows the iTriOvpeiv of the latter,
which is contrary to the spirit, to prevaU in it ; the body itseK,
however, is, notwithstanding this, according to its true destir
nation, a temple of the holy spirit (1 Cor. "vi 19 f ), and God can
and ought to be glorified in it ; it ought to be holy (vii. 34), and
its members instruments of righteousness (Eom. vi. 13, 19).
Thus Paul thoroughly recogiiizes a positive relation of the body
to the holy spirit, as the aim of sanctification ; but as sanctifi
cation (frequently in the case of the Gentiles with whom the
Apostle has to deal in his Epistles) starts from a condition in
which the body, as a matter of fact, behaves in just the contrary
manner, and is only an organ of the anti-spiritual flesh, it is
easy to understand why, in treating of sanctification, Paul gives,
as he certainly does, so much more weight to the negative side
of the question regarding the body.^
The Apostle accounts the o-v/iTrdo-xetv (Eom. vUi. 17), i e.
1 Compare with the above, the apposite remarks of Biedermann, Dogmatik, § 292.
Holsten, ut supra, p. 443, takes a different view.

218 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
bearing the sufferings which the Christian encounters in his
calUng as a Christian, therefore for the sake of Christ and in
imitation of him, or generally in his Christian Ufe, as an essen
tial part of the negative side of sanctification, or of dying with
Christ. He describes his being in constant danger of death for
the sake of Jesus (det TrapaSiS6p,eOa els Odvarov Sid 'Iijo-ovv, 2 Cor.
iv. 11) as a carrying about in his body of the putting to death of
Jesus (vcKpMcris 'lya-ov), the purpose of which was that the Ufe of
Jesus also might be manifested in his body (ib. ver. 10, cf ver. 14)
in the day of the resurrection. The Apostle thus regards his
sufferings as a copied repetition of the sufferings of Christ, which
is essential in order to the completion of the transformation into
the image of Christ As in him suffering was a putting to death
of the outward part of man (lya-ov), and at the same time a con
demnation of sin in the flesh (Eom. viii. 3), an djro^avefv t^
dpapTiii., in order to Uve henceforth to God (vi l(f), so the suffer
ings of the Christian serve to wear away the fleshly outward
man, in order that the inward man may be daUy more renewed,
and made capable of reflecting in that day, in a correspondiag
form of appearance, the exceeding 6d|a of Christ (2 Cor. iv. 16 f ,
v. 1 f , Ui 18). In this certainty he says, "As the sufferings of
Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by
Christ" (2 Cor. i 5. In PhU. Ui. 10, the end of faith is the
knowledge of the power of Christ's resurrection, but also — and
in fact as the condition of this knowledge—" the feUowship of
his sufferings, in being made conformable unto his death").
_ To this negative side of sanctffication, which, thus consists in
the mortiflcation of the flesh, and in the patient endurance of
sufferings, is related the positive side,, as in Christ the resurrec
tion Ufe is related to suffering and dying. As the risen one has
become a perfect spirit (2 Cor. iii 17), so sanctification, in its
positive side, is a IKe Iv Kaivoryji rrveupaTos, or briefly Iv Trve-ipan,
where the Trvevp,a is imagined as the element, in which the sub
jective Ufe essentiaUy reposes, in which it has its fulness and
its power; or it is said to be TrcptTroTeiv Trvevpan, koto JTvev/Mi,

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW LIFE. 219
where the Trvevpa is imagined as the rule by which the free self-
determination guides itseK, as the law (Eom. viU. 2, 6 vd^uos toC
jrvcv/iaTos rys fo)^s Iv XpuxT^ by which the Ufe is ruled in the
indi"vidual. And further, as the Ufe of the risen one is a ^yv tQ
Oe^ (Eom. "vi. 10), so also is sanctification a f-ijv ti^ Oe<§ iv Xpurr!^
lyrrov, a jrapiordvai eavTov T^ Oe<^, and SovAto^'^vai t$ Oe^ (ib. vers.
11, 13, 22). That Christ, who is bound up in a mystical imion with
the beUever (the indweUing spirit of Christ), is the animating
power, and that the wUl of God is the highest and final end of
the Ufe of sanctification, is expressed by the pecuUar but signifi
cant figure, that the Christian, freed from his former wedded lord
(the law), has become the spouse of the risen Christ, in order
that he may, in this new marriage-bond, become fruitful for
God (KapTTOipopya-ai Oecf, Eom. vU. 4).
¦What this fruit of the spirit in us should be is said in. GaL \
V. 22 f; it is Christian virtue, displayed in its numerous mani
festations, as love, joy, peace, long-suffering, righteousness, good
ness, fideUty, gentleness, temperance. WhUst joy, and perhaps
also peace (K it be not here equivalent to a peaceful disposition),
express the reUgious key-note of the Christian, and temperance
expresses the "virtue of seK-command with reference to his own
sensuous nature, aU the others relate to his right conduct towards
his neighbour, and are modifications of the fundamental social
¦virtue of the Christian, love, which is therefore placed before aU
the others. It is regarded by the Apostle as at once the highest\
gift of the spirit (1 Cor. xiU.), and the complete fulfilling of the
law, that is to say, in its moral essence (SiKaicopa tov vopov, Eom.
viU. 4), which — after the Mosaic law has been stripped of its
worldly sensuous element — is materiaUy identical with the law
of Christ, so that love may be said to be the TrX-qpcopa v6p,ov, as
weU with regard to the Old Testament law (Eom. xiU. 8 — 10 ;
GaL V. 14), as with regard to the law of Christ (Gal. vi 2).
Because it is itseK the fulfiUing of the law, the law is no longer
against it (GaL v. 23), has neither to demand anything of it, nor

220 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
to condemn it, has lost its significance as a written law ivith
respect to it, and thus that freedom from the law which was
already contained as an ideal right in the vloOea-la, and guaran
teed objectively by the death of Christ (see above), has become
real in love. At the same time, however, love is precisely that
which — does not, indeed, outwardly fetter, but — inwardly
constrains our freedom, and puts it at the service of our
neighbour (Gal. v. 13), as it is itself a being bound by the
love of Christ; 2 Cor. v. 14, ^ dydinj Xpio-Tov — towards us
which he displayed in dying for us — crvvexei ¦fjpds, i. e. keeps us
within bounds, bridles and rules our conduct towards others, by
means of gratitude to him, which admits no more of self-seeldng.
A practical example of this is seen in 1 Cor. "viU. 11 and Eom.
xiv. 15, "viz., the lo"ving regard for the weak brother for whom
Christ died. Christian brotherly love is thus only the natural
refiection and imitation of the love of Christ and of God which
we have made our own by faith (2 Cor. "vUi. 9 ; Eom. xv. 2 £).
For this very reason, it cannot but happen that faith, saturated
with such contents, should exercise its power outwardly by love;
in faith itself, the love of God to us which we accept changes
itseK into active love for our neighbour; ttio-tis is St' dydjnjs
ivepyovp,evy, GaL V. 6. Love, therefore, is not added to faith from
without to complete it, but it has in faith (which makes us of
one mind with Christ, or has the spirit of Christ for its concrete
contents) its organic germ, which, if only faith itself remain
aUve, necessarUy expands into the moral energy of love. For
faith, as the gi"ving up of the heart to God, makes us free from
the ungodUke wUl of the flesh and of our own selves, and there
fore also from the law, which is only valid against the carnal
mind ; but this it does only by placing our own freedom in de
pendence on God; but in this free bondage to God is to be
found the source of that power which binds man to man in
freedom, namely, love ; in faith the Christian is dvopos, iXevOepos
<ov iK irdvTiov, in love he is cwo/ios XpicrTCo, TrdcTLV eavTOV 8ovA(uo"as

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW LIFE. 221
(1 Cor. ix. 19 f).i Moreover, as the inwardly binding law of
freedom, love may, under certain circumstances, demand an ex
ternal limitation of the use of Christian freedom, an abstinence
from that which is in itself perinissible; for instance, where it
is required by regard for weak brethren, whose faith is not yet
strong enough to be free from the letter of statutes, and whose
consciences might therefore be shocked by the free practice of
stronger brethren (Eom. xiv. 13 f; 1 Cor. vUi. 9). Yet, on the
other hand, even this loving regard for those who are not free
must not go so far as to injure the right of freedom and the truth
of the gospel (GaL v. 1 — 12, U. 3 — 5, 11 — 21) ; it must, there
fore, extend only to really indifferent matters, and the Apostle
himseK certainly seems to have held, concerning the limits of
this extension, at one time a stricter, and at another time a more
tolerant, opinion (cf below, Chap. viU.); and it must be practised
only with reference to those who are really weak, whose con
sciences, not being free, require loving consideration and tole
rance on the part of the stronger, but who have no desire to
acquire for themselves any right to rule in such matters (Eom.
XV. 1); whilst against those who wish to rule, to set themselves
up as masters over the faith of others, and to make their own
narrowness a sla"vish yoke to limit the Christian freedom of the
community, the exclusive right of Christ to sovereignty is to be
energeticaUy maintained, as he is the only Lord and Judge of the
conscience, whose dominion is incompatible with any yoke what
ever of bondage to men (Eom. xiv. 3 — 12; GaL ii. v. 1; 1 Cor.
vU. 23).
In this way, then, in his religious principle of faith, the Apos
tle has at the same time indicated the immanent principle of a
Christian moraUty which is neither without law, nor has to seek
its law outside of itself, beyond the Christian sphere, in that
of Judaism, but which bears its law essentiaUy within itself,
namely, in the reUgious principle of Christianity, which Ues at
^ Luther gives the most beautiful and truly Pauline exposition of this thought in
his treatise "Von der Freiheit eines Christenmeuschen."

222 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
the root of it If we are by faith in Christ set free from the
schoolmaster of the external law, which was a law of bondage,
then we have attained a n£w law in the love of Christ (i e. love
for Christ), namely, "the law of the spirit of Ufe in Christ,"
which no longer stands externaUy over against us, as an enslav
ing and condemning letter, but which works in us real freedom,
strength to Uve the new life. This freedom from the external
(Mosaic) law, which had become to justKying faith an ideal
right belonging to sonship, now attains its completion in the
truly freeing and animating power of the spirit of Ufe given by
Christ, which frees us from the law of sin and of death by work
ing in us love, which is the fulfiUing of the law, and the reahza
tion of the SiKauopa TOV vopov (Eom. "viU. 2 — 4). And inasmuch
as the ideal relation of sonship first begins to work subjectively
in this real state of freedom, sonship is so inseparably connected
with the existence of the spirit, that from the fact of the spirit
working in a man it may be concluded that he is a chUd of God
(Eom. viU. 14).
In this way the PauUne opposition of faith to law and works
now attains its essential completion. Faith is not opposed to
every law, but only to that law which cannot give Ufe, because,
being external, it has its insuperable limit in the fleshly nature
(eiriOvpeiv) of man (comp. GaL iii 21 with Eom. viU. 3, 7), there
fore to the Mosaic letter of the law (and to every law which, hke
that of Moses, opposes to the wUl of man the rigid " thou shalt "
as a foreign wiU; and this is indeed the case with law in
general, if we look to the bottom of it, from the standpoint of
the natural man). But faith is not opposed to the new Christian
law, which consists in the impulse of the holy spirit, and which
accordingly no longer merely commands, but at the same time
gives life, i. e. pleasure in and strength for the accomphshment :
the Apostle caUs this, according to its true nature, " a law of
the spirit of life in Christ," and, according to its origin, " the law
of Christ" (Eom. viii. 2 ; Gal. vi. 2). Now this law is certainly
valid also for the Christian ; but the true moral essence of the

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW LIFE. 223
old (Mosaic) law, its SiKa'uopa, is not only contained in it, but is
for the" first time brought into fuU vaUdity and effectiveness
(Eom. vUi. 4, xiU. 8 — 10). So far it is certainly correct to say
that Paul in his doctrine of faith (that is to say, faith fiUed with
the Trvevpa and working by love) does not overthrow the law, but
sets it up ; only we must not introduce this thought into the
words of Eom. UL 31, where it would very abruptly and unneces-
sarUy interrupt the development of the doctrine of justification ;
these words, on the contrary, form the transition to the Scrip
ture proof of the doctrine of justification which foUows, and
therefore d v6p,os in that passage can mean nothing else than the
Old Testament revelation in general, and especiaUy that which
was made to- Abraham. From this point of view we shaU also
be able to understand the striking passage which appears to
form a contradiction to Gal. v. 6, namely, 1 Cor. vU. 19, " circum
cision is nothing, and the foreskin is nothing," dAAd T^pijo-is tcov
ivToXcov Oeov. Here also both Judaism and Heathenism are alike
said to be nothing, in comparison of the new reUgious moral life
of the Christian; but whUst in GaL v. 6 the latter is appre
hended in its ground and in its manifestation as ttiVtis St' dyd7r»/s
ivepyovpivy, here the moral manifestation alone is brought for
ward, and that in a form which was certainly the usual mode
of expression for Jewish morality, or for righteousness in the
Jewish legal sense. Nevertheless, that this cannot be meant
here is clear, because circumcision above aU things belonged to
the Typya-is evToXlov in the Jewish sense; and as this integral
part of the Jewish keeping of the law is here said to be nothing,
it is self-evident that by ivToXa'i here is meant the law, not in its
Mosiac form, but only in its universal moral essence, abstracted
from the positive Jewish law, that is to say, the moral law as it
is comprehended in love. It is also self-evident that the
Apostle demands from the Christian moral fruit, not only in
virtues (GaL v. 22), but also in the actual practice of them, that
is to say briefly, in works ; it would certainly be a mistake to
suppose that the Apostle meant an abstract piety which should

224 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
not attain to moral action. He expressly demands ofthe Gala
tians ipya^<op,eOa to dya^ov jrpos TrdvTas, jadAio-Ta Sc Trpos Toiis otKciovs
T^s Trto-Tews : and not to be weary in doing good is, according to
him, the condition of the future harvest, is therefore "virtuaUy
that which he before called sowing to the spirit (GaL \i. 8 — 10).
Again, he "wishes for the Corinthians that the favour of God may
come abundantly upon them, in order that they themselves may
act abundantly in every good work (Trda-av x"/"" Trepia-o-eva-ai els
¦vp,ds iva — TrepitrcrevyTe cts irdv Ipyov dya^dv, 2 Cor. ix. 8), and the
proport^ion of the harvest "wUl be conditioned by the sparing or
abundant proportions of this sowing (ver. 6). This leads us to a
further point connected with this subject.
The "walking in the spirit," according to the sense of the new
Christian moraUty which has just been developed, is not only
the necessary (i. e. infaUible and obligatory) fruit of accepted
salvation, but it is also the indispensable means and condition
of the perfecting of salvation, the final cnoTypia. This is ex
pressed by the Apostle by many different turns of thought,
which, however, are perfectly consistent with each other He
says to the PhUippians in plain words (ii. 12), perd <l>6^ov Kal
Tp6p,ov T^v edvTtov (TioTypiav Karepyd^errOe, they are to work OUt
their final salvation by their moral action, and that with fear
and trembling, on account of the constant possibiUty of falling
back through moral slothfulness, and after all losing their salva
tion. But he immediately adds the ground on the presupposi
tion of which alone that KaTepyd(ea-0 ai is reaUy possible, and
therefore also becomes a duty, d ^cos ydp Io-tiv d Ivepywv Iv vplv
Kal TO OeXeiv Kal to Ivcpyciv : it is the wUUngness and the power to
perform moraUy good works, effected by God, by imparting the
Trvevpa dyiov, OU the ground of wMch we are put in a position to
work out our salvation for ourselves, namely, by giving acti"rity
to that principle in the particular acts of moral Ufe. This
exactly agrees with what the Apostle acknowledges of himseK
(iii. 12), oijx oTi ^Stj eXaj3ov y »j8ij TCTcAci(D/toi, Siioko) Se, ct Kai
KaTaXdj3io, icfi (p Kal KareX-qc^Oyv vtto tov Xpurrov lycrov '. CCrtam

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW LIFE. 225
as he is of being apprehended by Christ, of having found in him
the righteousness of God (ver 9), he is stiU so far from thinking
that he has already attained completely or finaUy to the purpose
for which he was destined by God, to which he is called, that, on
the contrary, the favour which he has obtauied is only so much
the stronger motive never to be satisfied with the degree of
moral perfection that he has at any time attained, but to strive
and- advance ever further forward after the stUl unattained end
of absolute perfection. Nay, he says in fine irony to the PhUip
pians, those who are now perfect should Ukewise be of this mind
(ver. 15); tbat is to say, those who consider themselves perfect,
pattern Christians, should prove themselves to be so by striving
most zealously after that real perfection which was not yet
reached. The same thought is also to be found in the figure
of the race for the prize of victory in 1 Cor. ix. 24 — 27. If
deprivations were imposed, for the sake of a perishable crown,
upon those who contended in the Corinthian games, much more
should the Christian impose struggles and self-denial upon him
self for the sake of the imperishable crown (everlasting a-uTypia),
as he himself, the Apostle, subdued his body by severe disci-
_ pUne, so that he might not, whUe preaching to others, be cast
away himseK. This evidently presupposes, as being ever present
(at least in abstract), the possibiUty of losing the favour of God
in consequence of the flesh recovering its mastery. Accordingly,
the certainty of justification which is attached to salvation must
not be conceived so abstractly as to exclude the moment of sub
jective freedom, with its possible vaciUations and backsUdings.
The modest hypothetical expressions, therefore, in Phil. iii. 11,
ctirtos KaTavT'ycTio, and 12, ci Kai KaTaXd/3io, are by no means to be
regarded as affording any ground for doubting the genuineness
of this Epistle ; on the contrary, they only prove (Uke the whole
of the passage in connection with them) that the most sober
consciousness of his distance from the moral ideal was perfectly
consistent with the most joyful faith in the favour of justifica
tion which he had experienced (ver. 8 f ) ; and this very insepa-
Q

226 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
rable connection of the religion? realism of a complete and
satisfied consciousness of salvation, with the idealism which
looks forward, and struggles, and is stiU only hoping for salva
tion, and ever striving after the goal of perfectioji, is most
characteristic of the evangelical ethics of Paul. But for the
very reason that this moral struggle has as its presupposition
and its root the religious existence of man as justified and
endowed with the spirit, the consequence of that struggle, the
goal of Christian hope, appears not merely as an external recom
pence, or a purely supernatural fulfilling of a promise, as was the
case in the Jewish, and more or less also in the Jewish-Christian
view, but it appears as the natural fruit, in which the develop
ment of the Christian spirit attains to maturity. Accordingly,
the moral action of the Christian is caUed a sowing to the spirit,
which wUl produce the harvest of eternal Ufe from the spirit
(Gal. vi. 8) ; the existence of the (holy) spirit in man is therefore
the presupposition for both, for the sowing and for the harvest,
for the moral action, and for the eternal blessedness ; but be
tween this fruit and the seed-plot in which it is potentiaUy
contained, must intervene the moral action of man, by which
the forces latent in the spirit are let loose and put in operation,
made powerful to impel and to produce fruit — that is to say, if
this action is Iv TrvevpaTi and KaTd Trvevpa, has Spirit for its element
and its rule. But because action of an opposite kind, sowing to
the flesh, which reaps the harvest of destruction, is also a possi
bUity for the Christian, he has need of the earnest warning, py
TrXavdcrOe, Oeos ov pvKTypi^erai, o ydp idv cnreipy dvOpcoTros, tovto
Oepia-ei (ver 7). It is only the unconditioned dominion of sin
in the flesh which has ceased in the Christian by virtue of his
1 having received the spirit {dpapTia oi Kvptcvo-ct, Eom. vi 14), but
the impossibility bf allowing himself to be led by the flesh is not
thereby established (the non posse non peccare has ceased, but he
has not arrived at the non posse peccare, but only at the posse non
peccare). Christians are no longer debtors to the flesh, so that
they must live according to it, but yet the two-fold possibib

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW LIFE. 227
still remains, ei KaTd crdpKa ^yre, peXXere aTToOvqcTKeiv, el Se rrvevpan
Tds Trpd^eis tov criopaTos Oavarovre, ^ya-errOe (Eom. vUi. 12 f).
If we are thus to understand the Christian life as a process of
organic growth, which has the Ufe of the spirit proceeding from
God as its principle, and again as its end, then we have already
an answer to the question, how far Christian salvation is to the
Apostle a. future object of hope, and how far it is a present posses
sion of faith. For we find this two-fold wa,y of regarding it in
aU the different ideas which represent Christian salva-tion to
the mind of the Apostle ; above aU, in that most general idea
of a-coTypia, crco^ea-Oai, wHch Comprises the others within itself
The Apostle says, vvv ypepa a-ioTyplas (2 Cor. vi. 2), from the faU
of the Jews a-coTypiaha,s sprung up for the Gentiles (Eom. xi. 11,
comp. 15, KOTaAAay^ Kdcrp.ov); Christians are the a-io^6pevoi (1 Cor.
i 18), for icTioOypev T-g cAttiSi (Eom. "vUi 24); but the other way
of looking at it stUl preponderates, according to which the salva
tion already anticipated as a fact by the hoping consciousness is
nevertheless only realized in the future — crcoOya-opeOa dTrh t^s
dpy^s (Eom. V. 9, &C.), cTioTypiav KaTepyd^ecrOe, els Trepnrotycriv
o-(i)T»;ptas (Phil. U. 12 ; 1 Thess. v. 9), lyyvTcpov -ypiov ¦y aioTypia
(Eom. xiii. 11). SimUarly, we are already indeed children of
God by faith, and, on the ground of our being so, have received
the spirit of sonship (Gal. iU. 26, iv. 6) ; but yet we are stUl in
this temporal Ufe vloOea-iav aTreKSexopevoi, ryv dTroXvTpcocriv tov
a-iopaTos ij/itov (Eom. viU. 23). As chUdren we are also heirs,
KXypovopoi (Eom. vUi. 17 ; Gal. Ui. 29), and that of aU the pro
mises which from the beginning belonged to the people of God
as the seed of Abraham — first of aU, therefore, of the promise of
the holy spirit (GaL Ui. 14) ; but, on the other hand, our KXypo-
vopeiv is also a future one, consisting in future o-wSo^ao-^ijvat,
conditioned by present o-v/itTdo-xeiv, or in the future possession of
the /Saa-iXela Oeov (1 Cor. vi 9 f, XV. 50; Gal. V. 21). If in the
passage last named, the kingdom of God appears as the Messiah's'
kingdom, which began with his coming, it is again, on the other
hand, a present and inward one, and consists in righteousness,
q2

228 LIVING IN THE SPIRIT.
peace, and joy in the holy spirit (Eom. xiv. 17; comp. 1 Cor.
iv. 20). We have seen that the same two sides were contained
in the idea of fw^ (above, p. 205 f ). What is peculiar to Paul is
not this' two-fold view of Christian salvation, but the fact that
the two sides are fused together again by him into a higher
unity, namely, in the irvevpa, which, for aU its transcendence, is
nevertheless also present and immanent, and, for aU its imma
nence, is yet at the same time transcendent and future. As
salvation is already set forth ideaUy as present in justification,
so also it is set forth reaUy in the possession of the dirapx^
Trvev/iaTos, in which we have a pledge and seal of our future
redemption on which our hope may support itseK (2 Cor. i 22,
V. 5, dppa/3o)v TOV TTvevpiaTos). In this way Paul's doctrine stands
haK-way between the transcendent idea of salvation which
preponderates in Jewish Christianity, and the immanent idea of
it which preponderates in the theology of John, and forms the
transition from one to the other.

CHAPTEE VI.
THE CHEISTIAN COMMUNITT.

The first form of Christendom as the association of believers
is the separate communities which were formed here and there
in different towns. These separate communities, according to the
analogy of the political assemblies of the people of the Greek
towns, were caUed iKKXya-iai, Gal. i. 2, 22 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 19, and
many other passages. But this name was further extended to
the coUective body of Christians, and these, although they never
appeared as an external community or assembly, were called the
iKKXycTia TOV Oeov, that is, the Commonwealth of God (1 Cor. x. 32 ;
GaL i. 13).
The nature of this community is only indicated by figurative
comparisons, as Jesus only described the nature of the kingdom
of heaven in parables. It is caUed in 1 Cor. Ui. 9, a field of God,
in which the Apostle plants, another waters, God grants the
increase ; or a building of God, of which the Apostle lays the
foundation, another continues the buUding (ibid. vers. 10 f).
And indeed this foundation is Jesus Christ ; it is laid once for
aU, for the whole Church, by God, and in each individual case is
laid anew by the preaching of the Apostle, in founding every
community. The advancement of the Christian life of the indi
vidual community, Uke that of the individual Christian, is there
fore, in connection with this figure, naturally caUed edification or
buUding up (1 Cor. xiv. 4, 12, 26, &c.). More particularly, this
buUding is caUed a temple of God, because it is the abode of his

230 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
holy spirit, which, as we have seen in the last chapter, dwells
in the Christian. And this predicate is affirmed both of the
whole community as such and also of the indi"viduals in it;
which indeed forms the specific difference between the Christian
and the Old Testament community (cf 1 Cor. Ui. 16 f and
vi. 19). If the figure of a buUding, the foundation of which is
Christ, shows the stabUity of the community in its entire de
pendence on the historical Eedeemer, its own immanent "vitahty,
in consequence of the possession of Christ's spirit of IKe, is more
prominently displayed by the figure of the " body of Christ." As
oneness and manifoldness are inseparably connected and inter
penetrate each other iu the body, so Christians are one with
each other through their communion of Ufe with Christ in the
holy spirit, or through the one spirit which fiUs them and the
one Lord to whom they belong (1 Cor. xii. 4 f ); but this unity is
no uniformity, but a unity of manifold hearts, each of which,
through its special peculiarity, serves the whole in a special
way. We shaU have first to consider this manifoldness of gKts and
offices in the community ; then to fix our attention on its one
ness, as it exhibits itself externaUy in the love-feast of the com
munity ; and lastly, to see how this comes into existence by a
selection from Gentiles and Jews, the difference between whom
is merged in the higher union of the Christian community.

The Gifts and Offices in the Community.
I The one spirit reveals itself in different powers or capacities,
which, inasmuch as they are always bestowed by the favour of
God on the individual as a special distinguishing possession, are
caUed gifts of favour, x<^P"rp,aTa, but inasmuch as they are at the
same time for the use of the whole, qualKy and call to a perform
ance of service to the community (StaKovia). Every individual
endowment within the community includes also within itself an

THE GIFTS AND OFFICES IN THE COMMUNITY. 231
individual task in the service of the community, therefore a caU
to office ; but every office depends solely on the special qualificar |
tion of the individual by extraordinary endowment of the holy
spirit The distinction between official and unofficial gifts is
therefore evidently a false one ; for all gifts are in the first place
individual, depend only on the disposal of the free will of God,
but aU at the same time form the ground of a capacit)'", and
therefore of an obligation, to perform a public service, to take
some office in the community. There were as yet, in the primi
tive community, no other offices than these which depended on
individual endowments of the spirit, the rights and duties of
which were simply consequences of personal power and capacity.
Among the gifts which are often enumerated by the Apostle ,
(especiaUy 1 Cor. xU. 8—1 0, 28, 29, xiv. 6, 26 ; Eom. xU. 6—8),
but never in systematic order and completeness, we may most
suitably distinguish those which relate to the advancement of
the life of the community in general, and those which relate
especiaUy to the edification of the community by the worship of
God. The former again di"vide themselves into those which
belong to the service of the community (in the narrower sense of
the word SiaKovia), and those which belong to the guidance of it.
The SiaKovia, in general, consisted in taking a careful and
helpful interest in the members of the community (dvTiAi^i/'eis,
1 Cor. xii. 28) in aU their spiritual and bodily anxieties and
necessities, and particularly in giving spiritual comfort (Trapa-
KaXQv, Eom. xU. 8) to those who were troubled in mind, impart
ing to the poor the necessary gifts (d /iCTaStSovs, ibid.), sympa
thizing with the unhappy (lAeoiv, ibid.), especially tending the
sick, and finally in healing diseases by the miraculous power of
faith. With the last named are connected the ttio-tis, the xdpio-/«a
lapidriov, and the ivepyypaTa Swdp-eav of 1 Cor. xU. 9 f. By this
TTto-Tts "we are not, of course, to understand simply believing,
which is clearly not an individual gift of favour serviceable to
the community, but the root of the very existence of the com
munity. We must therefore understand by it, faith under a

232 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
special form of activity ; and if we take into account its connec
tion with what follows, x'^pl'Tp-ara lapdriov and evepyqpaTa Svvdpecov,
we cannot conceive of it otherwise than as a special power of
trusting faith in God, an enthusiasm or heroism of faith. Such
faith may be able to accompUsh extraordinary acts for the wel
fare of the community, such especially as healing the sick. Such
miraculous cures were effected at that time, as at aU times,^ by
means of the psychological fact, that strong faith inspires strong
faith, and this has a reviving and strengthening effect on the
physical organism of the sick (at least in certain diseases). It
is harder to say what we are to understand by the somewhat
vague expression, ivepyypara Svvdp,ecov. Perhaps we must take it
to refer chiefly to the driving out of devils.
We have next to consider in connection with the Smkovm, the
guidance of the community, Kv/Sepvya-is (1 Cor. xU. 28), to which
Trpoia-Tdpevos in Eom. xU. 8, although it may more generaUy be
understood of every office of authority, mainly refers; also in
Phil. i. 1, irria-KOTToi Kal SiaKovoi is precisely the same juxtaposition
of leaders (overseers) and servants, excepting that we have here to
think in anticipation of offices which were only estabUshed at a
later period. This is clearly proved by the plural eTria-KOTroi, which
can denote nothing but what is meant in 1 Thess. v. 12 by Trpoicrrd-
p,evoi, and in other passages by Trpecr/S-vrepoi, namely, those who, by
virtue of a special endowment quaUfying them for it, took upon
themselves the task of l;ritrKojr£tv and Kv^epvdv in aU the affairs of
the community. As, according to the nature of things, both these
forms of activity, the service and the guidance of the community,
are nearly related to each other, so we may see from 1 Cor. xvi 15 i
' It is undeniable that cures by means of prayer, wrought by persons who have
special powers of inspiring confidence, occur not unfrequently even at the present day
(a notable instance is that of the Suabian pastor Blumhardt in Boll). We are by no
means justified in thinking that there is anything in such phenomena different from
the SvvdpuQ lafidrhiv in the Bible, unless we proceed on the extraordinary assump
tion of Protestant dogmatism, that the privilege of miracles was confined to the ancient
period of the Biblical records, and that these were something supernatural in the
strongest sense of the word. But these suppositions are dogmatic postulates, which
both history and experience entirely contradict.

THE GIFTS AND OFFICES IN THE COMMUNITY. 233
how both of them did actuaUy often, or perhaps always, in the
communities established by Paul, faU into the same hands. The
Apostle here exhorts the Christian community to submit them
selves to the famUy of Stephanas, whose relatives had devoted
themselves to the service of the saints (Christians), as well as to
every one who co-operated with them, and worked (for the com
munity). We here get a view of the first beginning of church
government as it is coming into existence. The right to claim
submission from the other members of the community rests
simply and solely on the fact that one or more persons have
devoted themselves to the service, of the community, and have
carefuUy and laboriously attended to the needs of their feUow-
christians. Not only do we find no mention in the Epistles with
which we are here deaUng of a regular office of leadership, with
which an individual had in any way been formally entrusted by
the Apostle, but this passage in the Corinthians unmistakably
contradicts this supposition by the words eVa^av lavTovs, which
could not have been used if they had been appointed by the
Apostle ; besides, in this case the duty of the community to sub
mit themselves to the household of Stephanas would have been
made to rest simply on the authority of the Apostle, by virtue of
which they had been appointed to their post of dignity ; whereas
here, on the contrary, it is evidently looked upon as a grateful
return for their ha"ving voluntarUy devoted themselves to the
service of the saints (observe the expression, Kat vp,eis, you also —
corresponding with that which they do for you). Moreover, it
would be very extraordinary and incomprehensible, if the Apostle
had really appointed leaders in his communities, that he should
never make them responsible for the disorders which occurred in
the communities of Corinth and Galatia ; and stUl more so, that
in the excommunicating and receiving again of the sinner at
Corinth, he very emphaticaUy speaks of the community acting
with him, the Apostle, but never mentions a leader of the com
munity, whom he would certainly in this case have had prima
rily to deal with as the official representative of the community ;

234 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
on the contrary, he represents the matter as if the exclusion and
interruption of communion with the brotherhood had been left
entirely in the hands of its individual members. For when it is
said in 2 Cor. ii. 6, " this punishment which has come upon the
sinner from the greater number is enough," it is clear that this
refers not to a presbytery of the community as an official court,
but only to the greater number of the members of the commu
nity, which (probably as belonging to the party of Paul) had
obeyed the command of the Apostle (1 Cor. v.), and had broken
off their intercourse "with the incestuous person, whUe others
(probably the anti-PauUne party) had opposed the formal ex
communication. Nothing could show more clearly than this how
entirely a fixed organization was wanting to the Pauline com
munities, and accordingly how everything was completely de
pendent on the personal infiuence of a man who impressed others
by his capacity, and who had distinguished himself by serving
the community. Thus also in the Epistle to the PhUippians the
community is exhorted indeed to concord and unselfish humility
towards each other (U. 2 — 5), but not to submission under the
iTTUTKOTToi, which would certainly have befin the case if the later
conception of office had been already current (compare the
pseudo-Ignatian letters). And in 1 Thess. v. 12 f, grateful
recognition is demanded for those who work as overseers of the
community, but expressly only in the sense that they should
" be esteemed so much the higher in love " for the sake of their
work of love. The relation of the community to their leaders is
thus stUl entirely that of free, moraL high esteem and respect,
and not that of official, hierarchical subjection. This is also
shown by the exhortation to the correction of the disorderly,
being addressed in the same passage (ver. 14) simply to aU the
members of the community (dSeX<f>ot, ver. 12), according to which
the discipline of the church is here also, as in the Corinthian
community, the business of the whole community, and not that
of a privileged office or class.
Let us turn now to the xa/o'tf/^ao"", which relate to the edifica-

THE GIFTS AND OFFICES IN THE COMMUNITY. 235
tion of the community by the worship of God, including Adyos
(Tocjiias, and Adyos yviocrecos, Or SiSaX'^, drroKdXvxj/is OX Trpo<t>yTeia, yevi;
yXtocrcriov and ippyveta yXcorra-iov OX StoKpicrts TTvevp,dT<ov. At the
head of these stand the " speech of wisdom " and the " speech of
knowledge," both of which are comprised in the more general
notion of SiSax-y (this word is therefore wanting in 1 Cor. viU. 12,
A. <ro<j>. and A. yviocr. being substituted for it, as conversely it is
substituted for these two in xiv. 26 ; on the other hand, in
xiv. 6, Iv yvwo-ei and Iv SiSax'ij correspond with each other, and
are synonymous, as do also Iv dTroKaAv^/'ei and Iv TTpoj>yTela).
Both o-o<^ia and yvwo-is refer to the knowledge of Christian salva
tion, but with this difference, that o-o<^ ta denotes the elementary
consciousness of faith, the knowledge of elementary Christian
truths in the simplest and most direct form of actual fact, with
out any insight into the How and the Why. Preaching of this kind, \
therefore, does not possess the con"\dncing power of proofs derived
from human wisdom, but that of the direct proof of the spirit,
the divine power of which manifests itseK to the lieart (1 Cor. \
U. 1 — 50). On the other hand, yvoio-ts is the deeper knowledge
which is not directly given with faith, and which therefore
cannot come to all in an equal degree (cf 1 Cor. viU. 7, ovk Iv
jtSo-iv 'fj yviocTis). Its objects are the p,vcrT'^pia (xiii. 2), which
consist partly of questions regarding the eschatology (xv. 51),
partly of those important questions about the right of Christian
freedom, of which 1 Cor. viU. expressly treats. But these are
connected with the more general question of the relation of the
Christian to the Jewish law, and this again with the significance
which attaches to the crucifixion of Christ, "With reference to the
law, and in general with the apprehension of the person and the
work of Christ in the divine scheme of salvation. It is therefore
mainly in relation to these points that we shall have to consider
the Pauline gnosis. The ability to not merely understand these ,
deeper and more difficult questions, but also to impart this
knowledge to the community in learned discourses for their
edification, is a gracious gKt of the spirit in a much higher

236 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
degree than the plain " speech of "wisdom," which only discourses
in an edifying way about the elementary truths of the gospel,
"without gi"ving any explanation of the deeper secrets of faith. ,
Further, aTroKdXv^is is to be taken with -irpo^yTeia, wherefore
( the latter only is mentioned in 1 Cor. xiL 10, and only the
former in xiv. 26, but in xiv. 6 the two correspond with each
other as cause and mamfestation. They consist in revelations
regarding the future of the community, on which the conscious
ness of beUevers was intensely occupied, as we know, in the
primitive church. Between the historical facts proclaimed by
the Apostle and the prophetic picture of the completion of salva
tion, the remaining doctrines revolved as rormd a fixed centre,
for they only represented, as it were, the series of connecting
links between the beginning and the conclusion ; hence we have
in juxtaposition in 1 Cor. xii 28 and 29, " first apostles, secondly
prophets, thirdly teachers." But as practical exhortation, com
fort, and encouragement for the present Christian Ufe, would
most naturaUy have been connected "with the prophetic hopes of
the future, so we shaU have to understand by TTpo<j>yTeveiv, in its
vdder sense, aU those addresses to the community, the purpose
of which was not so much to instruct them on questions of faith,
as, by pointing to what ought to happen and would happen, to
awaken an enthusiasm of faith, and animate them "with the Ufe
of faith. This practical character of the Trpo^yTeveiv, by which it
comes most directly home to the hearts of the hearers, whether
in smiting them down or raising them up, we may see most
plainly in 1 Cor. xiv. 24 And it is quite in accordance "with
this "view, that it is just this practical, edifying Trpo^reveiv which
stands in the closest connection with that xdpia-pa which belongs
to the sphere of the excited emotional Ufe, the speakiug with
tongues. The yAwcroTj or yAoxro-ats AaAciv, a highly valued and very
frequent xdpio-ytta in the primitive church, but which so early as
I the second century had ceased to be any longer kno"wn by expri-
' ence, was, according to the description in 1 Cor. xiv., a mono-

THE GIFTS AND OFFICES IN THE COMMUNITY. 237
logne uttered by a person in an ecstatic state, unintelligible to
ordinary hearers, and therefoie requiring interpretation before it
could edify the commxmity, for whom it was whoUy unfruitful
"without this interpretation, but edifying for the speaker himseK —
edifying, as we may suppose, in that sense in which the expres
sion of a lively emotion is always a necessity and an enjoyment
to him who feels it The ecstatic character of this mode of
speaking is indicated by its taking place, according to ver. 14 f ,
only in the spirit, without the intervention of the vovs. La
(c£ above. Chap, i) of the understanding consciousness, there
fore in the living energy of immediate feding, in consequence
of whieh the speaker probably produced the impression of his
being unconscious, not master of himseK, possessed by a power
that was not his own, and only acting with his tongue as the
instrument of the unconscious spirit, not with the seK-conscious
^o. That which was uttered in this manner appears to have
been of different kinds, for the Apostle speaks of yhry yXbxra-iov :
perhaps at one time mere inarticulate sounds (cf "ver. 9, p.y
eSa-q/iov Adyov), at another time Tmconnected exclamations of a
hymn-like character, which might have a certain resemblance to
a psalm (hymnus), but -without yielding any determinate sense,
so that the community, although it might perceive that what
the speaker "with tongues expressed was the praise of Grod, was
not enabled to join in it, or to say the responsory amen to it
(ver. 16). It is easy to understand that such a thing was so far
from being able to act in an edifying way upon those present,
that it produced, on the contiarr, an uneasy impression of con
fusion of mind, or of madness, and at all events disturbed the
order of the meeting assembled for the purpose of worship, and
gave to bystanders occasion for mockery and blasphemy, rather
than for conveision (ver. 23 £). The Apostie therefore, without
undervaluing this gift, in the possession of which, on the con
trary, he gloried, whUe giving thanks to God for it, yet, in
in the inteiest of the community, desires that they should only
speak with tongaes in the assembly when the speaker himself

238-^ THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNIT Y.
or some other person was in a position to translate that which
was uttered in this ecstatic state into inteUigible language, for
the edification of aU (vers. 27, 28). This interpretatipn, again, is '
also reckoned as a special gift, consisting probably in the power
of transporting oneself into the half-expressed feelings of ano
ther, and clothing them in suitable language. By this interpre
tation of what is spoken in tongues, the outpouring of the
feeling of the individual is turned into the utterance of the
feeUng of the assembled community, so that the ecstatic mono
logue becomes a responsory dialogue between the speaker and
the community (ver. 16), in which the beginning of a church
Uturgy may perhaps be found.
Thus we see how these gifts embrace the entire community
as an organic whole, with aU the activities which mutually work
on each other within it ; the diversity of these operations, which
are necessary for the whole, corresponds with the different in
dividual gifts, as they again, as operations of the one spirit of
Christ, are serviceable to the one community for the one purpose
of its edification. But the oneness of this manifoldness does not
remain a merely inward unity in the one spirit, but also comes
forth in outward manifestation, in the first place by the rite. of
baptism, which establishes cojnmunion, by which the individuals
are united to one body in one spirit ; and secondly, by the rite
of the love-feast, or the Lord's Supper, which prreserves that commu
nion, and renders it perceptible to the senses hy a figure, which two
things are declared, in the classical passage on the subject of the
community, to be, together with the body of Christ, the means
of holding it together, and the visible manifestations of its
organic unity (comp. 1 Cor. xU. 13). Of baptism we have
already (Chap, v.) spoken ; we have now, therefore, to treat of
The Lord's Suppek.
When the Apostle, in 1 Cor. x. 16, calls the cup of blessing a
" communion (Koivwvia) of the blood of Christ," the bread which

THE lord's SUPPER. 239
we break a " communion of the body of Christ," we must take
this as an abbreviation for a means. of communion, means of bind
ing together, bond; his words do not directly inform us what the
nature of this union is, but we may learn it from fhe context.
This union with the blood and the body of Christ, by drinking
and eating at the Supper, is represented by the context of the
passage as a contrast to that union into which those who eat of
the sacrifice enter with the altar of sacrifice, and him to whom
it is devoted ; Israel with God's altar and with God, the GentUes
with the altar of demons and with the demons themselves (vers.
18, 20 f). Now it is clear that this union with the altar and
the being to whom it is devoted, can be no other than that
which is impUed in belonging to him, being personally united
and bound by the recognition, in an act (by means of a symbol),
of his supremacy.! r^he idea in this its general form is neither
Christian nor Jewish, but has formed part of the popular belief
in all nations, religions, and times f and for the very reason that
it was an idea generally acknowledged and recognized, the Apostle
was able merely to indicate it in this pregnant manner, without
any fear of being misunderstood by his immediate hearers. Ac
cordingly, it is no actual partaking (whether material or spiritual)
of the body and blood of Christ, and of course no mere represen
tation of the absent Christ, that is here intended ; but the real
meaning of the Apostle surely is, that partaking of the Lord's
Supper puts us into mystical union and real connection of life
with the Lord himself, just as the partakers of the flesh of
heathen sacrifices were put into such a connection with the
demons, whereby they were subjected to their dominion and
their influence. It is aU the more necessary to acknowledge the
1 Meyer, in his commentary on this passage, calls it a "theokratischer Konnex;"
for the rest, his explanation of the meaning of the word Koiviov'ia is correct, though
not exhaustive ; nor does he say why it is connected with blood and body.
» I may remind the reader of the GJreek legend, that by eating a fruit of the nether
world a man is given over to it; also of the German popular sayings about leagues
with the devil being sealed by the acquisition, use, or enjoyment of things which
belong to demons.

240 ¦ THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
existence of this mystical element in Paul's conception of the
Lord's Supper, because it does in fact Ue at the very root of the
ancient idea of worship ; the symbol is" here never mere symboL
but always mystical representation, medium of a real connection
with the actual and operative object of worship. (The explana
tion of this phenomenon, which constantly recurs in the history
of reUgion, is a psychological question, which belongs to the
phUosophy of religion rather than to an exegetical inquiry Uke
the present) But how is it that a union, not simply with Christ,
but with the body and blood of Christ, takes place by eating and
drinking at the Lord's Supper? We shall find an answer to this
question also by the analogy of the communion of the altar, ver.
18. Of course, the mystical union that is estabUshed by the act
of worship can in reality only relate to a person, but to the
person according to the definition and characteristics indicated
by the things which belong to him. Thus the commuiuon "with
the altar is a communion with the God who has his place of
worship and of revelation there; so also the communion of the
body and blood of Christ is a communion with Christ, not in a
general sense, but very specially, according to those character
istics which are indicated by his (broken) body, and his (shed)
blood ; therefore, in short, a union with Christ as the arucijied
Redeemer — therefore essentiaUy the same as that which is
effected by faith and baptism (see Chaps, iv. and v.). But
that this ^thought should be expressed precisely in this and
in no other way, was suggested by the use of bread and wine
as symbols, and required by the words of Jesus himself at the
institution of the rite. The view^ that by o-G/ia tov Xpia-rov, in
ver. 16, we are not to understand the real body of Christ at aU,
but his ethical body — that is, the community — is incorrect, as
the paraUeUsm of the blood contradicts it, as well as the addition
of the words, Sv KXiopev to dpros, which would in that case have
no meaning. Ilopa has this figurative sense for the first time in
ver. 17; but even if we aUow that the word o-Spa in ver. 16 may
1 Put forth as a conjecture by Batir, N. T. Theol. p. 201.

THE lord's supper. 241
by an association of ideas have suggested the thought contained
in ver. 17, yet this thought is in any case a new thought, and
different from that of ver. 16. It connects the communion that
exists between Christians and Christ with that of Christians
unth each other, and makes the latter, which, in the form of a
meal eaten in common by the members of the community, is a
fact directly apparent to the senses, the ground of recognition
and proof of the former, which cannot be an object of outward
observation. The truth that all belong in common to the one
Lord, the crucified Jesus, becomes a visible fact in the oneness
of the community finding expression in their partaking of the
Supper together. It is not implied by ver. 17 (as is often said)
that the bread of the Lord's Supper is separate from other bread;
but what it means is, that eating the bread of this Supper is an
act of uniting with Christ, because it is an act that openly pro
claims the uniting of Christians with each other, which um'on
can evidently have its real ground only "in Christ," in the spirit
of Christ that makes them one. Thus this passage comes into
the most exact accordance with xii. 13, where the two moments
which are separated in vers. 16 and 17 are comprehended in the
pregnant expression, TrdvTcs. ets ev Trvevpa irroTia-Oypev, for this
TTvev^a is the spirit of Christ, and at the same time that of the
community as the body of Christ.
The other classical passage, 1 Cor xi. 23 f , contains nothing
inconsistent with the interpretation which we have given to
1 Cor. X. 16, and which completely harmonizes with the funda
mental ideas of Paul as expressed elsewhere. Here the Apostle,
after giving an account of the institution of the Lord's Supper
as he had received it from Christ, without any intervention
whatsoever (of man), adds as a further explanation from himself
of the words ets t^v ipyv dvdpvya-iv, that the celebration of this
Supper, as often as it occurred, was an act which proclaimed the
death df the Lord (KaTayyeAAcTc indicative, not imperative);
which we must certainly understand not in the bare sense of a
proclaiming of that historical fact, but in the reUgious sense of
E

242 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
a confession of that fact, and a recognition of its significance for
faith. The significance of the celebration therefore turns out to
be the same here as in the previous passage, namely, to give
again and again an actual expression, a fresh confirmation by a
mystical syinbolic act, to the fact of belonging to the crucified
Eedeemer. But not a single word is, said in the whole passage
of any partaking of the present body and blood of Christ : if that
were the meaning of the Apostle, why has he not once io the
whole passage said the decisive word, but always spoken of eat
ing the bread and drinking the cup ? But when the unworthy
partaker of this bread and this wine loads himseK with guilt
against the body and blood of Christ, because he does not dis
tinguish (think of or take into consideration) the body of Christ,
we must not exactly suppose that this body is partaken of or is
in any way present ; the guUt, on the contrary, consists in the
fact that the thoughtless partaker does not actuaUy in earnest
devotion realize to himseK that to which his external act refers —
the putting to death of the body of Christ ; this irreverent cele
bration is itself a profanation of that which is holy, of that to
which the celebration refers. Moreover, the offence of the
Corinthians which the Apostle is here rebuking, consisted not
only in want of due reverence for the Eedeemer, whose death
the solemn act of remembrance and confession represented, but
also in the want of due love towards the community, so that this
meaL instead of being a love-feast which showed the unity and
equality of the community in the Lord, gave occasion, on the
contrary, to a separation of the rich, which showed pride and
absence of love, and to a shaming of the poor, and thus to a
dividing of the community, ver. 20 f This also reminds us
again that the idea of the Lord's Supper is two things at once,
an expression of communion with Christ by faith, and of the
communion of Christians with each other by love.
The union of the community exhibited in baptism and the
Lord's Supper is in 1 Cor. xii. 13 expressly described as a union

THE LORD'S SUPPER. 243
of those wlio had been Jews and Gentiles. Although this does not
appear at present to concern us nearly, we must consider that
the main practical question for early Christianity, and especially
for PauUnism, regarding the Ufe of the community, was precisely
this — were Jews and GentUes to exist in the future as two sepa
rate parts that could not be bound together, or were they to be
fused into the complete union of a new religious community ?
We have already seen the position that PauUnism took up theo
retically with regard to this question, in the doctrine of the law
and its abrogation by Christian sonship. And the practical
carrying out of Paul's idea was rendered possible mainly by the
fact, that far the greater part of the Christian community con
sisted of those who had been Gentiles, against whom the Jewish
minority were unable to maintain for any length of time the par
ticularism which was the essence of their law. But this very
course of events, which was brought about by the mission of
Paul to the Gentiles, and which supplied the most brUUant con
firmation of the truth of the PauUne gospel, as it were by an
•actual judgment of God, was to a Jewish mind the almost
insuperable stone of stumbUng. That the children of Abraham
should form only a dwindUng minority in the Messianic com
munity, compared with the GentUes who had hitherto been kept
at a distance from the Divine promises, whUe aU the prophets
had conceived of the future period of salvation as essentially
within the limits of the theocracy, so that Israel was the main
stem and the overpowering majority, the GentUes being only
admitted on sufferance as guests and not as principal actors— all
this was a perversion of what they had held on the authority of
the Scriptures to be the Divine plan of salvation, to which the
Jewish Christians could not reconcUe themselves, and was hardly
a less bitter vexation to them than the Pauline doctrine of the
cross of Christ as the end of the law.
In support of his view the Apostle had to show that, as the
favour of God was the sole cause of the provision of salvation,
so it was the sole and sovereign dispenser of the call to salva-
E 2

244 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
tion, and that consequently the composition of the community
by the calUng of its members from among GentUes and Jews
was a matter of the free election of God's favour. This doctrine
is, as it were, the keystone by which the pecuUar system of Paul
is a second time bound together, and so is the exact counterpart
of that other specific Pauline doctrihe, which we may caU the
foundation or corner-stone of his system, the redemption from
the law by the death of Christ. But whUe the truth of the latter
doctrine rests only upon consequences deduced from theory, the
key-stone of the system derives its high significance from its
theory being supported by actual facts.

The Calling of the Community by the Election of Favoue.
The actual course of events in the preponderating conversion
of the GentUes in comparison with the Jews," was, as we have
remarked, the more offensive to the latter (even to those who
had become Christians), as it appeared to stand in direct contra
diction to the Divine promises. This objection, that the word of
God with its promises to Israel had been done away by means
of the mission of Paul to the Gentiles, with its blessed con
sequences, he endeavours in Eom. ix. — xi to encounter And
this he does by a double Une of argument. First, by a sharp
polemical attack directed against Jewish arrogance, which pre
sumed that the Jew had a privileged claim to the Divine favour :
he has no more right to it than any other man, for the Divine
favour is unconditioned by anything human, and is absolutely
free in its bestowal and refusal (chap. ix.). But, secondly, he
endeavours to secure peace, by inspiring the hope of a concUia-
tory termination of the present discord, according to which the
blindness which had fallen upon the greater part of Israel was
to be only a temporary one, which should not prevent the final
fulfilment of the promise of favour to Israel as a nation (chaps.
X. and xl).

THE CALLING OF THE COMMUNITY. 245
In the first place, the Apostle proves from the Old Testament
history that the Divine promises were not from the beginning
attached to the natural offspring of Abraham, consequently not
to the fact of externally belonging to the nation, but were quite
independent of this, and purely a matter of free choice. Accord
ingly, of the several chUdren of Abraham's body, it was only the
child of promise, Isaac, who was to be the receiver of the pro
mises which were given to the seed of Abraham, and the proge
nitor of those who were to be sons of God, i. e. belonging to
God, members of the theocracy. It was the same, again, with the
twin sons born to Isaac — only one of these, Jacob, who was
inferior to his brother, born after him (whereby the Divine pur
pose was to be exhibited as electing freely, without regard .to
human conditions, KaT iKXoyyv TrpSOecris), was chosen to receive
the promises, and that before he was born, therefore before there
could be a question of any personal merit ; the cause lay in no
relation in which he stood to his brother, but wholly in God,
who simply loved the one and hated the other (ix. 6 — 13). But
that God has the full right to do this, He himself testifies with
regard to both,— as to the freedom of dyaTr^v, in the words which
He says to Moses, " To whomsoever I am gracious, to him I am
gracious ; and on whomsoever I have compassion, on him I have
compassion ;" and as to the freedom of picreiv, by his speech to
Pharaoh, " Even for this cause have I raised thee up in order to
show my power on thee, that is, by thy destruction." Hence it
follows, that whether a man obtains compassion from God or not,
does not depend upon his own wUl' and independent striving
("running"), but solely upon the wUl of God, which in both
cases is equaUy an unconstrained wUl, whether He shows com
passion on any one, or places any one in such a spiritual state
that he is not an object of his love, but of his anger ("hard
ens," a-KXypvvei). This is certainly exposed to the objection, that
K the determination of the Di"vine will is thus free from limita
tion, the freedom of man, and consequently his responsibility, is
done away. And what says the Apostle on this subject ? Far

246 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY,
from meeting this objection, which he himseK makes, with py
yevoiTo, as he is wont in such cases, he silently admits it, and
simply puts down aU further questions and claims by the boldest
inference from a religious mode of "viewing the matter, which is
magnificent in its one-sidedness. He silences aU human claims
by referring to the unconditional dependence of man upon God,
which he could not have expressed in more stringent terms than
by the figure of the potter and his vessel. As the shape has
become what it is solely by the wiU of Him who shaped it, and
who has free power out of the same material to make some vessels
for honourable uses, and others for uses that are not honourable,
— so man also is what he is, moraUy and reUgiously, only through
God, and must not complain K he has become something bad,
because God is unconditionally free, as we know, out of the same
material of human nature, to stamp some as recipients of his
compassion, with the final purpose of their being glorified, and
others as recipients of his anger, "with the final purpose of their
perdition. But there is a further objection, which is not indeed
expressed, but which is clearly in the Apostle's mind, and sug
gests to him- what foUows, viz.. What possible ground can God
have for making men recipients of his anger, destined to destruc
tion ? One would think that the most ob"vious answer to this
would be, that He desired to display his anger, and to make
known his power ; the ground of sueh action on the part of God
would thus be his purpose of revealing his holiness, which
makes no exceptions, but absolutely annihilates that which is
evil (whatever its origin may be), and his absolute power, which
can do what it wiU, without asking any one else. Only it
appears that the Apostle, while wishing to say this, felt himseK
that this purpose was no sufficient ground for action so gravely
contradictory to the manifestation of the Divine compassion. But
what if this apparent contradiction of his compassion should
turn out to be, on the contrary, the most brUliant proof of it ?
And in fact it is in this bold carrying out of the doctrine of
predestination that the Apostle's argument (ver. 22 f) culmi-

THE CALLING OF THE COMMUNITY. 247
nates : But what if God, wishing to show his anger, and make
known his power, (not only made, ver. 21, but also) endwred with
much patience vessels of anger, made for destruction, purposing at
the same time to make known the riches of his majesty (abounding
in favour) on the vessels of mercy whom He has prepared for gloi-y?
We have here — and this makes the construction involved, al
though the thought is clear — two different motives for the pre
destinating action of God entwined together. First, the more
general one, which refers to the vessels of anger merely as such,
and to their existence, i e. their having been made so by God
(OeXcov ivSei^acrOai .... Svvarov a-vTov) — viz., revelation of the hoU
ness and unlimited power of God ; secondly, a more special
motive, which refers to the vessels of anger in their relation to
the vessels of niercy, and therefore not merely to their coming
into being, but at the same time to their existing together with
these, and which thus manifests itself also in the mercKul pre
servation (¦^'vcyKcv iv TToXXy paKpoOvpicj) of the vessels of anger,
Kat tva Sd^av — viz., revelation of his mercy, to which even evil
must minister as means to good.
The harshness of this "view has often given offence, and has
led to aU kinds of attempts to soften it down. In the first
place, it has been thought that the passive KaTypTia-peva might
be turned into a reflective verb, " who have fitted themselves "
for destruction — in contradiction both to the true meaning of
the word and that of the context. The word KaTypTia-peva corre
sponds too exactly to d TrpoyToipacrev iu the following, and to
TToiyirai — ets dripiav in the preceding verse, not to have God like
wise for its active cause; and besides. Is it not precisely the
purpose of the whole section, xiv. — xxiii, 'to prove that ^ato-eiv as
well as dya;rav, crKXyp-vveiv as weU as lAcetv, are matters of the free
determination of the wUl of God ? Any admixture of subjective
human causaUty in connection with these is a distortion of the
sense, which, as clearly as possible, by the consistently worked
out figure of the potter and his vessel, excludes aU human caus
ality. But again, the con"vincing force of this analogy has been

248 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
cohipletely destroyed by understanding ver. 22 f to express the
opposite of ver. 20 f , as if the Apostle wished to say, that in the
abstract God has indeed an absolute right over man, as the
potter has over his vesseL but (Se, ver. 22) in the concrete He has
never made any use at aU of this right ; on the contrary. He has
wilh great patience endured vessels of -wrath, who, through their
own fault (of unbelief), had faUen under the anger of God, and
were ripe for destruction, in order to bring them to repentance.^
But how thoroughly forced is aU this ! KaTypna-peva els ott., as
we have seen, does not mean " ripe for destruction through their
own fault," but fitted for destruction, that is to say, by God ;
and ver. 23 says with the utmost conceivable distinctness, that
the purpose of ij'veyKev Iv TToAAjf paKpo6vp.tif is not the showing of
favour on the vessels of "wrath (by their conversion), but exactly
the contrary, namely, the sho-wing of favour on the others, the
vessels chosen and prepared beforehand for mercy.
So far then is the Apostle from retracting in ver. 22 f what
he has said before, that he here, on the contrary, carries on his
argument to its conclusion. Yet in this very conclusion his
powerful dialectic turns aside again its- sharpest point. The
harshness of the thought that God has made vessels of "wrath
only to display his anger and his power, is e"vidently paUiated,
when it is shown that this is not the sole nor the final purpose,
but is nothing more than a means to the end of compassion.
According to this view, it is not abstract power (which as such
is merely physical), nor abstract holiness (which as such is
merely negative and condemnatory), the former being the cha
racteristic of the GentUe, the latter preponderating in the Je"wish
notion of God, but it is compassionate love which is exalted
above all else in the Christian idea of God ; and the revelation
of this is set forth as the only absolute final end in itseK, to
which the revelation of power and of hoUness are subordinated
as merely relative or intermediate purposes. But when once
' So Tholuh, Comm., and Weiss, N. Tie. Theol. p. 354 ; also in his article in Jahrb.
f. d. Th. 1857.

THE GALLING OF THE COMMUNITY. 249
the revelation of the holiness that judges, or of anger, as attri
butes of God, are recognized as relative and subordinate in com
parison with the absolute end of the revelation of love, then it
is a very obvious and logically necessary conclusion, that this
relation of the Divine attributes to each other should also be
reflected in the present temporal state of mankind, in such wise
that the realization of the relative moment (anger) should also
be relative in respect to time, i. e. only a temporary means
towards the final goal of the absolute purpose, the revelation of
love ; i e. that the hardening of some should be, even for these
themselves, only a temporary state which should eventually end
in the universal bestowal of favour. This thought, which is
involved in the argument of ver. 22 f , is now indeed laid aside,
wholly untouched by the Apostle ; for his main object here is to
establish in its full force, which smites down all human pride, the
unconditioned right of God to exercise his sovereign power both
in hardening and in showing mercy, and to assert this against
the arrogated right of the Jews. But what he here in grand
one-sidedness leaves out of view, he does not on that account
entirely forget, but brings it forward again in chap, ii, where
his attention is fixed on the final end of God's deaUngs with the
Jews in respect of the Gentiles. The Apostle then has certainly
not solved in chap. ix. the enigma of the present, which so
greatly shocked the reUgious consciousness of the Jews, but has
thrust it back into a predestination before aU time, aUowing it
to remain there in all the harshness of an opposing dualism, viz.
a lo"ving God, who, with a freedom that acts without any grounds,
shows compassion on those whom He chooses, and prepares them
for glory, and a hating God who hardens those whom He chooses,
and fits these for destruction. The struggling of the reason,
which ever seeks for unity, against this dualism in God, is put
down by the authoritative words, Mevovvye J dvOponre, o-v tis e' 6
avTarroKpivopevos t<J) del^ ; nevertheless, it is this very dogmatical
hardness which, by its inward dialectic force, urges us on to the
perception that the love of God is wider than his anger, and

250 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
thus this duality resolves itself into the unity of the wUl to
love ; a perception from the height of which a "view of the phUo
sophy of history opens out to us, which promises such a solution
of the religious enigma of the present as wUl satisfy our reU
gious aspirations.
But before the Apostle enters upon this path in chap, xi, he
takes up (from ix. 30 to x. 21) the non-conversion of the Jews
from another point of view, viz. the anthropological and moraL
which serves to complete the theological and reUgious view. If
the hardening of Israel is, from the latter point of view, a
divinely-appointed destiny, against which it does not become
weak man to murmur, it is, on the other hand, from the former,
his own fault, because he did not submit himseK obediently to
the word of faith, the gospel of righteousness, which was offered
as a gift by God, but, on the contrary, persisted in his proud
attempt to set up his own righteousness, to be won by works of
the law, and therefore came to fall against the gospel as a stone
of stumbUng. Israel, by struggUng against the way of salvation
newly ordained by God, proved itself again — ^in spite of present
zeal .on behalf of the law — to be a disobedient and stubborn
nation, just as it had before in the time of the prophets, who so
often had reason to complain of their stiffneckedness (the
Apostle quotes examples from the Pentateuch and Isaiah in
X. 16 — 21). It is true that so far as this want of faith in
the gospel on the part of Israel depends essentiaUy on ignorance
and want of perception, which accompanied what was after aU
a zealous striving after the good (x. 2, 18), the main element of
moral guUt disappears again; for it is plain that we are not
morally accountable for faUing to understand a higher stage of
religion, in the same way as we are for offending against better
knowledge and conscience. It is plainly to be seen, however,
throughout this exposition, that the Apostle has no intention to
restrict the view of predestination contained in chap, ix., which
would be in part to retract it ; but the objective theological and
the subjective anthropological modes of "viewing the matter

THE CALLINO OF THE COMMUNITY. 251
proceed here paraUel to one another, and unreconcUed, as if each
were complete and separately valid, a pecuUarity which we have
already often noticed in Paul. And as before in a similar case
(sin, according to 1 Cor.-xv. f and Eom. v. 12), we were obliged
to reject the combination of the one with the other, as an intro
duction of ideas alien to Paul's mode of thought, so here also it
would be a decided forcing of the train of thought to explain,
i e. to weaken, chap. ix. by chap, x., according to the weU-known
method of rationaUzing exegesis, in the sense that, after aU, the
Divine lAeetv and o-KAijpvveiv, TrpocreTOipd^eiv eis So^av and KaTapTi^eiV
ets aTTioXeiav, had their ultimate ground, not in the free wiU of
God (ov ^cAci), but in the free wiU of man, who beUeves, or
.by his own fault does not believe.
An attempt has been made to support this interpretation,
which directly contradicts the sense of the words of chap, ix.,
by the help, among other things, of the idea of n-poytyvtoa-Kciv in
Eom. viU. 29. In that passage, it is said, the predestining of
God is dependent on his foreknowledge, the object of which is
of course free human beUef or unbeUef ; the unconditioned wUl of
God acts therefore only to the extent of sho"wing compassion on
believers in generaL and rejecting the unbeUevers ; but what in
dividuals are included in one or the other category is also indeed
predetermined by God, not however by an unconditioned deter
mination of wiU, but by an application of wUl dependent on
foreseen belief or unbeUef, and therefore conditioned by man.
'Whether this separation of favour and freedom has any value or
not, it is not Pauline. For, in the first place, it does an out
rageous violence to the ov OeXei, which distinctly connects the
Divine act of wUl, and that as an unconditioned sovereign act,
with each single indi"vidual ; and, moreover, it mistakes the real
sense of Eom. viii. 29 f , especiaUy that of irpoytyvtoo-Ketv. That
this does not mean a merely theoretical foreknowledge of beha-
"viour on the part of man (free beUef or unbelief), independent
of God's "wUUng and acting, is proved by xi. 2, where Trpoeyvco,
appUed to the people of Israel, cannot possibly mean anything

252 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
but the free election of God, by which that people became pecu
liarly his own.^ Accordingly, Trpoeyvco in Eom. viii. 29, may also
mean appointing beforehand, or electing some indi-viduals in
preference to others. And that it must mean this is proved by
the context. The object of the passage is plainly to show that
the KaTd TTp.6dea-iv kAijtoi reach without faU the final goal which
is destined for them. This rrpoOeo-is is now separated into the
two verbs Trpoeyvco and Trpoiopicre, of which the first denotes the
appointing = selecting of the persons, the second the destination
to which they are appointed ; both together are the Ik Aoy^
xdpiTos (Eom. xi. 5), i. e. the election which has the favourable
will of God for its ground, and the S6^a (viii. 30 and ix. 23) for
its final goal. The acts of KaXeiv and SiKawvv, the calling through
the preaching of the gospel that is the cause of beUeving (x.
14, 17), and the justification that is its consequence, which occur
in time, form the intermediate connection between the act of pre
destination and that of glorification in the eternal Ufe, both of
which transcend time.^ We should observe how, in this chain
of firmly closed Unks (rrpoeyvco, Trpoiopure, iKoAccre, iSiKatcoa-e, ISd^ao-e),
the Divine acts depend on one another in such a way that one
does not merely foUow upon another, but is its necessary conse
quence. For it is the very purpose of this passage to show that,
when one of these Di"vine acts has once occurred, the others "will
likewise infaUibly occur; or more particularly, whoever has once
known himself to be called and justified as a beUever, may be

^'Also in 1 Peter i. 20, Christ is said to be TrpoeyvaicrpevoQ Trpb icara/SoX^c Koafiov,
evidently not because God knew from the beginning concerning him that he would
come, but because God had from the beginning appointed him to come, as the Messiah
who should take away sin, and therefore should be a partaker of his glory, in which
character he has now revealed himself.
' This follows from the idea of So^a which is found in all the writings of Paul, and
especiaUy from the exact parallel in ix. 23, where So^a, opposed to aTrdXeia, raust
mean eternal life; comp. also 2 Cor. iv. 17. "We must not be perplexed by the aorist
iSo^aae in the passage before us; it represents the So^a, which is to be hereafter
entered upon, as something which is already secured to him who is justified, as an
inheritance which the Son already as good as possesses, although he will only enter
into the enjoyment of it at a future time (cf. viii. 17).

THE CALLING OF THE COMMUNITY. 253
sure that he has already been long before chosen by God in the
CK Aoy^ xdpiTos, and predestined to the final goal of Sd^a, which
for that very reason wUl also surely be reaUzed in him ; so
surely, that it is as good as reaUzed already. This securely
linked chain of Divine acts, which develope themselves infallibly
from one another, nowhere, therefore, leaves an opening for any
human self-determination taking part against or for Christ ; yet
faith is so far from being thereby excluded, that it is, on the
contrary, the necessary means, but only the means, by which
the Divine Trp60ea-is which has been manifested by the KaAetv
first realizes itself inwardly in the man, in order finally to realize
itself outwardly also in the S6^a. The question obviously arises
here, how it is to be explained that the Divine KaAeiv through the
preaching of the gospel, which mauKests the TrpoOems, has as its
certain consequence the faith of him who is elected, which is
presupposed as necessary for the further acts of StKatovv and
So^dfetv. This question is put aside here by the Apostle, since
he is only dealing with those in whom faith was already an
actual fact, and he has therefore no inducement to reflect on the
abstract possibility that they might not have become believers.
On the other hand, we may find in ix. 23, TrpoyToipacrev, an inti
mation which bears upon this question ; for this word appears
to indicate, not merely, like Trpocopure, an ideal predestination in
the Divine counseL but a real predisposition, i e. a moral dispo
sition prepared by God, in consequence of which those who are
affected by it are receptive of the Divine KaAetv, and thus by the
same cause infallibly allow themselves to be induced to beUeve.
The reverse side of this is, that those in whose case the preach
ing by which they are caUed has not had this result, have not
obtained the receptive disposition to it, or, to express it posi
tively, have been made unreceptive by God, hardened from the
first, and thus fitted for destruction — KaTypTia-peva els dirwAeiav.
Thus Eom. viU. 28 — 30 completely agrees with chap. ix. in the
sense of a decided doctrine of predestination, which is distinctly
opposed to any introduction of free decision of the human will.

254 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
And how could it be otherwise in the view of an Apostle, whose
most special pecuUarity consists throughout in reflecting the
actual world, with all its contradictions and all its harshness,
into the other world of the Di"vine wUl, and apprehending it, not
as a thing that is merely in some way permitted, but as expressly
willed and wrought out by God ?
If, however, this doctrine of predestination is left untouched
and unsoftened in its harshness as regards the individuals
affected by it, we must also remember that the Apostle nowhere
speciaUy reflects on these. In Eom. "viU. 29 f , he speaks only of
the elect, for whom the doctrine of predestination, precisely by
reason of its determinateness, being independent of anything
finite, serves as a most comforting support of their certainty of
salvation; and therefore the harshness of the reverse side simply
remains unnoticed. In Eom. ix. 14 f , both sides, it is true, are
dealt with, election and rejection, vessels of "wrath and vessels of
mercy ; but to whatever extent the abstract theory connects the
two-fold counsel of God with individuals, yet the whole of this
exposition refers in the concrete to the people of Israel as ha"ving
— the majority of them at least — remamed unbelieving compared
with the GentUes, who had been more incUned to Christianity.
And the prospect of the future course of the Divine guidance of
events offers a satisfactory explanation of this conduct, inasmuch
as the hardening of the one is recognized as a merely temporary
means to a final universal bestowal of favour. True it is that
Israel as a people have stumbled (eTrraia-e, xi. 11), but not so that
it should irretrievably faU. This is absolutely impossible ; God
cannot for ever repudiate his chosen people, whose root and pro
genitors, the patriarchs, were holy and devoted to God, because
He cannot repent of his gifts and his calling (xi. 1, 16, 28, 29).
And that He has not in fact done so is proved by there being a
remnant chosen from the mass (Xeip,pa kut iKXoyqv), which now
again, as a similar remnant did before in the time of EUas, main
tains the continuity of the chosen nation, and constitutes a
pledge that the Divine favour is stiU reserved for the chosen

THE CALLING OF THE COMMUNITY. 255
nation as a whole, in spite of the hardening of the present
majority of those who belong to it In virtue of this chosen
remnant, the nation, which in regard to the gospel is at enmity
with God, is stUl an object of his love, for the sake of the
fathers (ver. 28). But why then has God aUowed this nation
to stumble at aU ? why hardened the greater part of it ? From
their false step, salvation is to come to the heathen ; the natural
branches are broken off, and the GentUes, as wUd twigs, have
been grafted in. This actual course of events, which Paul had
before his eyes as the result of his missionary labours, he recog
nizes as a Divine dispensation — the unbeUef of the Jews is to be
historically the means of applying the Divine compassion to the
GentUes (vers. 11, 17, 30). But if this were the only and the
final purpose of God in this transaction, then would the chosen
nation be sacrificed in favour of the Gentiles who were not
chosen, and thus God's gift of favour and his caUing would be
revoked, which, from what has been said above, cannot be and
is not the case. Therefore Israel cannot be finaUy sacrificed for
the sake of the heathen, but his partial hardening is, according
to tbe counsel of God, only to last for a time, namely, untU the
purpose of it is attained — "until the time wlien the full number of
the Gentiles shall have entered into the kingdom of God." Thus,
as soon as this object is attained, the whole of Israel wiU also be
made blessed (ver. 25 f). And, in truth, the reahzation of this
latter object in favour of Israel wUl be brought about again by
the attainment of the previous object by the heathen, as the
counsel of favour to be conferred on the Gentiles had before
been brought about by the counsel of hardening which was to
befal the Jews. And it will be brought about in this way —
the fact of the GentUes entering first into the kingdom of God,
the more it advances to completion, and the greater the number
of the converted GentUes becomes, will so much the more incite
Israel to emulation, so that they also, who at first were un-
bslieving with regard to the gospel, wUl at last themselves
obtain mercy (vers. 11, 14, Trapa^yXZcrai, ver. 31) by means of

256 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
the mercy that the GentUes have experienced (by being shamed
and drawn on by this event). And further, if the GentUes
shaU thus have helped the Jews to salvation by taking prece
dence of them, then again wiU those who have been the first
derive the greatest advantage from it; for if the fall of the Jews
was the riches of the GentUes, how much more wiU abundant
salvation accrue to the GentUes from the completion of the
number of the (converted) Jews ! If the rejection of the Jews
served as a means of reconciliation for the (Gentile) world, then
must the final acceptance of the Jews serve no meaner end than
the completion of the time of salvation for the whole world, the
commencement of the final redemption that is to be ushered in
by the resurrection from the dead (vers. 12, 15).
Thus in the Apostle's splendid phUosophy of history, one
moment ever becomes the means of attaining to the next higher
moment of the Divine counseL until at last the whole culminates
in the final end of 'the will of God to bestow universal favour —
"for God has concluded the whole under disobedient, to the end
tliat He might show compassion upon the 'whole." It is true that
this text is not to be understood in the sense of the strictly dog
matic djroKaTao-Tao-is, because conversion in the world beyond the
grave does not come under consideration' here; on the contrary,
the mode of treatment is essentiaUy historicaL reflecting on a
final conversion of the whole of mankind who shall then stUl be
on the earth. But even so, it advances in its speculative grandeur
far beyond the narrow pale of the thoughts of ecclesiastical dog
matism regarding the future, whether it be that of Cal"vdnistic
predestination or of Lutheran indeterminism. In opposition to
the latter, this passage yields conclusive evidence that Paul held
the reUgious doctrine of predestination ; for we are by no means
justified in Umiting the tovs ^rdvTas, which denotes " aU the indi-
¦viduals,". to mere classes of persons, nor in adding mentally the
condition that they actually beUeve, by which the whole point
of the passage would manifestly be destroyed ; for the object
contemplated by the Divine counsel, the ultimate reahzation of

THE OALLING OF THE COMMUNITY. 257
which the Apostle declares to be certain, is precisely that all,
including those who had before been disobedient, should finally
be so no more, but should be converted and rescued. But this
predestination is not that of a two-fold definitive decree, like
that of Calvin. If the Apostle has in chap. ix. referred the con
tradictions which the reality exhibits to a two-fold will of God,
yet here, in the prospect of the future, this duality resolves itself
into the higher unity of a counsel of favour, which embraces all,
and which no longer has its opposite beside it as a limit, but
under it, as a means which serves the single final end. The
rejected no longer stand over against the chosen, but those who
appear to be such are in truth only those who have provisionally
been passed over, and put back, whose turn to be taken up into
salvation has not yet come, but who, on the contrary, are still
for the present held fast by the will of God in the bondage of
sin and disobedience, but this, nevertheless, only in order that by
means of the others, who have entered before them into favour,
they also may yet become partakers of the same salvation, and
that so salvation may come upon all equally, as a free gift of the
favour of God. But as this speculation on the philosophy of
religion embraces the whole world's history, as the realization in
successive moments of the Divine idea of the world, which is in
itself one, though of many parts, so from this height, not merely
the unbelief of the Jews, but at last the sin of man in generaL
is seen to be a moment in the process towards the absolute end
of salvation. If the Divine counsel includes aU under sin, for the
purpose of realizing itself upon all as redeeming favour, then in
fact sin also is included in that Divine counsel, i. e. not merely
permitted, but ordained as a means to the revelation of favour.
If we have already seen in the doctrine of the law, that it was
given by God, according to PaiU, not to guard against sin, but to
increase it, for the sake of the redemption which is brought
about through it, then it is but a small and logically necessary
step which the speculation of the Apostle makes in gaining this
crowning eminence of his dogmatic exposition, .when he recog-
s

258 THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
nizes the fact of being in bondage under sin (the state of the
natural man, Eom. vii) as the means appointed by God for the
reahzation of his favour— a height truly to which ecclesiastical
dogmatism has been unable to follow him.
This universal realization of the favourable wiU of God forms,
according to the Apostle, the concluding epoch of the develop
ment of the plan of salvation, and the commencement of the
completion of salvation (xi. 15), to the consideration of which
therefore we have now finally to pass.

CHAPTEE VII.
THE COMPLETION OF SALTATION.

In this portion of his teaching, the Apostle Paul stands indeed,
for the most part, on the common ground held by the primitive
Church, although some specificaUy Pauline features wUl be found
here also. Paul has made no attempt to accommodate these to
the traditional eschatological views, nor to modify the latter in
the spirit of his gospeL The consequence is, that it is here least
of aU possible to obtain a coherent representation of his views ;
on the contrary, we meet everywhere either with actual contra
dictions or at least with inconsistencies, which it is the business
of our exegesis simply to note as such, and to explain geneticaUy,
instead of reconciling them according to our own arbitrary judg
ment. The coming of Christ is with Paul also the central point of
the eschatology ; but the position of this event, both with refer
ence to the intermediate state of individuals, looking to the past,
and, looking to the future, with reference to the end of the world,
presents many unsolved antinomies.
• The Coming of Cheist.
Paid, together with the entire primitive Church, expects the
speedy return of Christ to the earth, in a visible form, to under
take the management of his kingdom ; he calls it Trapovcria, 1 Cor.
s2

260 THE COMPLETION OF SALVATION.
XV. 23 ; djTOKdAvi/'is, or ypepa tov Kvptov, i 7, 8, and V. Simulta
neously with this event, the whole body of Christians will pass
over into that state which is conformable to the kingdom of God,
a spiritual corporeality, which not being fleshly is no more sub
ject to decay, and is analogous to the heavenly body of the risen
Christ, which consists, as before explained, of heavenly light-
substance (Sd^a). This transition wUl take place in those who
are at that moment living by a change of their earthly bodies
into heavenly bodies, and in those who are dead by the resurrec
tion. As regards the resurrection body, it is not, at all events, any
longer the old fleshly body, for flesh and blood are, according to
1 Cor. XV. 50, precisely that which cannot enter into the king
dom of God ; moreover, if it were so, the body of those who sur
vived tiU then would require no change. It is not equaUy clear
whether the resurrection body is to be a completely new one,
having no relation to the old, or only a new and higher form of
the old body, stripped of earthly and fleshly materiality. The
latter view appears to be supported by the analogy of the resur
rection body of Christ, which Paul conceived^ not as an entirely
new one, having no relation to the old (which would then have
remained in the grave), but as identical, at least in its form, if
not also in its material, with the body which was put to death,
inasmuch as it came into being from that body, by being re-ani-

' Holsten, ut supra, p. 132 f. and note, maintains this very decidedly, and declares
the contrary view to be a misconception of the main idea of PauUnism. Only he
happens here again (as in many other instances) to be wrong in drawing a too strictly
logical inference from the weak point of the conception. His argument is inconclu
sive, because it rests upon a dilemma to which Paul was indifferent, that either the
resurrection body was an entirely new one, which had nothing in common with the •
body that was put to death, or it was the old "fleshly body" which had necessarily to
be done away with, in order to the accomplishment of redemption. The above exposi
tion, on the contrary, gives the tertium of the Pauline (and general primitive Chris
tian) conception. (Moreover, Holsten's assertion (ut supra) that the doing away with
the adpi, in the death on the cross is the fundamental idea on which the Pauline
gospel rests, is incorrect.) Holsten himself has elsewhere well demonstrated thab
this is rather the idea of the means of reconciliation, which belongs to quite a different
range of thought. For further details on this subject see Chap. ii.

THE COMING OF CHRIST. 261
mated, and at the same time changed ; for on no other supposi
tion could such terms as " resurrection '' and " rising from the
dead " have been appropriately used. The analogy of the grain
of seed, which comes into new life by dying, also supports this
view, for the point of this analogy lies precisely in the changing,
the passing over of the old out of decomposition into a new
structure, where the substratum of the process still remains the
same, and an entirely new thing does not take the place of the
old. But in 2 Cor. v. 1 f , the resurrection body is spoken of as
a " buUding of God " which we have in heaven, in thp case of the
dissolution of our earthly tent, which is the present body (as a
substitute kept ready for us), which we therefore, even whilst
we are here, long for in order that we may be clothed upon /rom
heaven. According to this text it appears as if the resurrection
body did not come into existence from the old one, which rested
in the grave, by means of a change of its substance, but was
related to it as a new garment, which previously existed in
heaven, in order that it might be put on us from thence —
whether as a substitute for the old, or put on over the old
(iTTcvSiJcraa-^at). In this case, then, it would certainly not be easy
to see why this new house or garment should not be given to us
immediately after death, instead of waiting tUl the resurrection ;
especiaUy as it appears from ver 8 that the dwelling with the
Lord begins immediately after the departure from the body.
Is, then, the soul of the departed Christian which is dwelling
with the Lord, to be nevertheless obUged to wait to be worthUy
housed untu the general resurrection ? Nothing in the passage
before us points to such a conclusion ; on the contrary, it may
be inferred from ver. 3,^ that we shaU never be left in a condi-
^ Of the different explanations of this passage, which is rendered doubly difficult by
the various readings (an enumeration of which is given by the commentators), the
simplest appears to me to be the following : " jd Ithottgh (e'lTrep) should we even be
unclothed (EKSvcrdpevoi, i. e. even though we may not depart without laying aside our
old garment, without dying), we yet shall not (need to fear that we shall ever) be
foimd viithout a body." Thus the Apostle wishes to limit the desire to be clothed
upon, which he had before expressed, by reminding himself, as it were, for comfort in
case of its non-fulfilment, that even iu the less happy event of having actually to die,

262 THE COMPLETION OF SALVATION.
tion of nakedness, i. e. existence without a body. Many com
mentators, therefore, clearly perceiving this difhculty, have sup
posed the heavenly house or garment to be merely a provisional
body for the intermediate state. But not only is there no inti
mation of any kind in the passage before us that would justify
this hypothesis, but it is one which is quite alien to the whole
tenor both of Paul's teaching and that of the Bible ; and it must,
therefore, be regarded only as a desperate resource, adopted by
an arbitrarUy harmonizing exegesis, determined to reconcUe at
any cost the discordance which here manifests itseK.
If the Christians rise from the dead together at the coming of
Christ, then they are, untU that time, in a merely provisional
intermediate state, which can the less be regarded as a state of
vitality and happiness in proportion as these qualities are more
decidedly connected with regaining possession of the body.^
The Apostle describes it as sleep, Koipdo-Oai (1 Cor. xi 3(), xv. 6,
XX. 51), to which common expression he doubtless attached only
the common meaning of a diin shadowy existence, from which
the feeling of Ufe and its activity are absent .As to the how
and the where of this state, he had the less occasion to go into
detaUs, as he hoped, for himself and most of the Christians
of his time, to survive till the coming of Christ, and so to pass
directly, by being changed, from the earthly Ufe to the higher
Ufe of the Messiah's kingdom, without passing through that
intermediate state (1 Cor. xv. 52, ypeis dXXayycropeOa, opposed to
vcKpoi iyepO-rjcrovTai : and 1 Thess. iv. 15 and 17, 'yp,eis 01 fSvTes ot
the soul will not be in a state of nakedness (without a body), but, on the contrary,
will immediately (this is implied in exof^ev, ver. 1) obtain its new body from heaven
(and be in heaven, ver. 8). In this sense the whole passage is entirely consistent irith
itself, though certainly at variance with the idea of the resurrection at the coming of
Christ. ^ The whole of the argument for the necessity of a resurrection in 1 Cor. xv. would
be superfluous, without the supposition that the condition of the dead, previously to
the resurrection, was an unhappy one. If it already consisted in communion of soul
with the glorified Jesus in heaven [Weiss, p. 393), what necessity would there be iu
that case for the resurrection ? And how could this communion with Christ be de
scribed as a KoipdcrBai, whereas it is, on the contrary, according to Rom. viii. 17, a
cTvvSo^affBtjvai ?

THE COMING OF CHRIST. 263
irepiXei-TTopevoi ets Tyv Trapovcrlav tov Kvpiov ov p,y cfiOdcrcopev tovs
Koip.yOevTas). But intelligible as it is that, assuming the near
ness of the coming of Christ, the intermediate state might
appear to be of little importance, and the unsatisfactory nature
of it, according to the traditional Jewish view, might escape
notice, it is yet equally certain that the matter would assume
quite another aspect, so soon as the preponderating sense of the
nearness of death brought the state that was to follow death, as
being the object of immediate expectation, into the foreground of
consciousness and of interest, and threw the prospect of the
coming of Christ and of the general resurrection into the back
ground. Consequently the object of Christian hope — the com
munion with Christ in the kingdom of glory — advanced a step
nearer, as it immediately succeeded to the moment of death. If
death is the laying aside of that fleshly body which has hitherto
been the hindrance to full communion "with the Lord, and to
the reahzation of the freedom of sonship (Eom. viii. 21, 23), and
whose fault it is that we are relatively at a distance from the
Lord (iK&f)pya-ai drro tov Kvpi'ov, 2 Cor. V. 6), why should not that
state, which is guaranteed as to its certainty, and prepared with
respect to its real possibiUty, by the spirit of sonship which
already dwells in us, commence at the moment when this hin
drance ceases, at the death therefore of the fleshly body ? Comp.
PhU. Ui. 10, 11 ; 2 Cor. v. 5 ; Eom. viU. 11. In thus foifliding
the resurrection on the communion of IKe with Christ which
aUeady exists, or on the spirit of Christ which dweUs in us
(wherefore this spirit is distUictly caUed " Ufe," in opposition to
the body which is forfeited to death, Eom. viii. 10), the ground
of the Jewish eschatology, which depended on particular Mes
sianic miracles, is implicitly abandoned, and the Christian idea
substituted for it, according to which the completion of salvation
depends on an essentially immanent development of the higher
Ufe, which is already inwardly present, as is brought out more
distinctly in the theology of John. In fact, the acceptance of
the intermediate state, which is connected with the waiting for

264 THE COMPLETION OF SALVATION.
the coming of Christ, is inconsistent with the way in which
Paul joins Christian hope to the present possession of salvation
by the Christian. Is the object of Christian hope, according to
Paul, only the completion of that salvation which is not merely
promised by God (the Jewish Christian notion), but already
reaUy present as life in Christ or in the spirit, and only hin
dered from external manifestation by the opposing reality of the
fleshly body ? If so, it is impossible to see why the realization
of that hope, the completion of the life of the spirit, which is
now already inwardly actual, by the external manKestation of
the Sofa, should not begin immediately after death, but be post
poned tUl the coming of Christ, while the operative power of the
spirit remains as it were latent or suspended, in spite of the
removal of its hindrance (the flesh), from the time of death until
the coming of Christ From this standpoint of the aheady
present life in the spirit, the hope of passing immediately after
death into the state of completed salvation, of dweUing with
Christ, and being " clothed upon " "with a body of a higher kind
corresponding with the spirit is most obvious and most reason
able ; and the Apostle has undeniably (2 Cor. v. 1 f and PhU.
i. 23) expressed this hope without the slightest reference to the
coming of Christ or an intermediate state. Only it is in the
highest degree characteristic of the teaching of PauL and a
repetition of the frequently remarked pecuUarity of it, that this
specifically Christian turn of thought by no means sets aside
that conception which is derived from entirely different pre
suppositions, and belongs to the specifically Jewish sphere of
thought (the coming of Christ simultaneously with the resurrec
tion) ; on the contrary, both views stand quite harmlessly side
by side, without any thought of their essential inconsistency,
much less any attempt to reconcile them.
The same thing happens with regard to the second point con
nected with the coming of Christ, the judgment. Agreeably to
the general Jewish and Jewish-Christian expectation, Paul
makes the Messianic reign begin with a great day of judgment,

THE COMING OF CHRIST. 265
and that catastrophe is caUed mainly in this sense " the day of
the Lord" (1 Cor. i 8; cf 7, v. 5, Ui. 13; 2 Cor. i 14; Eom.
ii 16). On this day aU Christians must appear at the judgment-
seat of Christ to give an account of their deeds ; and especiaUy
it will be made known whether their work done in the service
of Christ was good or not (Eom. xiv. 10; 2 Cor. v. 10; 1 Cor.
iii. 13). But, according to Eom. ii. 3 — 16, judgment wUl be
passed on all men (not only on Christians) by God (not by
Christ), when every man will be rewarded according to his
works. Not only is no intimation of a second day of judgment
given by the Apostle, which might justify us in regarding this
judgment as distinct from the judgment of Christians by Christ
at his coming, as just described, but, on the contrary, the identity
of the two is proved by Eom. ii. 16, inasmuch as at the great
day of judgment God will judge through Christ, or (according to
1 Cor. iv. 5) will dispense to every one his reward (and punish
ment?). Now a difhculty certainly arises out of the above state
ment, namely, that if the general judgment takes place at the
coming of Christ, there would afterwards remain no enemy to
be overcome during the reign of Christ, in the interval between
his coming and the end of the world, as it is plainly supposed
there wiU be, in 1 Cor. xv. 24, 25. This is connected with the
question of the miUennium, of which we shall shortly have to
speak. There is a further difficulty touching the principle on which
the judgment wiU proceed. The Apostle, without any limitation
and in general terms, states the rule to be recompence according
to works (Eom. ii 6 — 10), and also applies this specially to the
Christians, who were to receive at the judgment-seat of Christ
what they had done in (by means of) the Ufe op^e boCy,
whether good or eviL i e. the exact equivalent of their entire
moral action, in the shape of a corresponding recompence of
reward or punishment (2 Cor. v. 10). How does this agree with
the Apostle's doctrine of favour, which (Eom. iv. 4) excludes
aU reward which might pertain to action as such, because this

266 THE COMPLETION OF SALVATION.
would be a recompence KaT 6<j>eiXypa, and therefore not Kord
xdpiv ? How does it agree with the Apostle's doctrine of pre
destination, according to which the Divine purpose is asserted to
be a purpose grounded on the free choice of favour, by the fact
of its not being directed according to human action (Eom.
ix. 11 f, xi. 6)? How does it agree, finally, with the Christian
hope of the immediate union of departed Christians with their
glorified Lord, expressed in 2 Cor. v. 1 f , Phil, i 23, and there
fore of a blessedness that should begin directly after the laying
aside of this body of death ? This must necessarUy have been
disturbed, if not taken away, by the prospect of a judgment yet
to come, by which morally defective conduct — and such must
that of the best Christian ever remain- — ^had to expect punish
ment. We can hardly help percei"ving that there appears here
again in the retention of the expectation of a Messianic judg
ment, the opposition which constantly pervades the dogmatic
t.eaching of Paul, between the Christian mode of thought, which
apprehends the relation of man to God from the standpoint of
favour and sonship, and Jewish presuppositions, which have
their root in the judicial relation of performance and reward.
It may certainly be pointed out that, after aU, from the stand
point of Paul's doctrine of salvation, reward is not in every
sense excluded ; that, on the contrary, it may find a place on
the ground of Pauline anthropology (the doctrine of fiesh and
spirit), under the form of the natural congruence of the harvest
with the sowing (cf Gal. vi 7, 8. Comp. what is stated above.
Chap. V. p. 224 f). Only, certain as it is that the true moral core
of the Jewish doctrine of recompence is contained in this ethical
teleology, it is equaUy certain that it is not to be identified with
tKo judicial form of this Jewish doctrine, as distinctly embodied
in the conception of a "day of judgment." For a recompence in
exact equivalent to th6 sum of the actions, dependent on the
sentence of a judge, is the precise judicial form of the doctrine
of recompence, and is in simple and plain opposition to the
Pauline gospel. The ethical system, which apprehends moral

THE COMING OF CHRIST. 267
life as an organic development, in which every force must attain
to a corresponding efiect, every germ and every propensity to its
corresponding fruit, is based on quite a different point of view.
There, in the doctrine of judicial recompence, performance and
reward stand externally and mechanically over against each
other, and a balance is struck between them by an external
valuation (a thing impossible in the realm of morals) ; here, on
the contrary, performance ahd reward stand in the inwardly
organic relation, in which the one produces the other out of
itseK, like force and its effect, and the reward itself becomes
again an operative force, which produces from itself new per
formances. But the idea of a recompensing judicial sentence
which shall on a single " day of judgment " assign to every one,
at the same time and for ever, his reward or punishment, cannot
possibly form part of such an organic and ethical apprehension
of the relation of moral cause and effect ; for this organic moral
development is rather a constant process that varies in each
individuaL It is accordingly not to be denied that the judg
ment which Paul aUows to be connected with the coming of
Christ is as far from ha"ving anything in common with his fun
damental anthropological views, as it is fyom agreeing with his
doctrine of the favour of God. Nothing therefore remains but
to see in it a remnant of Jewish dogmatism unassimUated with
the rest of Paul's teaching.
The resurrection of Christians and the judgment are the events
immediately connected with the Trapovcria, but they by no means
constitute the end. On the contrary, the epoch of the Messianic
reign of Christ on the earth begins at the Trapovcria, that epoch
to which the a,uthor of the Apocalypse assigns a duration of a
thousand years, and which is therefore technically- caned-tiip.
" MiUennium," even when its duration is undetermined, as it is
with Paul. That PauL as weU as the writer of the Apocalypse,
assumes that there wUl be an interval (of undetermined length)
between the coming of Christ and the end of the world, during
which Christ wiU rule the earth in visible Messianic glory, and

268 THE COMPLETION OF SALVATION.
after which he wUl resign this sovereignty to God, is unmis
takably implied in 1 Cor. xv. 23 f In ver. 23, the order (riypa)
of the resurrection is discussed : first of all is Christ " the first-
fruits;" then at his Trapovcria foUow those who are Christ's; etra
TO TeAos, i. e. then is the end of the resurrection, namely, the
resurrection of aU ; which moment will be at the same time the
end of aU things, the end of this present world-period, because it
coincides in time with the giving over of the sovereignty to God
(orav TTapaSiSco ttjv /SacriXeiav TCf Oeco SC. d XpicTToS — UOtc the pre
sent tense TrapaStSaJ, which indicates that this giving over is
simultaneous with the end of the resurrection). We therefore
have here a series (Tdypa)- of moments of the resurrection, hi
which each is separated in time from the preceding one ; this is
expressed by aTrapxy — eTreiTa — etVa. This distinct idea of a Taypa,
which consists of different parts, and comprises different periods
of time, would be altogether destroyed by supposing that en-a to
tIAos is simultaneous with the preceding cTretTo — irapovo-i^i avrov:
for in that case there would be, at the coming of Christ, only one
thing, namely, the resurrection of the Christians, to be expected,
besides that of Christ which had preceded it, which evidently
would give no ground for speaking of a " series ;" and, moreover,
the fate of the entire non-christian world would have been
passed over in silence in an inconceivable manner. But apart
from this- negative argument, the Apostle also positively says
that the tcAos will occur at a point of time different from that of
the coming of Christ, nay, at an opposite point of time. That is
to say, the point of time of the tIAos is that at which Christ
gives up the ^acriXeia to God, after he shaU have conquered aU
hostile powers, for until that has happened he must ^aa-iXeieiv.
-New; according to the universal showing of the New Testament,
the Trapovcria is undeniably the point of time at which Christ
enters upon the /3acriXeia ; and to what end should he appear on
the earth in visible glory, if hot for the very purpose of entering
upon his sovereign dignity, and administering his regal of&ce m
the place of God ? A visible appearance on earth, not in order

THE COMING OF CHRIST. 269
to enter visibly upon the sovereignty he had until that time
exercised invisibly through the spirit, but in order to give it up
immediately to God, would surely be a contradiction to common
sense. Hence it follows undeniably that we must conceive the
TcAos when Christ gives up the fSacriXeia, as essentially different
from the Trapova-ia when he enters upon it, and in fact separated
from it by the period during which he reigns (fiamXevei), i. e. by
the period of the millennium (as it is caUed in the Apocalypse).
Thus, then, "we find Paul agreeing with the author of the
Apocalypse in the supposition of a period of the visible govern
ment of the world by Christ, between the Trapova-ia and the end
of the world. He differs from him, however, not merely in the
secondary matter of not assigning any definite duration to this
period, but in the more important respect, that he makes out
that the whole of this period is filled up with incessant warfare
against hostile powers, and conquest of them ; while the writer of
the Apocalypse, on the other hand, imagines this period to be a
time of blessed, unopposed, priestly dominion of Christ and the
believers ; while Satan is bound and unable to carry on his work
of perversion until the end of the thousand years, when he will
once more be let loose, and will be conquered.rin a short and
decisive battle (Eev. xx. 2 — 6 and 7 — 10). But what gives to
this difference its great importance is that, accorduig to the
Apocalyptic view, the millennium is the anticipation of heavenly
sovereignty and blessedness on the theatre of the world, which
is precisely' the Jewish idea of the Messiah's kingdom painted in
Christian colours ; whUe according to the Pauline view, on the
contrary, the millennium is merely the continuation of the pre
sent spiritual conquest of the world by the power of Christ, only
in such wise that it will at the same time be visibly present,
which we may describe as the Christian idea of the kingdom of
God in a Jewish form. It certainly follows from tbis, that no
really clear line can be fixed between the period preceding and
that following the Trapova-ia, and that what is to be placed before,
and what after it, remains in the greatest obscurity. As to the

270 THE COMPLETION 0> SALVATION.
conversion of the Gentiles and the Jews, for instance, we have
already seen, from Eom. xi. 15, that Paul looked forward to the
latter as the signal for the resurrection of the dead ; but which
resurrection ? The first, which is confined to the Christians and
connected with the coming of Christ ? Or the second general
resurrection, which is connected with the end? The former
might appear the more ob"vious and natural in itself; only we
are met by the consideration that, after the complete conversion
of both GentUes and Jews, no enemies would remain to be con
quered in the Messianic reign of Christ during the miUennium.
This question can hardly be determined with certainty from the
tone of thought or the statements of Paul. And the same is the
case with regard to the judgment. Paul everywhere speaks, as
we have sho"wn, of one judgment, and connects it apparently
with the coming of Christ. But if the final judgment shaU have
been pronounced on that occasion upon all who are alive, where,
after that event, wUl the enemies be who have still to be con
quered ? And what becomes of the judgment to be passed on
the entire body of non-christians, who are not to rise untU the
end of the period of the mUlennial kingdom ? Simply to supply
this as " necessarily involved in the resurrection, although not
expressly mentioned by Paul in the context of this passage," ^ is
no more justifiable than it would be to introduce any other of
the numberless hypotheses and combinations that might be made
on this subject, but could not be shown to be PauUne in cha
racter. Instead of such fanciful criticism, a scientific exegesis
has simply to note the inconsistency, and to point out how it
originated. The fact is, as we have already repeatedly shown,
that the whole of this circle of ideas which revolved round the
Trapovcria, had got beyond the range of possible reconciUation
with the advanced Christian yvucris of the Apostle, and from the
very nature of the case must have done so. For this remnant of
the Jewish doctrine of the Messiah agreed neither with the theo
logy of PauL 'with its doctrine of favour and predestination, nor
^ Meyer, Comm.

THE END OF THE WORLD. 271
with his anthropology, which involved the immanence of the
spirit of Christ in individuals and in the community. Accord
ing to this, the reahzation of salvation in the individual and in
the world is a constant process, a historical development ; but
the Trapovcria Originates in a circle of ideas, according to which
salvation was something merely transcendental in its subject-
matter, something to be expected from heaven, and whose real
ization was in its form a purely isolated miraculous act of God,
without any inward connection with that which preceded or
that which followed it. It is therefore natural that two elements
so foreign to each other should not have been able to coalesce
into unity. But here also we have again, in conclusion, the same
thing which occurs in all the main points of Paul's teaching,
namely, that the logical inference not yet drawn by Paul himself
from his Christian yvuo-ts, according to which the Judaizing ele
ments would be completely set aside, is drawn in the theology of
John. In this theology, the conception of the Trapovcria is so far
set aside, that it is resolved into or made potential in the coming
of Christ in the spirit ; and in the same way the judgment is
changed from being on the other side of the grave and accom
panying the Trdpovcria, into a process of separation in this world,
introduced by the word and spirit of Christ, and constantly
advancing towards completion (John xiv. 12, 31, 47 f, xvi. 8 f ).
We now proceed from the Trapovo-ta to consider the second focus,
as it were, of the eschatology,
The End of the World.
As the miUennium, or the Messianic regency of Christ in a
visible form, is ushered in by the resurrection of Christians, so
the end of the world is ushered in by the resurrection of aU, as
the last term in the series (rdypa) of resurrections (vers. 23 and
24, etTa Th tIAos). This is the last act of Christ's government,
because by it the last enemy, death, is definitely conquered (26).
By it aU powers hostUe tp God as such, as actuaUy operative

272 THE COMPLETION OF SALVATION.
forces, are done away, and thus all creatures are subjected to
Christ, and therefore to God. Whether this is to be understood-;
in the sense that aU have voluntarily subjected themselves, i. e.
have been converted, or that the effectual opposition of all has
been broken, and the opponents of Christ laid at his feet, bound
and powerless, cannot be decided by the words used ; the words
which follow, however, Oeos Ta Trdvra iv Trdcriv, appear to support
the former view, of which niore hereafter. The grand univer
sality, moreover, with which the eschatological perspective of
the Apostle truly embraces the whole universe, is notably
attested by his intimation (Eom. viii. 19 — 23) of a final redemp
tion of ?rdo-a y ktIctis from the SovAeta T-^s cjyOopds tO the iXevSepia
t^s So^ys Tuv TeKvcov tov Oeov. Even nature, the irrational world
(for KTiVis, according to the context, can have no other meaning), •
is in a state which does not correspond with its true destination, '
namely, the reflecting of the Divine Sofa, for it is subject to the
bondage of corruptibiUty, and an instinctive feeUng of this exists
in nature, and shows itself in groaning after redemption. This
wUl also be granted to it, for it has been subjected by God to
this bondage, in hope, for the sake of Him who has subjected it,
that is to say, in order that He may manifest upon it the more
gloriously his power and his favour, by freeing it — precisely the
same fundamental idea of Paul's teaching to which he has given
utterance in xi 32. What Paul thought of the way in which
this freeing of the groaning creation was to be effected, we
cannot teU; but we may be certain that it was not by com
pletely destroying and newly creating it in its substance, but by
changing its form, for he only speaks of the form (o-xil^) of ^^^
world in 1 Cor. vii. 31 as passing away. It is worthy of obser
vation how Paul has here given an application fuU of deep
meaning to the traditional expectation of a golden age in a
renovated world, for which authority is to be found even in the
prophets,! by placing it in direct relation to the specifically
Christian fundamental doctrines of favour and redemption.
' Comp. Is. xi. 6 f., Ixv. 17—25; also Ps. cii. 27.

THE END OF THE WORLD. 273
Now when Christ shaU have thus accompUshed the task of
his Messianic regency, and made aU things subject to himself,
the whole created world, rational and irrational, then, finally, he
will make himself subject to Him who has made all things subject to
him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. xv. 28). The thought
expressed in this verse, taken with ver. 24, is very plain : when
God's counsel of redemption has been fully carried out to its
end, then the instrument of it, the historical Eedeemer, retires
from his exalted post; he has completed his task as the Ee
deemer and the ruler of the redeemed (which was part of the
carrying out of redemption to its definitive and victorious
reahzation), and now resigns his office of leader to God, in order
to return into the ranks of the perfect created beings who are
under God's immediate rule ; just as a victorious general, after
the close of the war, resigns his command into the hands of his
king, and returns into the ranks of the ordinary citizens. This
thought of the Apostle's is so simple, that regarded by itself its
meaning could never have been uustaken, had it not given so
severe a shock to the dogmatic consciousness of ecclesiastical
interpreters. For there is no doubt that it can by no means be
reconcUed with the ecclesiastical doctrine of the Trinity. That
the majesty and leadership of Christ is only a dignity conferred
upon him by God for a time, certainly gives a deadly blow to
the " homoousia " of the Church. But, moreover (and this it is
which alone concerns us here), this doctrine, when viewed from
the presuppositions of Paul's own Christology, certainly appears
very extraordinary. For we have already seen that Paul makes
the person of Christ, before his work on earth, in his pre-exist-'
ence, take part in the creation of the world as the organ of God,
and consequently does not date his more exalted position in the
Divine plan of revelation from his historical work on earth as
the Messiah ; and now, notwithstanding that, is this Lord who
existed before the world and before time, by whose means the
creation was effected, aU at once at the end of the period of the
world's duration, to be stripped of his sovereignty, and to enter
t

274 THE COMPLETION OF SALVATION.
into the ranks of the created beings as a subject like any other ?
It is hardly to be denied that there is a certain amount of con
tradiction here ; and this would be quite unaccountable, if that
position of pre-existence, that cosmical significance and dignity
of Christ, were the starting-point or the central idea of Paul's
Christology. But this, as we have seen, is plainly not the case ;
on the contrary, the complete sonship of Christ Iv Swdpei, dates
from no earlier time than his resurrection (Eom. i 4), just as the
whole of the Christology is built up on the yvmo-is of the histori
cal work of redemption (the death on the cross), and it is only
by means of the reflection into the past of the picture thus
obtained that the pre-existence comes to be added to it It is
perfectly consistent with Paul's Christology, starting from this
point, which was ever foremost even in the dogmatic conscious
ness of the Apostle, that the sovereignty of Christ, as it had its
beginning in time, should also have a limited duration in time ;
but of course the pre-existence is in this case left out of view ;
as soon as this is taken as the standpoint whence the matter is
regarded, the dignity and power of Christ, which he had before
all time, must also be conceived as unlimited by time, as endless,
which is the case in the writings of John. Thus we have in
this peculiar Pauline doctrine of the subjection of Christ at the
end of the world- period, another conclusive argument in favour
of our view of the Christology of Paul, — the view, namely, that it
has indeed advanced in free speculation regarding the historical
person of Jesus to the dogmatic personification of the religious .'
principle developed in redemption, but that it has not yet gained
a firm footing on this standpoint of dogmatic speculation, has
not yet made the height of the absolute principle the dominating
point of view for the whole system, and therefore stands half
way between the Jewish-Christian Christology and that of John.
After Christ shall have subjected himself and his kingdom to
the Father, the grand final end of the world will have been
attained — God, 'will be all in all. This sentence, looked at by
itself with unprejudiced eyes, certaiiUy supports the notion of a

THE END OF THE WORLD. 275
conclusion of the world in unity, where no existing thing wiU
be excluded from the kingdom of God, and therefore from the
fulfilment of its destination — from blessedness; where no heU
goes on by the side of the kingdom of heaven. For the suppo
sition of the continued existence of the damned, outside of the
blessed kingdom of God, would either limit unwarrantably the
Iv Trao-tv to the half of the TrdvTcs, which appears quite inadmis
sible in the case of a final comprehensive survey of the whole
result, such as we have here ; or it would make the expression
iva y — Ta irdvTa mean, contrary to the sense of the words, that
God is only Lord over aU — over the one part (the blessed) with
their wUl, over the other (the damned) against their wUl, though
without any Umitation and without opposition. But iva y — rd
irdvTa iv Trdcri does not mean that He is completely Lord over
aU, but that He is the whole, the only and the aU-determining
inward principle in all, which is just the opposite to being Lord
over subjugated enemies whose wUl is opposed to his. The ter
mination of the world in unity, as above explained, might be
brought about either by unbelievers being completely annihi
lated, or by their being all finally converted. In support of the
former view it may be observed that no mention is made of a
resurrection of the godless, therefore these might possibly be
conceived as remaining for ever in death, and consequently
(according to the Jewish view, which regards actual existence
as essentially connected with the body) as no longer existing ;
but 1 Cor. XV. 22 appears to support the latter view : "As in
Adam all die, so in Christ shall all he made alive." For in this
passage Trdvres cau hardly be taken in a more limited sense in
one clause than in the other, and as it applies in the first clause
to all men without distinction, it must also be taken in an
equally general sense in the second ; and if the resurrection of
all wiU be Iv Xpto-T$, then it must be a resurrection to Ufe and
blessedness. And this is strikingly confirmed by Eom. xi. 32,
where the universaUty of man's disobedience is contrasted with
the universaUty of God's mercy in Christ, just as in the former

276 THE COMPLETION OF SALVATION.
passage the fact of aU being made alive in Christ is contrasted
with that of aU dying in Adam. These two passages, together
with the final " God all in aU," would seem to show that Pad,
when he speaks out of the fulness and the depth of his Christian
"view of the universe, is incUned to the idea of a termination of
the "world in unity, in the sense, of the dTroKaTdo-Taorts.^ Never- '
theless, those passages again are opposed to this view, which
speak of a judgment with a two-fold termination — eternal life
for some and perdition for others (Eom. U. 5 — 12) — as weU as
the often-repeated mention of the dTroAAv/itevot (1 Cor. x"vui.; 2
Cor. ii. 15, xvi. 4, 3). And thus even when we reach the end of
the dogmatic teaching of Paul, we are stUl confronted by the
unsolved anti'iwmy between the termination of the world in '
unity, which was more in harmony with the Apostle's reUgious
speculation on the doctrine of God's favour, and the two-fold
end which is more conformable with the legal standpoint, not
only of the Jews, but of moral reflection in generaL We have
here once more, therefore, essentiaUy the same antinomy which
we have met with, in one form or another, in all the chief points
of the Apostle's dogmatic .teaching, and which, moreover, is no
where more intelUgible than in the case of the man who, from a
Pharisee and a zealous upholder of the law, was caUed to be a
chosen instrument of the gospel of the favour of God in Christ
^ " That an dTroKardcrTacyig is entirely irreconcilable with the presuppositions of
Paul's .doctrine of election, which assumes throughout a two-fold termination of man's
destiny" (Weiss, p. 404 f.), is so far from being obvious, that the contrary wiU rather
impress itself upon everyone who considers how decidedly the Pauline doctrine of
predestination (Rom. ix. — xi. ) finally makes the dualism with which it commences
lose itself (xi. 30 — 36) in the complete unity of the final resiilt (see above, p. 256 f. ).

END OF PART L

C. Green & Son, Printers, 178, Strand.

<L.

PAULINISM:
HISTORY OF PRIMITIYE CHRISTIAN
THEOLOGY. BY
OTTO PFLEIDEEEE,
DOOTOK AND FROFESSOB OF THEOLOST AT JENA, ETC.

TRANSLATED BY EDWAED PETERS,
LATE OE THE MADRAS CIVIL SERVICE.

VOL. II.

THE HISTOEY OF PAULINISM IN THE
PEIMITIYE CHUECH.

WILLIAMS AND ISTOEGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON;
And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1877.

LONDON ;
PRINTED BY 0. GREEK AND SON,
178, STRAND.

CONTENTS.

Part II.

THE HISTOEY OF PAULINISM IN THE PEIMITIVE
CHUECH.
CHAPTER Tin.
PAOE
The Original Position op Paulinism towards Jewish Chris
tianity ...... 3
The Dispute about the Law .... 4
The Dispute about the Apostleship of Paul . . 26
Tendency towards Peace . . . . -38
CHAPTER IX.
Paulinism under the Influence op Alexandrine Ideas . 51
The Epistle to the Hebrews . . . . 51
The Epistle to the Colossians . . . . 95 t
The Epistle of Barnabas . . . . 119
CHAPTER X.
Paulinism in the Course of its Change to Catholicism . 134
The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians . 135
The First Epistle of Peter . . . .148
The Epistle to the Ephesians . . . . 162 i*

IV CONTENTS. PASE
CHAPTER XL
The Paulinism op the Church in Contest with Gnostic
Heresies . . . . . .194
l/The Pastoral Epistles .... 196
The Epistles of Ignatius . . . . .214
CONCLUSION.
The Acts op the Apostles .... 228

^art SKonir.

THE HISTORY OF PAULINISM IN THE
PRIMITIYE CHURCH.

VOL. II.

CHAPTEE VIII.

THE OEIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM TOWAEDS
JEWISH CHEISTIANITY.

Having investigated in detail the gospel preached by Paul,
with its peculiar characteristics, we shall proceed to ascertain
what place it occupied in the history of primitive Christianity.
We have repeatedly had occasion to remark that it differed on
points of essential importance from the Jewish- Christian view ;
it need not surprise us, therefore, to see a conflict break out on
severalpoints between Paulinism and Jewish Christianity. The
Epistles to the Galatians and to the Corinthians, whose main
purpose is the defence of Paul's apostolic work against his Juda
izing opponents, are especially calculated to give us a clear and
true insight into the relation between the two parties. (We
cannot depend upon the Acts of the Apostles as a source of in
formation on this matter, since the relations of parties in the
primitive Church are there viewed in the light of later dogmatic
presuppositions, and adjusted accordingly.) The subject of the
Epistle to the Galatians is partly the independence of the apos
tolic work of Paul, partly the right of an independent Gentile-
Christian body to belong to the Christian community, without
at the same time becoming Jews, as the opponents of Paul
demanded, by subjecting, themselves to the law, especially to
circumcision — a disputed question, which eventually led to the
b2

4 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
laying down of the principles on which the validity of the
Mosaic law among Christians depended. In the Epistles to
the Corinthians the disputes about the law fall into the back
ground, as the opponents of Paul in the Gentile-Christian com
munity of Corinth had directed their attack in the first instance
less against the contents of Paul's Gospel, than against hia
claims to apostolical authority. The contest of principles, there
fore, takes here the form of personal attack and defence. In the
Epistle to the Romans, again, the personal element gives place to
the actual setting forth of the doctrine' of Paul, not, however,
polemically,- as in the Epistle to the Galatians, but rather in
calm and positive development, and, moreover, with a decidedly
conciliatory spirit towards the Jewish Christians. The Epistle
to the Philippians, finally, shows the mixed feelings of the
departing Apostle with regard to his opponents, the recog
nition of their Christianity being combined with irritation at
their personal behaviour to him. We shall, therefore, have
to distinguish three phases in the relations of Paul to the
Jewish Christians; the contest about the law (Epistle to the
Galatians), the contest about the apostolic office of Paul (the
Epistles to the Corinthians), and the adoption of a concilia
tory course regarding the question of principles (Epistles to the
Eomans and Philippians).

The Contest about the Law.
In order to prove to the Galatians that his gospel was inde
pendent of human authority, and depended on divine revelation,
Paul relates to them how, after his conversion, he had not com
municated with flesh and blood, nor gone to Jerusalem to see
those who had been Apostles before him, but had withdrawn
for three years to Arabia and Damascus; after which he had'
ti-avelled to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him
fifteen days, but of the other Apostles he had seen none, except-

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LAW. 5
ing James, the brother of the Lord ; he had therefore remained
personally unknown to the other Apostles and to the community
until the journey which he made to Jerusalem fourteen years
later. The Apostle lays great stress upon these facts, because
they prove that at the commencement of his exercise of Apostle
ship, and for the first fourteen years of it, he had not only been
officially independent of the community at Jerusalem, but had
in fact been wholly unconnected with it. The fact that he not
only did not seek any connection with it, but apparently avoided
it, clearly reveals the depth of the chasm by which he felt him
self separated from the primitive community, and his gospel
from theirs. But, nevertheless, he could not continue for any
length of time ^hus to ignore the community at Jerusalem,
because tliis community itself took up an aggressive attitude
against his labours in the mixed community of Antioch, and
that with so much success, that he saw the entire work on which
he had hitherto laboured in danger of being undone. It was the
fear that, in consequence of the reaction set on foot at Jerusalem,
his running (striving) in the service of preaching the gospel to
the Gentiles might be in vain, or had already been in vain
(p-ffrcos els Kevov Tpex<o y eSpapov, ii. 2), which finally, after the
lapse of fourteen years, induced Paul to try to come to an under
standing with the Christians at Jerusalem regarding "the gospel
which he preached among the Gentiles;" that is to say, regard
ing the principle of his Gentile Christianity. The impulse which
issued in this resolution, at which the Apostle evidently arrived
with reluctance, was given by a "revelation," a recurrence of
that miraculous form in which the overwhelming conviction of
a higher necessity burst out through the struggles and oscilla
tions of the human soul — psychologically the same phenomenon
as we have already seen in the aTroKdXvij/is at his conversion
(i. 12, 16 : see Introduction).
We see from ii. 3 — 5, what was the main point at issue in
this conference. Paul took the uncircumcised Gentile Christian
Titus with him, in order to show by this example how unreason-

6 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
able it would be to yield to the extravagant demands of the
Jewish Christians, who had crept into the community at Antioch
as false brethren, in order to destroy the freedom which they had,
and which they used there in Christ (on the ground of the faith
of Christ), and to make slaves of those who were free. For these
false brethren who had forced themselves in demanded nothing
less than that the Gentile Christians should accept circumcision,
and with it the observance of the Mosaic law. These demands,
which had already been made in Antioch, and which excited the
apprehension of the Apostle for the very existence of the Chris
tian community that he had gathered from the Gentiles, they
repeated in conjunction with those who held the same opinions
still more strenuously in Jerusalem, the head quarters of this
party. " But," says the Apostle, " we yielded subjection to them
not for one hour, in order that the truth of the gospel might
stand fast in you." The Apostle saw, therefore, in the demand
that the Gentile Christians should be circumcised, an attack
upon the principle of the gospel ; to give way in such a situa
tion was impossible, for it would have been in his eyes a denial
in principle of evangelical truth. As, however, the demands of
the Judaistic " false brethren" derived all their weight and theii
power to become dangerous from the support of the primitive
community, and of the " influential persons," the men of autho
rity, the older Apostles and James, the Apostle Paul felt the
necessity of establishing the truth of his Gentile-Christian gospel
against any further opposition, by means of an understanding
Avith these pillars of the primitive Church. He narrates the
result of these negotiations in vers. 6 — 10.
As regards these " influential persons " (SoKovvre's) — by whose
antecedents (as having been the immediate disciples of Jesus) he
by no means allowed himself to be awed, for God does not regard
the person (in matters of faith external advantages of a personal
kind decide nothing) — they had nothing to impart to him
(TrpocraveOevTo, cf Trpocravedep,yv, i. 16) ; they Were unable to teach
him anything new, or to overthrow or limit his gospel of freedom

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LAW. 7
by a gospel of circumcision. But, on the contrary, as they saw
that he had been entrusted with the gospel of the uncircum-
cision, just as Peter with that of the circumcision (for they were
compelled to regard the actual success of his work amongst the
Gentile Christians, which was not inferior to that of Peter's work
among the Jewish Christians, as a divine judgment, by which
God acknowledged Paul's work to be well-pleasing to Him) — as
they recognized in this the favour bestowed on Paul (the being
entrusted with the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles), they,
that is to say, those who were accounted pillars of the Church,
James, Cephas, and John, extended to him and Barnabas the
hand of fellowship, on this ground of peace and reconciliation —
that he should go to the Gentiles, but they should go only to the
Jews, care being taken to provide one connecting link between
two so widely diverging parts, namely, that Paul, with the com
munities he had founded, should think of the Jewish-Christian
poor. Thus Paul had certainly gained the great object which
lay nearest to his heart — the freedom of his Gentile Christians
from the Mosaic law had been admitted by the heads of the primi
tive community. But let us note in what sense and on what
grounds this admission had been made. They made it only on
the ground of the actual success of the Apostle of the Gentiles,
which success they could not help regarding as a judgment of
God, as a proof that God had blessed the work of the Apostle,
and therefore that it was well-pleasing to Him. But in bowing
to this judgment of God, they were far from recognizing the dog
matic principles which Paul made the ground of his mission to
the heathen, or sharing his conviction of the abrogation of the
law by the death of Christ, which was the foundation and
corner-stone of Paul's Gentile-Christian gospel. For, had they
done this, a two-fold consequence must necessarily and imme
diately have forced itself upon them. In the first place, the law
would have been abrogated not only for the Gentile, but also for
the Jewish Christians ; and secondly, this abrogation of the dif
ference in principle between Jew and Gentile would have re-

8 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
moved all grounds for confining their apostolic work to the
former, and they, as well as Paul, would consequently have
had the duty of devoting themselves to the great work of the
mission to the heathen. They did in fact, however, admit
neither of these consequences; they determined for their part
to have nothing whatever to do with the mission to the heathen;
not because they merely did not recognize this as a personal
duty in their own case, but because they looked upon it as
something actually contrary to their duty, and forbidden ; for in
such matters there can be no middle way, no indiiferent course,
but only one alternative of a command urging them to do it, or
a prohibition keeping them from it. But that the older Apostles
accepted the latter alternative, is made very clear by their main
taining, in opposition to Paul, that the law which made the
division between Jew and Gentile was perpetually binding.
This is also the only supposition upon which the account that
follows of what happened at Antioch is intelligible.
Hence we may now infer with tolerable accuracy in what
sense the compact, ver. 9, was understood by each of the parties.
Paul, in the first place, was contented to see that by it at least
the future of his gospel was secured for the Gentile Christians,
that these were free from the Mosaic law, and consequently
the work which he himself as an Apostle had especially under
taken was protected in its integrity ; but how he should behave
with regard to the Jewish Christians, he manifestly allowed to
remain in uncertainty ;i he abstained, on the one hand, from
¦^ This is overlooked by those who make out that the opposing views in their com
plete distinctness, which was not fully developed until a later period, came into colli
sion hersj aud who thus needlessly overstrain the difference between Paul's account of
this proceeding and that contained in the Acts of the Apostles. That Paul cannot at
this time have extended the consequences of his views to the Jewish Christians, not
only follows from his making no allusion in the whole course of his narration to any
demands that went so far as this, but is the only supposition wbich naturally corre
sponds with the situation. He came to Jerusalem to obtain the recognition of his own
work among the Gentile Christians, and to secure it from attacks that might have
d'^stroyed it. What was more natural than that, contented as he was with the
admission of this claim, he should not have unnecessarily increased the difficulty of
obtaining that which was of primary necessity to him, by pushing too far the converse

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LAW. 9
making any demand on this point, which would plainly have
had no result but that of wounding the consciences of the
Jewish Christians, and so diminishing the, chances of reconcilia
tion ; and, on the other hand, avoided any concessions and pro
mises that would have bound his own conscience, and that of his
Gentile Christians or of the mixed communities, and have sur
rendered something of their right to the freedom of the gospel.
It is thus quite possible (as is suggested, if not distinctly proved,
by the behaviour of the mixed community at Antioch) that
Paul, being satisfied with the recognition of the freedom of the
GentUe Christians, and leaving the question of the Jewish
Christians in uncertainty, had more or less consciously the
latent idea in his mind, that his principle of Christian freedom
from the law, when once established among the Gentile majority
of the Christian community, would gradually exhibit on the
Jewish minority also its power of annulling and renovating the
old. This hope, which, at all events, has been justified by the
course of events, might all the more easily have suggested itself,
even at that time, to a far-seeing mind. It is, however, no doubt
equally possible that Paul at that time had not distinctly put to
himself the question, what was to be done regarding the observ
ance of the law by the Jewish Christians ; that he had not yet
drawn the consequences of his principle so far as to conceive the
freedom of the Jewish Christians from the law as a possibility,
still less as a necessity; for it was the later course of events
which led him on to these consequences. However that may be,
we may safely assert thus much to be clear, that in the negotia-
proposition which followed from it ? And is it probable that the Judaizers would have
stretched out the Se^iaQ rfJQ KoivoiviaQ to one who decidedly professed antinomianism ?
Their eubseijuent behaviour certainly does not support that view. Moreover, it would
be difficult to account psychologically for the vacillating conduct of Peter at Antioch, if
an explanation of principles, and with this of course a division of parties on the ground
of recognized differences of principle, had previously taken place at Jerusalem. The
whole scene at Antioch strikes us distinctly as the first collision of the opposing princi
ples in their developed form. This also accounts for the profound silence maintained
in the Acts of the Apostles with regard to this proceeding, while the author was able
to relate — modified of course after his wont — the more harmless negotiations at Jeru
salem.

10 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
tions and the agreement made at Jerusalem, Paul allowed the
question of what was to be done with regard to the law in the
case of the Jewish Christians to remain in abeyance ; and that
it was probably not raised in any other quarter. The older
Apostles, on their side, had evidently understood the arrange
ment with Paul to mean that they — constrained by the success
he had achieved — acknowledged his personal work among the
Gentiles to be praiseworthy and pleasing to God ; and promised
to refrain from opposing or injuring it in any way, so long as it
was confined to the Gentiles. But this qualified personal recogni
tion was at the same time an indirect refusal to recognize any of
the dogmatic principles of Paul's gospel, and a rejection of each and
every inference that might possibly he drawn from it, first with
regard to the Jewish Christians, but further with regard to the
character of the Messianic community regarded as a wliole. As to
the Jewish Christians, it was taken for granted, without any
thing being said on the subject, that everything should remain
as it was ; and that consequently no inferences should be drawn
from the freedom of the GentUe Christians from the law, to the
abrogation of the law among the Jewish Christians. On this
assumption depended the limitation of the work of the older
Apostles to the Jews (for these limits could not be overstepped
without a violation of the law) ; on this also depended the send
ing of the persons from Jerusalem to Antioch by James, and
their influence on Peter, whose free behaviour before they came
is thereby shown to have been an exception to the rule. But if
the religious significance of the law remains, in the conviction of
the Jewish Christians, after the agreement just what it was
before, in spite of the personal recognition of Paul, then it is
plain that the full claim to participation in the Messiah's king
dom remains attached to the law as the ground of all the cove
nant promises; whence it follows that they might look upon the
Gentile Christians, as such, as being without the law, and not
fuU members of the Messiah's community. So long as they
remained Gentile Christians, i. e. so long as they did not accept

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LAW. 11
the law, they were regarded by the primitive community as only
guests and strangers ("proselytes of the gate"), who might in
deed become more closely connected with the Messiah's commu
nity, which was essentially Jewish and theocratic, and have a
certain relative share in its blessings, as had already been fore
seen by the prophets in their frequent utterances about the
Gentiles partaking of Israel's salvation. But if these half citi
zens of the Messiah's kingdom wished to become fuU citizens,
there remained no other course by which this could consistently
be done, but that they should become members of the Jewish
nation by submitting to circumcision. Is it possible that, at the
conference at Jerusalem, those members of the primitive com
munity who held the more decided views, at least one like
James, had such an after-thought as this, and only befriended
the mission of Paul to the Gentiles on the unexpressed supposi
tion that Paul's work was but the beginning, which might and
-should at a future time be brought to full completion by the
acceptance of the law on the part of the Gentile Christians ?
This conjecture wUl appear to be not improbable from the sub
sequent behaviour of the party of James.
According to the above account, then, the agreement made at
Jerusalem proceeded on the understanding that each of the two
parties should confine themselves to their own particular sphere,
but that, within each of these spheres, matters should be kept
just as they had hitherto been ; the Gentile Christians should
remain without the law, the Jewish Christians under the law.
It is plain, however, that this could not be a satisfactory issue,
either dogmatically or practically. Dogmatica,lly it was without a
principle, and illogical; for if a man could, like the converted
heathen, be a Christian without becoming a Jew, then Christian
ity was something new, and specifically different from Judaism.
But in that case it followed that the converted Jew, in order to
be a true Christian, must cease to be a Jew, and must therefore
free himself from the Mosaic law. Conversely, if the Jewish
Christian,. in spite of his having become a believer, nevertheless

12 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
continued to look upon the law as the undisturbed foundation
and the conditio sine qua non of his expectation of Messianic
salvation, then Christianity was only a filling up and completion
of Judaism; and it followed in that case that the converted
heathen, in order to be a true Christian, must first of all become
a Jew and accept the Mosaic law. This alternative, which in
volves a principle, and is the only logical one, may perhaps have
floated before the minds of the thorough -going champions of the
two sides at Jerusalem, such as Paul and James; officially, how
ever, it was ignored, and doubtless never occurred at aU to the
greater number, the moderate men like Peter and Barnabas, so
long as the theoretical inconsistency did not make itself felt in
a practical conflict. But this could not long be delayed. For
the a.greement made at Jerusalem was also practically unsatisfac
tory; for whUe it established a separation between GentUe and
Jewish Christians with regard to the law, it took no notice of
the actual existence of mixed communities. If the Jewish
Christians in these were to stand fast in the observance of the
law, they could have no commiinion with the GentUe Christians,
who were not bound by the law. But this would break up the
unity of the body of believers, and destroy the common Christian
life, which rested essentially upon that unity. If this were to be
avoided, and if the mixed community were to be maintained in
its status of a united Christian body, it was absolutely necessary
that one of its two parts should accommodate itself to the other;
that either, therefore, the Gentile Christians should stoop to
submit themselves to the law by which, the others thought
themselves bound, or that the Jewish Christians should deter
mine to release themselves from the law, from which the others
deemed themselves free. Which of these two events should
actually occur could only be decided, in the absence of any
solution of the question on principle, by the preponderance
which happened to exist at the time in each case, whether of
the numbers or of the personal consideration of the representa
tives of either party. It was therefore natural that a decision

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LAW. 13
of this kind, which depended, not on any principle, but on the
fortuitous existence of personal motives, should be liable to be
reversed, and that thus the same mixed community should at
one time assume a GentUe- Christian attitude of freedom from
the law, at another a Jewish-Christian attitude of submission to
it; that as the weight of the personal authority of the more
thorough-going spirits pressed more strongly in one or the other
direction, the undecided ones should oscUlate between the two,
now accommodating themselves to their opponents, and now
again demanding the same from them.
Now, in Gal. u. 11 — 21, Paul relates to us a case of this kind,
which happened in the community of Antioch, a case which is
not only in the highest degree instructive as an example of the
state of affairs at that time in a mixed community, but is espe
cially significant, because this was apparently the occasion on
which the question of principle, left in abeyance at the con
ference in Jerusalem, came forward for decision; and that in
such a way as to bring to open antagonism the opposition of
principles which had hitherto been more or less concealed.
Peter had come to Antioch, and had at first, in accordance with
the freer customs of this mixed community, which had remained
under the personal influence of Paul, eaten at the same table
with the GentUe Christians. But on the arrival of certain
persons from James (who came from, i. e. were sent by, the
foUowers and the party of James), he "dissembled," as Paul
expresses it, and withdrew from the GentUe common meal,
through fear of the men of the circumcision ; an example which
proved so infectious, that the other Jewish Christians also, and
such a man as Barnabas among them, aUowed themselves to be
induced to dissemble with him. And now, in order that the
unity of the life of the brethren might not be given up, these
Jewish Christians appear to have put forth in some way to
the GentUe Christians the extravagant claim that they should
accommodate themselves to them, and "Uve as Jews." This
unprincipled vacUlation on the part of the Jewish Christians,

14 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
who at one time lived like the GentUes, and at another time
used moral compulsion at least to force the GentUes to live like
Jews, is now rebuked by Paul as "dissimulation." He certainly
does not use this word here in the gross sense of conscious dis
loyalty to better convictions ; for, in the first place, it is very
improbable that aU those Jewish Christians should have had
such worthless moral characters as to act against a theoretically
clear and acknowledged conviction, from mere dread of men;
and, secondly, the spe§ch of Paul which foUows would by no
means tally with such a supposition, since he speaks not a single
syUable against the moral error of unprincipled action through
the fear of men, but points out, in a theoretical explanation, the
intellectual error of the want of a guiding principle, of half con
victions and want of clearness in points of dogma. What Paul
here brands in too strong language as " dissimiUation," was,
therefore, in fact only the uncertainty in practical action which
is the natural and inevitable consequence of uncertainty and
want of clearness in dogmatic thinking. That want of clearness
with regard to the question of principle, whether Christianity
stands in relation to Judaism as a new religion, and therefore
involves the end of the Jewish law, or whether it is only the
completion of Judaism and the keystone of the theocratic edifice
which is supported by the law— this want of clearness, which
was shared, if not by aU who were present at the conference at
Jerusalem, yet at least by the great majority of the moderate
party represented by Peter, made it possible for Peter to take
part at first in the freer customs of the GentUe Christians, in.
unsophisticated and unreflecting liberality of mind, and then
again, as soon as his Jewish conscience was sharpened by the
strict observers of the law, to fall back into legal bondage. The
appearance in Antioch of the people from the party of James
could not possibly have had this influence on Peter, if he had
already, whUe at Jerusalem, freed himself consciously and in
principle from the legal standpoint of this party, and raised
himself to the height of Paul's freedom from the law; for in

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LA W. 15
that case the discussion with the opposite party at Jerusalem
would already have led to a complete mutual understanding,
and to a separation of the two parties ; and the Christian, con
science of Peter, already made aware of his freedom, would have
been so thoroughly strengthened at Antioch by the freer spirit
of brotherhood which prevailed there, that it would have been
psychologicaUy impossible for it to be overpowered by the
champions of a theory, the principle of which he had already
overcome. As, however, this latter event did happen, it is thus
clearly proved that the above presupposition did not occur; that
Peter had not freed himself consciously and in principle from
the legal point of view ; that he rather shared in principle the
views of James ; that his looser practice, therefore, had been
an inconsistency with respect to his own theory, prompted by
good feeling — an inconsistency regarding which his eyes had
been opened and his conscience quickened by the appearance
of the consistent representatives of the same theory, so that he
was now frightened at the free action which he could not justify
to himself dogmatically, and returned practicaUy to the bondage
of the legal point of view, which he had never dogmatically
overcome. Let us observe how Paul (ver. 15 f), whUe blaming the con
duct of Peter, at the same time condemns with trenchant argu
ments the whole standpoint of the Jewish Christians who held
fast by the law. " We who are by nature (birth) Jews, and not
sinners of the Gentiles " (Paul here places himself on the stand
point of his opponents whom he has to refute, and speaks from
the Jewish way of looking upon the Gentiles), " being convinced
that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in
Jesus Christ, we also have become beUevers in Christ Jesus, in
order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the
law; for by works of the law shall no flesh be justified." Thus
far does the positive argument of the Apostle reach, in order to
bring to the consciousness of his opponent the inconsistency of
his holding fast by the law while he also believes in Christ. He

16 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
argues upon the Christian axiom which was admitted even by
the Jewish Christians, that the sufficient ground of justification
did not consist of works of the law, but of faith in Christ, for,
without this presupposition, it would be a groundless and un
reasonable act for a Jew to become a believer. The Apostle here
stands on ground common to both, inasmuch as this conception
of the Christian consciousness, " A man is not justified hy works
of the law, hut hy faith in Christ," does not directly exclude that
juxtaposition of works of- the law and faith which constitutes
the Jewish-Christian conception; but from this Jewish-Christian
standpoint of an obscure coupling together of works of the law
and faith, he now brings his adversary over to a logically con
sistent simple alternative of one or the other. — If we have become
believers in the conviction that justification is not to be attained
untu we have done so, then we confess by that very act that
righteousness actuaUy comes only from faith, and not (in any
respect whatever) from works of the law.* In this very convic
tion, that for all mankind, whether Jew or GentUe, in conse-,
quence of the weakness of the flesh which is common to all
men, righteousness by the law is a thing impossible, we have
sought righteousness in the way of faith as the only possible
way besides that of works, from which this is an entirely dif
ferent way of salvation. "What ground can there be then to
justify our still clinging to the law, at the same time that we
are following this new way of salvation, which alone leads to the
end ? Upon this Paul now aUows his opponents to speak, and
throws their main objection to his standpoint into the pregnant
conclusion drawn by them in these words : " Put if we, while we
sought righteousness in Christ, were ourselves also found to he
sinners^ (equivalent, according to the Jewish use of the word, as
' I dissent from the traditional view, and hold with Meyer, Holsten, Lipsivs
(Z. f. w. Th. 1861, p. 73 f.), in interpreting el — eitpeOripev, as not conditional of a
mere hypothesis, but indicative of an actual fact ; but I differ so far from these com
mentators in their further explanation of dpaprioKoi evpk9r\pev, that I refer these
words not to the "confession of natural sinfulness," which appears to me far-fetched
and scarcely consistent with the context, but to the fact immediately in question, that

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LAW. 17
in ver. 15, to GentUes who are without the law), then is Christ
therefore a minister (a promoter) of sin!" We then have his
own answer, which refutes the objection of his adversaries, and
then passes on to his decisive attack upon them — "God forbid!
Tf I indeed build again what I have destroyed, then (certainly) I
acknowledge myself to be a transgressor (which is just your case,
but this inference in no way affects me). For I have by means
of the law (attained to such a condition, that I have) died to the
law, in order that I may live to God; I have heen crucified with
Christ," &c. Paul thus defended his own standpoint against the
specific objection of the Jewish Christians, and showed the utter
worthlessness of this objection for those who stand on the ground
of Pauline doctrine. The reproach which the strict Jewish Chris
tians of the party of James threw in the teeth of the Jewish
Christians of the Pauline party who had emancipated them
selves from the law at Antioch, proceeded on the supposition
that they who sought to become righteous in Christ had been
found, on the contrary, to be persons who had put themselves
on the same footing with the GentUes, and were therefore
sinners, as the GentUes were sinners, so that their faith in
Christ had thus served for the futherance, not of their righte
ousness, but, on the contrary, of their unrighteousness, namely,
of their living in sin without the law, like the Gentiles. It is
clear that the whole weight of this reproach rested solely on the
the Jewish Christians of Paul's party at Antioch had been found to be persons who
had placed themselves on the same footing as the Gentiles, aud had thereby proved
themselves — to the consciousness of a believer in the law — to be themselves sinners,
as the Gentiles were. The conclusion must necessarily have been drawn from this by
the believers in the law, that these emancipated Jewish Christians, instead of finding
"perfect righteousness in Christ, as they imagined, had, on the contrary, lost all righte
ousness through their faith in Christ ; so that Christ, instead of being to them the
cause of righteousness, had rather become an occaision of unrighteousness. This con
clusion was quite correct on the assumption of the Jewish-Christian axiom — no
righteousness without the law, but for that very reason it was to Paul a mere petitio
pri-ncipii, of which he exposes the fallacy by reducing the ambiguous notions dfiapria
and d/iapnSKoQ to the more definite TrapafSacriQ and TrapapdrijQ, which only have any
meaning where the law, while it is broken by action, yet is (still or becomes again)
theoretically recognized as a law which gives the standard, but have no meaning where
this recognition is entirely wanting.
VOL. II. C

18 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
fact, that from their side " being without the law " was taken as
absolutely synonymous with " being sinful," and the want of the
righteousness of the law with the want of righteousness in
general ; which was the Jewish petitio principii. The refuta
tion of the Apostle is now directed to this point, and that in so
masterly a manner, that the reproach is not only turned away
from himself, but made to fall with its fuU weight upon the
Ulogical moderate party of Peter. He shows that this reproach
possesses significance only if we continue to regard the law as
the standard of righteousness, and accordingly to see nothing
but unrighteousness and Gentile sinfulness outside of the law.
But those who do this are certainly not the logical foUowers of
Paul, who, on the contrary, consider the law to be theoretically
and practically abrogated, and therefore cannot any longer allow
themselves to be guided by its standard. It is only Ulogical
persons, Uke Peter, who find themselves in that position, who
first lived like Gentiles, thus practically breaking the law, and
then again (by Uving as Jews and inducing others to do the
same) placed themselves under the rule of that very law which
they had before broken by their acts, thus setting it up again,
and thereby confessing that they still continued to recognize the
law as the standard which is binding on the conscience, and
which decides the moral worth of Christian action. These
persons thus set forth their previous practical lawlessness as a
contradiction to the moral standard which they themselves had
never given up in theory, and consequently as an actual trans
gression of the law, as sin ; and since it was by their faith in
Christ that they were induced to behave at first as free from the
law, they now, by disavowing this behaviour and branding it as
criminal, make Christ himself, as the cause of this, transgression,
a promoter of sin. It is then precisely by their inconsistency
with regard to the law that they bring about that which they
falsely assert to be the result of the consistent carrying out of
Paul's view, namely, X/3to-Tos dp,apTias SidKovos\ A logical anti-
nomian, on the contrary, like Paul, finds himself in a very

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LAW. 19
different position. He has been convinced by the law itself of
the impossibility of righteousness by the law (inasmuch as the
perception of sin comes by the law, Eom. iii. 20); he has died to
the law, has entirely released himseK from it, no longer, there
fore, acknowledges it as the standard by which he is to pass a
moral judgment on himself, so that being without the law would
be sin or Gentile unrighteousness; on the contrary, he is conscious
that in being without the law he has not only not become god
less, but that he has died to the law precisely for the great pur
pose that he may henceforth live whoUy with his entire self to
God ; he knows that his dying to the law is being crucified with
Christ, whereby the natural self, which being fleshly could never
have attained to righteousness by works of the law, is done
away, and Christ, the holy spirit of the Son of God, has come
to life, and gained the mastery in him. Thus the Apostle
already intimates here, that which he afterwards (v. 13 f) ex
pands into further detaU, that Christian freedom from the law is
by no means, as the Jewish Christians thought, a falUng back
into GentUe godlessness and fleshly caprice, but the exact oppo
site of this, namely, Uving for- God and in Christ (as has been
explained in greater detaU above, in Chap. v.). Having thus de
stroyed the force ofthe chief objection ofthe Judaizers as against
his freedom from the law (and in doing so very ably turned the
point of it against the Ulogical moderate party of Peter), he now
finaUy proceeds to his attack upon the principle of Jewish Chris
tianity. The principle of the law, without which the Jewish
Christians are unable to conceive any Christianity, is so far from
harmonizing with the gospel of God's favour and of faith, that it
distinctly tends to set aside the favour of God, so that we have
only the choice either of the law without favour, or of favour
without the law (cf. v. 4 and Eom. xi. 6). But when once this
distinct alternative has been established, in the place of the
Jewish-Christian combination of the law and favour, no true
believer in Christ can be left any. longer in doubt as to^his
decision, "I set not aside the favour of God (which would be done
C 2

20 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
by holding fast to that heterogeneous way of salvation by the
law) ; /or if righteousness were brought about by the law (if the law
had any significance whatever, were it ever so partial, in regard
to the attainment of salvation),' then Christ would have died in
vain " (there would have been no occasion for a new means of
salvation by the reconcUing death of Christ). The Apostle aptly
concludes his argument against the Judaism of the primitive
Apostles with this retort, in which the fundamental thought of
his gospel is as distinctly expressed as that of the Jewish-Chris
tian gospel was in the reproach of his opponents (ver. 17). As
this inferred from Paul's axiom — faith without the law — that
Christ was a promoter of sin, so Paul infers from the Jewish-
Christian axiom — faith with the law — that Christ had died in
vain. " It is by these two inferences that we must measure the
distance which separates the gospel of the Jews from the gospel
of the GentUes, Peter from Paul."i
On this occasion we see the opposing views of the primitive
community coming into conflict for the first time in their dis
tinct difference of principle ; partly because they had not pre
viously been plainly seen, and partly because they had not yet
been developed into complete distinctness. From this time for
ward Paul no longer contents himself, as in the conference which
had been held at Jerusalem, with merely demanding freedom
from the law for the GentUe Christians, while the Jewish Chris
tians were left to themselves with regard to the observance of
the law; but he boldly declares Christ to be "the eind ofthe law"
for all (Eom. x. 4). He deduces (dogmaticaUy and exegetically)
from the nature and the Mstory of the law, its merely temporary
character as a TratSaywyos ets XpuTTov, and says to the Jewish
Christians especiaUy that they were redeemed by the Son of
God in order that they might no longer be under the law as
their governor, but that they might attain to sonship by faith in
Christ ; so that henceforth there is no difference between Jew
and Gentile, but all have become one, within the one community
^ Holsten, Comm. on Gal. in "Protestantenbibel," p. 729,

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LAW. 21
of Christ, and thus the barrier of the law has once for aU been
thrown down (GaL Ui. 5 — 28, iv. 5).^ Nay, so far is he from
merely securing this freedom from the law for the Jewish Chris
tians, as a permission, of which they might make use or not as
they liked, that he declares, in the strongest language he can
use, that to fall back into the law (even by keeping the feasts
appointed by the law, iv. 10 f ) is to fall away from Christ, to
lose the benefits of Christ's ' salvation, to make all the labour
bestowed upon them by the Apostle useless, to end in the flesh
that which they had begun in the spirit (v. 1 — 4^ iv. 11, iii. 3 f ).
On the other hand, we find the Judaizers assuming from this
time forward an equally decided polemical attitude towards
Paul, and raising difficulties in the way of his wprk at every
step. It is they who have " bewitched " the Galatians, so that
they can no longer recognize Christ crucified, as pictured by
Paul before their eyes (no longer understand the fundamental
idea of Paul's gospel to be the abrogation of the law), GaL iu. 1.
It is they who have " hindered " this community, which had run
so weU, so that they were no longer obedient to the truth (v. 7) ;
who sought to aUenate the community from Paul, their only
spiritual father, and induce it to emulate them, the Judaizers,
by representing to the Galatians that Paul was not a true and
upright friend to them, was not acting honourably by them, but
was hindering them from fuU and complete participation in
the Messianic salvation, which was only to be obtained by the
acceptance of the law (iv. 12 — 20). It was they who by all
these means " troubled and disturbed " the community, and who
would have to " bear their judgment " for it (v. 10 — 12). And
why do they act thus ? " In order that they may not be perse
cuted through the cross of Christ, in order that the offence of the
cross may cease" (vi. 12, v. 11), i.e. because Paul's conception of
the cross of Christ, according to which it is the end of the
law, and therefore his whole gospel, was offensive, galling, and
insupportable to their Jewish consciousness (which clung to
1 See above, Vol. I. p. 188 f.

22 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
the Jewish principle of the law, in spite of their faith in
Christ). Attempts have been made, with the idea of defending Chris
tianity, to extenuate or almost to deny this opposition of prin
ciple between PauUnism and Judaism, to which the historical
inquiries of Baur have, for the first time since the writing of
Marcion, directed attention. This has been done by means of
two assertions — first, that there was a complete understanding
between the Jewish Christians and Paul with regard to the
fundamental doctrine, that the law was not religiously binding
on believers in Christ, but that they had from motives of piety
retained it, though indifferent in a religious point of view, as a
national observance. Secondly, it is said that Paul had found
nothing to say against such a practical holding fast of the law,
as an external regulation of life, but, on the contrary, had pro
moted it both by example and precept.^ As regards the former
of these assertions, it is not only unsupported in any way by
those Epistles of Paul which can alone be treated here as
authentic evidence, but it is completely refuted by them, both
directly and indirectly. Indirectly, — for if Paul could have
taken it for granted that the Judaizers agreed dogmaticaUy in
principle with his doctrine regarding the law, and only differed
from him externaUy, in their practice, where would have been
the use or necessity for aU his splendid apparatus of dogmatic
and exegetical argument in support of his antinomianism, and
especiaUy of his often-repeated and emphatic assertions of the
independence of his gospel, if that of his opponents had not
been eTepov e-iayyeXiov in principle, in cardinal dogmatic ques
tions, such as this very one of the vaUdity of the law ? And
that this was in fact the case, the Apostle directly affirms in
Gal. i. 6 f , 2 Cor. xi. 4. So entirely was it another gospel, that
the essence of Paul's gospel, the doctrine of the cross of Christ
as the end of the law, was an offence, through which they felt
themselves persecuted (vi. 12), and on account of which they
' Hofman, Lechler, Ritschl, Weiss, &e.

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LAW. 23
persecuted Paul (v. 11). So far were they from considering the
keeping of the law as a matter of indifference, as regarded reli
gion, in the Christian community, that a Christ who was the
cause of such indifferentism with respect to the law, appeared to
them no better than dpiapTias SidKovos (U. 17). They wished to
find righteousness by faith in Christ, not outside, of the law, but
on its firm foundation, and therefore looked upon those who bore
as their motto, Tricms x'^P's epycov vopov, simply as dp,apTcoXo-vs,
like the heathen. Since they could only see in the faith of
Christ the completion of the law and the means to the attain
ment of its highest, righteousness, they naturaUy regarded the
principle of faith without the law as an utter absurdity, a falsi
fying of God's truth, nay, as downright viUany (2 Cor. iv. 2). It
is thus established beyond doubt, in spite of all apologetic
attempts that have been made to extenuate the fact, that the
dogmatic standpoint of Paul's doctrine and that of the Jewish
Christians, on the question of the validity of the law, were
antagonistic in principle.
That differences of principle, however, do not exclude various
means of accommodation and approximation in practice, is taught
by the experience of aU ages ; and it can hardly be denied that
this was the case in the primitive community to a greater extent
than the Tubingen critics are incUned to allow. As a man like
Peter adopted at Antioch, in order to please the Gentile Chris
tians, a freer mode of life than was reaUy allowed by his dog
matic standpoint, which he shared in principle with James,
though the latter was stricter in practice, so the same thing
might weU happen in many other instances, and might widely
extend itself. In fact, the Judaistic agitators in Galatia appear
to have considerably relaxed the strictness of the demands of
the law, from motives of prudence (vi. 13, v. 3) ; and in Corinth
they evidently relaxed their demands stiU more.'- At aU events,
1 The reader may here be reminded of the Epistle of James (certainly of a later
date), which is decidedly Jewish-Christian in spirit, although it does not set before its
readers, amongst whom Pauline Christians were included, a specifically Jewish demand
of the observance of the law.

24 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
the Judaizers could not have avoided eating with those who were
uncircumcised in mixed communities, stUl less in those in which
the GentUe Christians were the majority, without losing all influ
ence over them. As, however, practical concessions of this kind
on the part of the Jewish Christians were inevitable from the
first, so, on the other hand, Paul also bears witness of himself that
" in order to win the Jews, he became to the Jews as a Jew, to
those that were under the law as under the law, yet without
being personally under the law" (1 Cor. ix. 20 f ). Nothing can
be more absurd than to attempt to prove from this passage that
PaiU approved, or actuaUy demanded, the perpetual observance of
the law on the part of Jewish Christians, as a fundamental doc
trine. On the contrary, if he is constrained to become to the
Jews "as a Jew'' (us 'lovSafog), certainly on no other ground than
the wish to educate them, this proves plainly enough that ordina
rily, and therefore as to his fundamental principles, he is no
longer, and wiU no longer be, a Jew, which he moreover expressly
states in adding the words, py cSv a-iros two vopov. It must how
ever be confessed that this passage proves at least thus much, that
Paul did not practicaUy carry out his dogmatic antinomianism in
that complete and absolute exclusiveness with which he sets it
forth in principle, for instance, in GaL v. 1 — 10. The Apostle who
" could be all things to aU men, that he might gain some," was
very far from being a man who would get astride of an abstract
principle and ride through thick and thin in his burning zeal to
attack the law, without asking whether he destroyed souls or not,
provided only that he saved his principle. No; this same Apostle,
who, when in the actual defence of his principle he had to take
part in a decisive negotiation, did not yield a single step, " so that
the truth of the gospel might stand" (Gal. u. 5), confesses, on
the other hand, of himself, iXevOepos oJi' iK Trdvrcov, Trdcriv ipavTov
iSo-vXcocra, iva tovs 7rXeioi/as KejoSijo-o) (1 Cor. ix. 19), and Ukewise
demands from others that they should show regard for their
weaker brethren, should neither judge any nor cause them to
offend, but ever keep in view the edification of their neighbours

THE CONTEST ABOUT THE LAW. 25
(Eom. xiv. 15). How far he may have extended this practical
accommodation in particular instances, is a question which can
not possibly be answered a priori; for in this sphere everything
is decided by the prompting of the individual conscience, and
no one can judge for another the extent of what is permissible.
But by the very act of assigning " the weakness of their
brethren" as the reason for thus accommodating themselves to
the Jewish Christians, Paul characterizes it as a concession to
the standpoint of others, as an exception to the normal rule, and
therefore refutes the opinion of the modem apologists, that he
required converts to continue their observance of the Jewish
customs as a matter of principle. It is supposed that this asser
tion, which stands in the most manifest contradiction to the
clearest expressions of the Epistles to the Galatians and Eomans,
is proved by 1 Cor. vU. 18 f But this passage only declares
that the Jewish Christian had as Uttle need to abolish the out
ward sign of Judaism in his body, as the GentUe Christian had
to adopt it, because it was a matter of perfect indifference
whether they had it or not. That the observance of the whole
of the Mosaic ordinances was bound up with the retention of
this sign in the body, is an extraordinary notion, which it is
impossible to discover in GaL v. 3 ; for to allow oneself to be
circumcised is of course a very different thing from not exter
nally undoing one's circumcision. But the admonition to remain
in the caUing wherein they were caUed (1 Cor. vii. 20), refers to
the different social positions in life, not to the ordinances of the
Jewish law, to which rather the following texts are appUcable —
iXOo-vcrys rijs TriorTeios ovKeri vrro iratSayoiyov icrpev, and el ovv
dTreOdveTe ovv t^ Xpurrco aTrb twv uToixeiiov tou Kocjpov, ti cos ^covres
iv Koa-pcf Soyp-aTiiecrOe (GaL Ui. 25 ; Col. ii. 20.). In brief, there
fore, Paul's fundamental principle of freedom from the- law wUl
no more admit of abatement than the Judaistic principle of
legality ; although it must also be granted that the practice of
both parties was less severe than their theory.

26 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.

The Dispute about the Apostleship of Paul.
When the primitive Christian community at Jerusalem had
once begun to work upon mixed communities like that of the
Galatians, by means of their emissaries, and had attempted, not
wholly without success, to convert them from the gospel of Paul
to that of the Jewish Christians, they went a step further, and
began to attack the Apostle of the Gentiles in the field of labour
which was exclusively his own, in purely Gentile communities
like that at Corinth. This was, no doubt, a most flagrant breach
of the compromise agreed upon at the meeting of the Apostles
at Jerusalem, which had distinctly separated the fields of labour
of the two parties, and assigned the work among the GentUes to
the Apostle of the GentUes as his exclusive prerogative. The
original Apostles did not indeed, by appearing in person and
agitating in Paul's field of labour, themselves incur the blame
of violating their compact by this encroachment ; they rather
backed those who, furnished with credentials of the weightiest
authority, came to the Corinthians with a different gospel from
that of Paul. But practically this made no difference; it was
their authority which lent to those who had forced themselves in
at Corinth, the \l/evSaTroa-T6Xois and ipydrais SoXiois, the weapons
for their attack on Paul ; it was their authority also agauist
which Paul had to defend his independent right of apostleship
(2 Cor. xi. 4, 5) ; and thus it was certainly a breach of the com
promise on their part, of which Paul justly complains. , The
opposite party could certainly appeal to the fact of Paul's having
been the first to break the treaty — as they, the Judaizers, had
understood it — by inducing the Jewish Christians in mixed com
munities like those of Galatia and Antioch, to assume the Gentile-
Christian freedom from the law, the consequence of which was
the mission from James, and subsequently the dispute with
Peter.. So far, each party was in the right from their own stand
point, and the abandonment of that treaty only showed the

THE DISPUTE ABOUT THE APOSTLESHIP OF PAUL. 27
incompatibUity of the opposing principles which lay concealed
within it.
Now, however, that the opponents of ParU had transferred
their attack to his exclusive sphere of labour, they were compelled
to adopt different tactics from those which they had hitherto
employed among the Jewish Christians, to whom they could
appeal on the ground of their common respect for the law. The
final object of their agitation could of course, as before, be no other
than to convert the Gentile Christians to the Jewish-Christian
view of Christianity, and therefore to force upon them obedience
to the law, in addition to their faith in Christ. But had they from
the very beginning openly proclaimed this to be their ultimate
object, they would have rendered the success of their agitation in
the highest degree improbable, if not altogether impossible. They
were compeUed, therefore, to prepare a foundation for their anti-
Pauline gospel by setting up the representatives of the other
gospel against Paul as the higher authority. They accordingly
put forward the Jewish- Christian Apostles as the " pre-eminent
Apostles" {-im-epXiav diroorToAoi), Le. as Apostles whose authority far
outweighed that of Paul, in comparison with whom, as the real
Apostles and piUars of the Church, Paul could by no means
rank as an Apostle of equal standing with independent authority
to teach. Thus the contest was transferred from the question
of the Law, which was of course throughout the real and impor
tant object of contention, to the question as to the right of Paul
to independent apostolical authority, as the first and immediate
point of the controversy.
In this contest the position of both parties was again precisely
the same as in that regarding the law. Externally, regarded
according to appearances (Kara TrpocrioTrov), the Judaizers had
more right on their side, whence Paul is enabled to caU their
weapons fleshly, their mode of fighting Kara crdpKa o-rpaTevecrOai
(2 Cor. X. 3 f ). On the other hand, Paul had the deeper spiritual
right on his side, which indeed was strong enough in itself to
throw down every rampart that could be raised against the true

28 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
evangelical perception of God, and to compel every external
ground of thought (jrdv voypa) to give itself up in obedience to
Christ (to the truth of Christian salvation), but strong in this
way only for those who were able spirituaUy to judge of spiritual
things, not for those who Kara Trpocronrov pXeTrovcriv. In what then
consisted this Kara TrpocriOTrov fSXeTreiv and Kara crdpKa cTTpaTevearOai
of the anti-Pauline party ? The Apostle leaves no room for
doubt on this point — they placed aU their confidence in their
XpicTTov etvai, which, they averred, was wanting to the Apostle
Paul; in this it was that he was behind the chief Apostles
{varepyKevai, xi. 5, xiL 11), and he therefore did not possess the
fuU apostoUc i^ovcria (x. 7, 8). Paul opposes these assertions hy
maintaining, first, that he could appeal as weU as they to the
XpicTTov eivai as the foundation of his apostoUc authority, and
therefore stood in that respect exactly on the same ground as
they ; but, secondly, he went on to say that in regard to this
very i^ovcria he could boast of a further authority which went
beyond it, and was thus not only on an equality with them,
but in fact had an advantage over them.
Now what is this Xpicrrov eTvai, on the presence or absence of
which the question of the apostoUc i^ovcria of Paul is to depend ?
Eegarded as a note of apostleship, it cannot mean belonging to
Christ in the sense in which aU believers belong to Christ hy
faith, but must refer to some special sense in which the original
Apostles belonged to him, and on which depended the peculiar
rights and privileges of those Apostles and of the whole party
which attached itself to them. But belonging to Christ in this
sense can only mean that relation to him which resulted from
the immediate personal companionship of the original Apostle
with Christ du/ring his historical life, and which was ratified and
sealed by the caU to the Apostleship which they received from
Christ himself This explanation is so natural, so entirely in
accordance with the relations of the parties, and so obviously
suggested by the crucial passage, 2 Cor. x. 7 f, that the refusal
to accept it can only be accounted for by the prejudice of apolo-

THE DISPUTE ABOUT THE APOSTLESHIP OF PAUL. 29
gists.^ What course was more obvious for the party of the
original Apostles than to point to the difference of their past
lives from that of Paul, as an argument against the latter ? He,
far from the historical Christ, a persecutor of his community,
converted to the faith last of aU and long after the others, now
pretends to know what Christian faith and the true gospel of
Jesus the Messiah is, better than they whp were about him from
the beginning, who received instruction directly from his Ups,
and were expressly appointed by him to their apostleship ! The
defence which Paul made shows plainly enough what powerful
weapons his adversaries possessed in this argument, which is so
striking from the point of view of the natural understanding.
He insists over and over again, that this eicternal advantage of
^ The attempt of Beyschlag (Theol. Stud, nnd Kr. 1865, II.) to separate the party
who called themselves Christ's in Corinth from the original Apostles, and in fact to
represent them as holding opposite views (of. Hilgenfeld, Ztschr. f. w. Th. 1865, III. ;
1871, I. ; and 1872, II.), is utterly untenable. It is abundantly evident from 2 Cor.
X. 7, 8, compared with xi. 5, that these persons had made XpitrroiJ elvai into a party
watchword at Corinth, solely for the purpose of proving the apostolic inferiority of
Paul to the original Apostles, or the exclusive apostolic authority of the latter, by his
lack of this characteristic. How then is it conceivable tbat they should have done this
without the consent of the original Apostles, nay, in opposition to their views ? And
wbat weight could the ILpiarov elvai posisibly have as individual self-assertion in
the mouth of a, few casual new-comers ? Whereas it would haye meaning enough,
and, as the sequel shows, a considerable importance, in the contest with Paul as
the watchword of the whole party, which had the original Apostlea at their head,
and sheltered itself under their authority. Now inasmuch as these persons certainly
did not make their appearance at Corinth merely in their own name, but solely as
representatives of the party of the original Apostles, from the heads of which party
they had iu fact, as we know, procured letters of introduction to take with them, the
question whether they themselves also may have been the immediate disciples of Christ
during his lifetime would appear to be irrelevant. They did not evidently insist upou
this advantage for themselves, but only in favour of those whose names they inscribed
on their banner in opposition to Paul, in favour of the original Apostles. We must
therefore allow that Baur is perfectly right in declaring that the ' ' Christ party " was
essentially identical with the party of Peter; the former was the dogmatic shibboleth,
which indicated the principle that stamped the character of the party, the latter was
merely the external denomination of the party from its head. Granting that the
former term characterizes the anti- Pauline party in stronger and more decided colours,
it is yet essentially one and the same aitti-Panline party, which bands itself around
the original Apostles, shields itself with their authority, and appeals to their letters of
recommendation (2 Cor. iii. 1). Cf. Baur, Paul, Engl, transl., I. p. 266 f. ; and Hol
sten, ut supra, p. 22 f.

30 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
their past Christian life is of no value in the eyes of God, who
does not regard the person, and that it can therefore secure to its
possessors no prerogative in questions of divine truth (Gal. ii. 6,
aTTo TOJV SoKO-vvTcov eivai ti, orroioi rrore ¦ycrav o-iSev poi Siacjtepei.
Trpoa-coTrov Oeos dvOpcoTrov ov Xap,pdvei) ; he caUs their self-glorifica-
tion a KavxdcrOai iv TrpocrcoTTCff Kal ov KapSiq,, 2 Cor. V. 12, i.e. &
boasting which is based upon external qualities of a contingent
kind, and not on inward worth, or the condition of the heart
with regard to Christ, which alone is of decisive importance in
Christian questions. For that historical acquaintance impUes
nothing more than a bare knowledge of Christ, Kara a-dpKa, ibid.
ver. 16, of his external human manifestation in the flesh, on
which salvation was not dependent, and which did not constitute
his Messiabship, his divine sonship, but only the Jewish son-
ship of David. As Christ died for aU, so, for aU who are truly
in Christ, old things have all passed away, and aU has become
new ; the relation therefore to Christ also of true Christians, who
have beconie new creatures in him, can no more be limited by
their former connection with the fleshly Christ. " Although we
(Christians) may also have known Christ according to the flesh
(of which the party of the original Apostles boast as an advan
tage which they possess more ev Trpocrcorrcf than in KapSicg), — ^now
after the death of Christ for all, we (aU) know him thus no
more ;" i. e. although in the case of some of us Christians, our
relation to Christ in the past may have been an external, fleshly,
immediate, personal acquaintance with his human form, this
makes no difference in our present relation to Christ ; for since
his death, all that is past has become insignificant in comparison
with this one thing, that we are in Christ, according to the
spirit, or with the heart, and live for him.^ After the appear-
' Compare Hilgenfeld on this passage, Ztschr. f. w. Theol. 1871, p. 115: "We
involve ourselves in inextricable difficulties if we take iyvwKaptv to apply to Paul's
own standpoint. For Paul to say that he himself also had been personaUy acquainted
with Christ would be quite out of place here, since, as he had been at the beginning an
opponent of Christ, he could not have boasted of this acquaintanceship. Besides, it ia
hard to draw any other conclusion from 1 Cor. ix. 1 than that Paul saw Christ for the

THE DISPUTE ABOUT THE APOSTLESHIP OF PAUL. 31
ance of Christ in the flesh was resolved into the pure spiritual
being of the dvOponros ejrovpdvios, the belonging to Christ is now
likewise elevated from the realm of the flesh, of the external
acquaintance, and historical relation to his earthly person, upon
which the Xpia-Tov etvai of the anti-Pauline party depended, to
the higher realm of the spirit, the spiritual bond of union in
" living for Christ." It is true that this spiritual belonging to
Christ applies to aU beUeving Christians, and therefore contains
no special authorization for his apostleship. Thus far therefore
the prerogative claimed on the part of his opponents was not
disproved, and Paul was consequently obliged to bring forward
another argument in support of his questioned equality with the
original Apostles.
And he had another argument, nay a Trepura-orepov ti, to bring
against his opponents. If they grounded their apostolical autho
rity on their having been in immediate communication with the
person of Jesus, and having been instaUed in their apostleship
directly by him— weU, then Paul was conscious ofthe very same
thing, only in another form. He also had seen Christ at his con
version, and had on that occasion been called by him to be his
Apostle among the Gentiles. Hence he is enabled (1 Cor. ix. 1)
fearlessly to confront his adversaries, who disputed his claim to

first time at hia conversion and calling." Paul then speaks for the first time in his
own person with the word yiyvcocrxoiiev, while d icai . . . lyvioxapev is a hypothetical case
referring in the abstract to Christians in general, and applying in the concrete not to
Paul, but to his opponents. He does not say iyvcoKare, because he is not here directly
addressing his opponents, but only alludes to them indirectly, and therefore the expres
sion is left undefined, so that it may apply with equal force to all who may feel that
it concerns them. When Baur (Paul, Engl, transl., I. p. 272) and Holsten (ut supra,
pp. 430 — 432) translate the sentence ei icai . . . eyvcoKapev, "if we (I, Paul) have also
formerly known anything of a fleshly Messiah, i.e. of a Messiah according to the fleshly
conception of the Jews, yet know we now nothing more of such an one," this appears
to me to be an interpretation of 'Xpiarov which is justified neither by the language of
the text nor by the context, in which the word is applied throughout only to the his
torical Jesus Christ. And the whole point of Paul's polemic against the " Christ
party," which Baur also rightly discovers in this passage, would be destroyed by that
interpretation, for it was the ecopaKtvai and yiyvdaKeiv of the historical Jesus Christ
whieh was, as we have seen, the matter of their specific self-glorification as against
Paul.

32 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
apostleship with the question, " Am I not an Apostle ? Have I
not seen our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Am I not at liberty to act like
the other Apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas
(himself)"? (ver. 5). As this passage plainly shows that the
question of the right to apostleship turned on its legitimation by
the ecopaKevai 'lyaovv XpicxTov, it appears to confirm what we have
stated above, that the Xpurrov etvai, which the anti-PauUne party
made out to be the decisive note of genuine apostleship, depended
also on the kapaKevai XpicTTov OX on the personal relation to Christ.
Now Paul also is able to apply to himself this Xpurrov etvai even
in the strict sense of immediate communication with the person
of Christ, 2 Cor. x. 7, KaOcos a-vrhs (the adherent of the party of
the original Apostles, who boasted of his Xpurrov etvai in opposi
tion to Paul) Xpia-Tov, ouTO) Kai -ypeis Xpia-Tov. He also, as he so
energetically insists in Gal. i. 1, 11, 12, 16, is an Apostle, not hy
the favour of men, or by the intervention of men, but imme
diately through Christ, and has Ukewise received his gospel
directly by the revelation of Jesus Christ, Uke the historical dis
ciples of Jesus. It is true that this immediate communication
with the person of Christ was not that of intercourse with the
earthly person of Jesus, nor of instruction received from the his
torical teacher, any more than his instaUation as an Apostle was
an external historical public act; but all these were to Hm
experiences of a miraculous nature, which, however real, did not
belong to the theatre of earthly events, and were therefore whoUy
withdrawn from the observation and control of others, and stood
fast as truths only in his subjective self-consciousness. But how
could he with this truth, which was only subjectively valid, con
tend successfully against the objectively historical relation of the .
original Apostles to the living Jesus of history ? If they threw
doubt on the truth of his asserted vision of Christ and his reve
lations, what had he to oppose to them but a simple repetition
of his assertions ? And how obviously in that case did he lay
himself open to the reproach of his opponents, that if there were
any truth in these assertions, it must before all things have

THE DISPUTE ABOUT THE APOSTLESHIP OF PAUL. 33
proved itself by its fruits, namely, by the agreement of that
which had been (as averred), revealed to him by the heavenly
Christ, with that which the original Apostles had notoriously
received from the earthly Jesus, as the true message of salva
tion ! We actually meet with this very obvious reproach of
the anti-Pauline party in a much later anti-Pauline work ; the
pseudo-Clementine Epistles make Peter address to Simon Magus,
who represents Paul, the question — rrm Se o-oi koI TricrTe-va-op,ev aijxo',
Kav OTt co<j>Oy croi (XpicrTOSj ', Trios Se croi Kal dxpOy, o?roT€ a-VTOV to.
evavria T-y SiSao-KaXic^ 4>poveis ? The Opposition of the teaching of
Paul to that of the undoubted disciples of Jesus made his calling
to the apostleship through visions and revelations, which rested
only on assertions of a subjective character, in the highest degree
doubtful from a rational point of view. Moreover, the question
might be asked whether this could be in any way a possible or
a proper way of becoming a disciple of Jesus. If the knowledge
of the true gospel could be obtained by the unhistorical method
of miraculous revelations, what purpose, after all, was served by
the whole historical appearance of Jesus on earth ? It is the
pseudo- Clementine Epistles again which put this question in the
mouth of Peter — Ei' ns 6t OTrTacriav els SiSacrKaXiav iTO(f>ia-0yvai
Suvarat ; Kal ei p,ev ipeiTe, SvvaTOv icTTiv, Sta tI oA^ eviavTCf eypyyopocri
Trapap,evcov iipiXycjev o 8tSao"KaAos ;
But had Paul no further legitimation of his apostleship than
the miraculous event of his conversion ? He had more than one.
He is not obUged to rest his i^ovcria as an Apostle merely on the
past, as the original Apostles do (oTroioi Trore ycrav o-vSev poi Sia<j)epei),
but he can also appeal to divine evidence which is being given at
the present moment ; above all, to the judgment of God pro
nounced in the fact of his success as Apostle to the Gentiles.
This, which he had already successfully advanced at Jerusalem
as the most weighty argument in support of his right to the
apostleship to the Gentiles (Gal. ii. 8 f ), he now brings forward
again in reply to his opponents ; he draws attention with great
emphasis to the difference that there is in this respect between
VOL. II. D

34 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
himself and the party of the original Apostles. Whilst they
were only able to boast of wide-spread success in a field of labour
which did not belong to them (namely, Paul's), and in so doing
took on false grounds more credit to themselves than was their
due according to the facts, — Paul, on the other hand, always
conscientiously abstains from every encroachment on other men's
labours, wiU not deck himself with borrowed laurels, but boasts
only of that to which he has an actual right, that is to say, so far
as God himself has fixed the due proportion of merit by granting
successful results. Thus it is not he who boasts, but the Lord
himself offers his testimony as is meet; and so he does not
boast of his success as if it had been gained by his own arm,
but he makes his boast in the Lord (2 Cor. x. 12 — 18). He can,
therefore, without vain self-laudation, boldly point to the fact
that he, although he is the last of the Apostles as to the time of
his caUing, has nevertheless by the favour of God laboured more
than they aU (1 Cor. xv. 10). And not only in his success, hut
also in labours and sufferings of every kind for the sake of Christ,.
he is before all the other Apostles (2 Cor. xi. 23 f ). And he
prefers to boast of his distinction in this respect, because this
boast, having for its object suffering and weakness, is least
exposed to the danger of being represented as vain self-exaltation.
In connection with boasting of such advantages as these, which
pass with the world for weakness and folly, he comes at last
(2 Cor. xii. 1 f ) to the most delicate point of his defence, which
he has purposely kept to the last, because the highest exaltation
and the deepest humiliation come here into the closest contact,
and at the same time the most blessed assurance regarding him
self is most closely united with the painful consciousness of being
helplessly exposed to the doubts, nay, even to the malicious mis
interpretation of others. He comes to the account of his visions
and revelations (which were well known to his opponents), of
which indeed he speaks with reluctance, well knowing that this
kind of boasting was calculated to gain him no advantage, but
rather to give his adversaries the greatest occasion for maUcious

THE DISPUTE ABOUT THE APOSTLESHIP OF PAUL. 35
slander. _ Nevertheless, out of a number of visions and revela
tions of various kinds, he relates one extraordinary revelation,
on the occasion of which (whether with his spirit alone, whUe
his body remained on earth, or whether with his entire man,
including his body, he cannot himself say) he was taken up into
the third heaven, into paradise itself, and heard there words that
cannot be uttered. If he wished to turn this glorious super
natural experience to his own glory, he was free to do so with
out faUing into vain and groundless self-exaltation, for he would
only be speaking the simple truth; but he wishes to keep
entirely clear of this self-glorification, and chooses to regard the
experience which befel him as something which had happened
to another person (having been in fact not master of himself on
that occasion, and therefore to a certain extent a different person
from his ordinary self), in order that he might not induce any
one to estimate his person more highly than was warranted by
what he had actuaUy experienced. With regard to himself, he
determines, on the contrary, only to make mention or to boast of
that which is his weakness. He then proceeds to speak of his
bodUy infirmity and excessive sensibiUty, and in a most masterly
manner turns these weaknesses, of which his opponents had
taken advantage in order to depreciate him (x. 10), to his highest
praise, since they formed, as it were, only the reverse side, and
were imposed by God as a counterbalance to his great exaltation
by revelations and visions.
Having thus proved by facts of the most varied kind, drawn
from his outward and inner Ufe, that he could adduce divine
testimony of fact for the legitimation of his equality with the
original Apostles, not only of equal but in fact of much greater
weight than theirs, he finaUy addresses to the community which,
by their unloving remissness in defending him, had forced upon
him the painful task of praising himself in his own defence, the
question, whether they were not compeUed to bear him witness
that all the signs of an- Apostle had been displayed amongst
them, that they were in all respects, in all the proofs of the
d2

36 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
genuineness and power of the Christian spirit, not a whit behind
the other communities (referring especially to those which be
longed to the field of labour of the original Apostles) — excepting
indeed in this one point, that he had accepted no maintenance
from them, as the other Apostles and Evangelists were accus
tomed to do in their communities. If this had been an injustice
towards them, he begged that they would pardon him for it;
but he certainly could not act differently in this respect in the
future. Thus with fine and gentle irony Paul repels the coarse
accusation, which only a low and malicious disposition could
have brought against him, that he betrayed his consciousness
of not possessing the full right of an Apostle by his renunciation ¦
of material payment for his labours from the community, and
at the same time his evU conscience, as one who was thrusting
himself into the dignity of an Apostle. Against this he re
peatedly guards himself, saying that it was not because he had
not this claim upon the community, as well as any other Apostle
(1 Cor. ix. 1 f ), neither was it from want of love or confidence
in them (2 Cor. xi. 7 f , xii. 13 f.) that he had refused to avail
himself of it, and stiU intended to do so, but in order that he
might cut off from those who would gladly have found some
occasion against him, every opportunity of doing so (xi. 11 f).
Vehemently as he gave utterance, in defending himself, to aU
that was in his heart, or that his mind suggested to him, he fears,
notwithstanding, lest in doing so he should again incur the
reproach of vain self-glorification. He therefore begs for leniency
and indulgence to this self-praise, which is forced from him by
the necessity of self-defence, and with great delicacy reminds
the Corinthians that they had shown only too much indulgence
to his opponents; 2 Cor. xi. 4 £ : " If any chance person comes
to you and preaches another Christ whom we have not preached,
or you receive another spirit which you have not received, or
another gospel which you have not accepted,^ you bear that
' Every one who reads the 4th and 20th verses of this chapter with unprejudiced
eyes raust perceive that the writer is not here putting a merely hypothetical case, as

THE DISPUTE ABOUT THE APOSTLESHIP OF PAUL. 37
well !" (Why then will you not bear from me at least that boast
ing to which you have yourselves forced me?) "I consider
myseK in no way iiiferior to the very chief Apostles" (induced
by whose authority you listen to all that is said to you- by any
chance person who comes to you with another gospel, cf vers.
19, 20). In appealing to the indulgence of his community with
regard to his defending himself by means of self-praise which
had been forced upon him, the Apostle gives them to understand
that he ventured with all the more confidence to make this
claim upon them, as they had only too readily and freely ex
tended their indulgence to his opponents. And he unmistakably
indicates, by the expressive addition of ver. 5 to ver. 4, that this
indulgence to the new-comers, who with their new wisdom
wished to make themselves lords over the community (v. 20 —
Ei TIS vpds KaTaSovXoi), could only be grounded on their extrava
gant respect for the authority of the " chief Apostles." It is only
on this supposition, which we may read between the lines, that
this verse has a clear and good relation to the context. But if it
be true that these persons who came to Corinth with another
gospel, met with so much indulgence there only on account of
the excessive respect of the Corinthians for the " chief Apostles,"
what can follow more clearly than that those new-comers relied
only on the authority of these Apostles, and in their name alone
demanded recognition for their new doctrine ? And as we have
already heard (2 Cor. iii. 1) from the Apostle that these new
comers were furnished with " letters of recommendation," is it
possible to understand by this expression anything but official
letters of authorization from those on whose name and authority
the bearers relied, and owing to whose authority they met with
so much indulgence? — in other words, an official letter ofauthoriza-
Beyschlag thinks, but alluding in a delicate manner to what really occurred. Cf. Hilgen
feld, Ztschr. 1865, p. 261 : "It is only Paul's delicacy which prevents him from saying
plainly to the Corinthians, When people who carae from abroad preached to you
another Jesus, you bore it nobly (ironically of course)." He rightly calls attention
at the same time to a similar instance (Gal. ii. 14) in the address of Paul to Peter, who
certainly had lived like the Gentiles— ei ai) Wvikwq Zm, &c.

38 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
tion from the original Apostles, the mrepXiav dTrocrroXoi, who sought
thus to thrust out, by the hands of his own community, this
man who had thrust himself into the apostleship ?^ However un
pleasing this result may be, we shaU hardly be able to avoid it if
we give the unprejudiced consideration of an historian to aU that
Paul, though he has veUed it with deUcacy, allows any one who
will read between the lines to see clearly enough.

Tendency towards Peace.
How unselfishly the Apostle Paul, through all the heat of
controversy, stiU kept in view only the truth of the gospel, the
concerns of Christ and not his own, is most beautifully shown in
the conciUatory course which we find him adopting the moment
he sees that the principle of his gospel is no longer in danger.
" Paul himself" — ^the sharp controversialist of the Epistle to the
Galatians — "is the first to adopt in the Epistle to the Boma'ns
that peaceful and conciUatory tone which characterizes the post-
apostolic development. For he is also the first who felt the deep
need of the reconcUiation of the Jewish with the GentUe Chris
tians in the interest of Christendom itself"^ It was the same
need of reconcUiation which made the offering of love for the
J According to Beyschlag roAiei, the "vTrepXiav airooToXot" are not the original
Apostles at Jerusalem at all, but are identical with the " -^evSaTroaroXoi, ipydrai
SoXioi and servants of Satan," cf. ver. 13 f., that is to say, the new-comers at Corinth
themselves ! So extravagant a fancy does uot need a serious refutation. Cf. Hilgen
feld, Z. f. w. Th. 1866, p. 263 : "Is it not the merest satire upon Paul to make him
maintain, by a solemn appeal to the attestation of his apostleship, his full equality
with persons on whom he tums his back as ' false Apostlea and servants of Satan' ?"
Further, when Beyschlag sees in the authorization of these emissaries from Jerusalem
an act in contravention of that agreement described in Gal. ii. 9, he is quite right, no
doubt, only he has forgotten to read frora vers. 9 to 12, otherwise he must have known
that au act in contravention of that agreement was not an impossibility at Jerusalem,
but had in fact occurred very soon afterwards. The fact that this was possible only
proves that the understanding at Jerusalem was not so complete as Beyschlag would
make us believe (see above pp. 7- — 12).
" Holsten, in his review of Hofmanu's Commentary on the Epistle to the Eomans,
Z. f. w. Th. 1872, p. 456.

TENDENCY TOWARDS PEACE. 39
poor of Jerusalem, and the friendly acceptance of it by the
original community, an earnest wish of his heart. But the more
ground there was for his earnest care in this respect (which
plainly shows itself in Eom. xv. 30 — 32), the more inteUigible is
the wish to place himself on the best possible understanding
with the chief community of the West, that he might find com
fort in their unanimity and harmonious communion of faith, for
the dissensions and troubles which threatened from the East
(Eom. L 12, XV. 5, f 30—32).
The concUiatory tendency of the Epistle betrays itself, above
aU, in the way in which the national self-esteem of those who
were born Jews is spared by the repeated and unreserved recogni
tion of the advantages and privileges of the covenanted nation of
the Old Testament, which were derived from their history and
religious institutions. At the very opening of the Epistle, the
destination of the gospel for aU is emphaticaUy so expressed that
the precedence is given to the Jews — " The gospel is a power of
God unto salvation for every one that believes, 'lovSaic^ Te irpcorov
Kal "EAAijvi (i. 16). After speaking of the sinfulness and the
need of redemption of Jew and GentUe alike, he nevertheless
decidedly brings in the theocratic advantage of the Jews, iU. 1 f ,
Tl ovv TO Trepicrcrov tov lovSaiov, y tis y locjieXeia t^s TrepiTopys ', TroXv
KaTa Trdvra TpoTrov' rrpcoTov piev ydp oti iTricrTe-vOycrav to. Adyta tov
Oeov. Of the manifold advantages of Israel,^ he brings forward
at first only this most important one, that the " oracles," i.e. pro
phecies and promises of God, were entrusted to them ; which,
moreover, are not done away by the unbelief of some in Jesus
the Messiah, in whose name those promises are fulfilled ; the
Messianic promise belonged first of aU to Israel, and this stands
unaltered, in spite of their present partial unbelief, by virtue of
^ I cannot suppose that iu ver. 2 Paul is not speaking in his own name, but making
his Jewish opponents speak (according to the explanation of Baur aud Lipsius in the
" Protestantenbibel," p. 510). Paul raust have given some distinct indication of such
a striking change of speakers ; besides, in other instances, the answer to such self-pro
posed questions always gives his own view. The contents of this verse, again, are pre
cisely the same as those of ix. 4 — 6 and xi. 28 f.

40 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
the faithfulness of God, which is not to be turned aside by the
sin of man. This is the same thought which is carried into fuller
detail in Eom. ix. — xi. The Apostle shows by the strongest
expressions, ix. 1 f., his sympathy with his nation, for whose
sake he would give up his own salvation ; for they are the
chUdren of Israel ; to them belong the theocratic sonship of God,
and the glory of revelation (his presence and his communica
tions to mankind) and the covenant, and the giving of the law,
and the worship, and the promises, and the fathers (patriarchs,
through whom they received the covenants and the promises),
and from them is Christ descended according to the fiesh. It is
impossible then that the word of God can fail, that is to say, the
assurance of Messianic salvation made to the fathers of Israel
cannot be doiie away. This is still more definitely expressed in
xi. 2 — 5, 28 f — God has not rejected his people whom He had
predestined to salvation through the Messiah, for He cannot
repent of his gifts of favour, nor of his calling which went forth
to Israel ; on the contrary, this nation is still the object of his
love, for the sake of the fathers, in the persons of the iKXoyff
(ver. 28), i. e. the remnant of beUevers which, according to the
election of favour, remained amongst the unbeUeving majority,
as was the case in the time of EUas (cf ver. 5). This chosen
remnant is the enduring stock in which the historical dignity of
Israel, as the chosen people of the covenant, is maintained in
unimpaired integrity. But this stock constitutes at the same
time the real guarantee that, at some future period, Israel as a
people wiU participate in salvation. For " if the first-fruit he
holy, the whole of the dough is holy ; if the root is holy, the
branches are so likewise" (ver. 16). And although the greater
part of Israel is hardened, and only a Xeip,p,a Kar eKXoyyv xa/o'Tos
be left in the first instance, as recipients of the same imperish
able love of God which bestowed on the patriarchs such exalted
xapia-paTa and eTrayyeXias, jet still the people of Israel, as a
whole, belongs to the same body from which this Xetppa has been
taken, and is sprung from the same root, and therefore caniiot be

TENDENCY TOWARDS PEACE. 41
separated in its definitive destiny from this Xetppa, but must at
some future time enter in its entirety into that "cadre" of the
elect which has been preserved against that time. The nation
in its entirety is not rejected in order that the GentUes may take
its place for ever, but a part of it only (the greater part certainly)
is hardened for a time, and its place fiUed up by the chosen
GentUes, untU the restoration of all at a future date. But Israel,
notwithstanding, remains aU the time, without any doubt, the
main trunk upon which the Gentiles are grafted in Uke wild
oUve branches, in order to be sustained by it, and to partake of
its sweet juices ; and the natural branches of this trunk, which
in the first instance were broken off, to make room for those that
were grafted in, can therefore and must yet at some future time
be grafted again into their own trunk (vers. 17 — 24). Finally,
Eom. XV. 8 f is in entire accordance with this •} " I say that
Jesus Christ became a servant of the circumcision for the sake
of the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers,
but also that the GentUes might praise God for his mercy."
Since the Adyta Oeov (iii. 2) and the iTrayyeXiai (ix. 4) had been
given as special advantages to the Jews, so also the fulfilment of
these by Jesus the Messiah, who came from among them, belongs
naturaUy first of aU to them (eiiayyeAtov .... 'lovSaicp TrpaTOV,
i. 16), for God cannot repent of his gifts of favour and of his
calUng ; his truthfulness therefore required that the Messianic
promises given to Israel should be confirmed, which is exactly
what Jesus Christ did, doing his work for the benefit of Israel in
the first place (SiaKovos TrepiTojjiys yeyevyrai). Israel had no right
to this, but it was required by the truthfulness of God, by the
unchangeableness of his favour. The heathen, on the contrary,
have become recipients of the pure compassion of God, without
any previous promise, and contrary to aU expectation, wherefore
they have so much the more reason to praise God. These are
' I can by no means regard the whole chapter, Eom. xv., nor this passage in it (in
spite oi Baur, Lucht, and Lipsius in the "Protestantenbibel") as spurious, but, on
the contrary, I subscribe entirely to the remarks of Hilgenfeld in reply to Lucht in
the Z. f. w. Th. 1872, IV. Compare especially p. 477 on the passage quoted.

42 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
precisely the same thoughts as in xi. 28 — 30 ; and it cannot be
said that they contradict the freedom of God's favour ; although
it may be fairly argued that they rest, more than the previous
expositions of the Apostie, on the ground of historical actual
ity, according to which Christianity has in fact grown out of
Judaism. Certain as it is, however, that aU these passages are consistent
with one another, yet it cannot be denied that there is to he
found in Paul's writings another way of looking at these ques
tions, which was the predominant one in the Epistle to the Gala
tians, but which assumes a secondary place in the Epistle to the
Eomans. In GaL iU. and iv., Paul considers the promise made
to Abraham as aUeady completely fulfiUed in the Christian com
munity (whether consisting of Jews or GentUes), because those
who sought righteousness in faith, with Abraham, were the only
true sons of Abraham (iii.-^ix.). The promises given to Abraham
and his seed did not from the first apply to the many descendants
of Abraham (t^hrough his body), but only to one, namely, Christ.
Now since those who believe in Christ belong to Christ (make
up with him one single moral personality), it foUows that they
are the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise
(ver. 29). According to this view, the Messianic inheritance
belongs exclusively to the spiritual sonship of Abraham, or to
faith, and thus it is indirectly asserted that the promises made
to the spiritual progenitor of the community of the Messiah do
not apply at aU to his personal descendants, or to the nation of
Israel ; consequently that Israel, as a nation, stands in no other,
nearer, or more particular relation to the fulfilment of those
promises in Christ Jesus, than the heathen. And as, in the
community, of the Messiah, the GentUe beUevers are now in
point of fact the most numerous, to put Jews and GentUes upon
an equaUty with regard to the Messianic promises, is really to
give the advantage to the latter. Foreseeing that God would jus
tify the Gentiles by faith. Scripture (God according to the Scrip
ture) has already made to Abraham in anticipation the promise

TENDENCY TOWARDS PEACE. A2>
— " in thee shall aU the Gjentiles be blessed " — in other words, it
was from the beginning the predetermined purpose of the Divine
ordinance of redemption, that the blessing of Abraham should
come upon tbe Gentiles (vers. 8, 14). These spiritual children
of Abraham, the father of the faithful, are the only free and
legitimate sons with the right of inheritance ; his personal
descendants, on the other hand, are the chUdren of the bondmaid
(for Hagar is Mount Sinai, the covenant of the law, which
gendereth to bondage), slaves without rights ; what was formerly
said of Hagar and Ishmael applies to them — "thrust out the
bondmaid and her son, for never shall the bondmaid's son
inherit with the son of the free-woman" (iv. 21 — 31). This is
certainly the strongest declaration that Paul has made regarding
the relation of Israel to the Messianic inheritance — not only has
Israel as a nation no special claim to it, but he is, on the con
trary, as the natural offspring of Abraham which has no rights,
once for all excluded from the inheritance, and the community of
the Messiah, which consists essentiaUy of Gentile believers, is
the only son who has a right to the inheritance, the true child of
promise of Isaac.
Now this rough treatment of Israel is very essentially modified
in the Epistle to the Eomans ; and if we examine it carefully
we shaU find it is so in two respects ; first, as to the community
of the Messiah, when the fact of its being made up of Je-ws and
Gentiles is referred to, the precedence is always given to Ihe
former (whUst according to the Epistle to the Galatians the Gen
tiles are placed first among the spiritual sons of Abraham, iii. 8,
14); secondly, the promises made to the fathers of Israel are
said not to have received their full and final fulfilment in the
spiritual posterity of the father of the faithful, i.e. in the present
mixed community in which the GentUe Christians predominate,
but it is said that they shall attain to fulfilment in a distant
future, in afar higher degree in his own personal posterity, in the
nation of Israel (whilst according to Gal. iv. 21 — 31, the nation
of Israel is simply for ever thrust out). The Epistle to the

44 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.,
Eomans, indeed, perfectly agrees with that to the Galatians in
this, that there also Abraham is called the father of the faithful
(iv. 11), and his personal descendants are not all on that ground
to be children of the promise (objects and recipients of the pro
mise, ix; 6 f ). Here also it is, in the first instance, by this dis
tinction between the personal and the spiritual sons of Abraham,
that the truth of the declaration, that God's word of promise
cannot fail, is to be established ; accorduig to this then (as in
the Galatians), the divine word of promise to the fathers is ful-
fUled in the first instance only to tbe community of the faithful,
not to the nation of Israel. This community, by virtue of the
free mercy of God, has been called " not only from among the
Jews, but also from the GentUes " (ver. 24) ; from the latter for
the most part, but stUl there is in it a remnant at least (Kara-
Xeip,pa, ver. 27), and a seed from Israel (ver. 29). But here there
is based on this very fact the further hope that God has not
definitively rejected Israel as a nation, but only hardened a part
of them until the time when the- fulness of the GentUes shaU
have entered in (to the Messiah's kingdom), Kal oijTa) :ras 'la-payX
(TcoO-fjo-eTai, xL 26. Paul therefore by no means retracts here his
fundamental idea, that the Messianic promises are fulfiUed in
the community of the believers in Christ, but he gives it com
pleteness in two ways — first, by giving the Jews precedence in
the community of Christians, and declaring that they are the
main stock into which the believers from among the GentUes
have been inserted ; and secondly, by holding fast to the hope
that the whole of Israel wiU finally enter into the community of
Christians, and that thus the promises made to the fathers wiU
also be realized in their actual posterity. If the Epistle to the
Galatians roughly said in an anti-Jewish sense — ot £k Trurrecos,
oiiToi elcriv viol 'AySpaot/i, oictte ol iK Tricrreuis euAoyovvTat cruv r^
TruTTi^ Kfipadp,, iva els rd eOvy y evXoyia tov Afipadp ytvvjTat ev
Xpia-Tcp 'lycrov, the Epi'stle to the Eomans says with conciUatory
gentleness — Sta tovto Ik Tria-Tecos, iva Kara x<^p'-v, els to eivai ^tySatav
Tyv iirayyeXiav TrdvTi t<^ (j-TreppLari, ov Tcp f/c tov vopov povov (there-

TENDENCY TOWARDS PEACE. 45
fore also to this) dAAa Kal tcjT iK Tricrrecos ' KfSpadp, os to-Tt TraTyp
TrdvTiov ¦yp.Zv (iv. 16). In this " Not only — but also " is reflected
the whole character of the Epistle to the Eomans, its peaceful
and conciliatory tendency.
Some further peculiarities of this Epistle may be explained
from the same point of view. WhUst the Epistle to the Gala
tians described the law as rrdp^, and included it in the same
category with the Gentile worship of nature, as bondage vTrh Ta
a-Toixeia tov Kocrpov (Ui. and iv. 3), and the second Epistle to the
Corinthians also sees in it essentially the ypdppa dTroKTetvov
(iU. 6 f), the Epistle to the Eomans emphaticaUy exalts the
law — o pev vopos dyios, Kal y evToX-y dyia Kal SiKaia Kal dyaO-rj, 6
vopos TrvevpidTiKos icTTiv, eyoi Se crdpKivos elpi. The impotence of
the law to give spiritual Ufe, which according to the Epistle to
the Galatians might appear to be grounded in the law itself,
inasmuch as it has to do with externalities, and its nature is
itself external, is very distinctly referred in the Epistle to the
Eomans to the fleshly nature of man. In point of fact, both
Epistles attain finally to one and the same thought, namely, that
from the standpoint of the law, the will of man and the wiU
of God are outside of each other and mutuaUy opposed. Now
whether this be expressed by declaring that the law is external
to man, or that man is, as regards the law, fleshly, is evidently
only a difference in form ; but the second mode of expression
has the advantage of being more considerate to the feelings of
the Jewish Christians who believed in -the law, and this is the
reason that Paul employs it exclusively in the Epistle to the
Eomans. Again, whereas in the Epistle to the Galatians the
falling back into life according to the law, eVen if it consisted
only in keeping the Jewish sabbaths and feast-days, is a denial
of the evangelical principle of the spirit and of freedom, is a
decided mark of being " in the flesh," on the other hand, in the
Epistle to the Eomans, Paul is so tolerant and accommodating,
.that he who considers himself bound to keep feast-days holy,
does it to the Lord just as much as he who does not keep them

46 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
holy. He here therefore unhesitatingly puts the perpetuation of
the Jewish feasts (for he is evidently speaking of these) before
the individual conscience, as a matter of indifference to a Chris
tian. When he refers to eating also, to which he appUes the
same general rule, we must understand him to mean not only
the ascetic practices of the Essenes (for which one man would
hardly have judged another), but also the Jewish laws regarding
food. He certainly characterizes the scruples with which the
Jews still bind themselves in these matters, as weakness in
Christian faith ; but he does not regard this as a thing to be
rejected, but something to be borne with in love; he demands of
those whose views are more free, the same consideration and
accommodation for those who are less free which he had already
declared to be his own maxim, 1 Cor. ix. 19 — 23. But who can
fail to observe that this mild course of action is very different
from the uncompromising assertion of principles in the Epistle
to the Galatians ? Finally, we may caU to mind the friendly
way in which mention is made in Eom. xv. 26 f of the primitive
community, as the one to which the other communities were
debtors, as they had received from it the spiritual riches of
Christianity. As it could never have entered into the Apostle's
mind to question this simple fact of history, there is in these
verses no actual contradiction of his former assertions; but their
tone is certainly different ; it is more gentle and concUiatory, as
compared with that in which the original community and the
Apostles who were its piUars are spoken of in the Epistle to the
Galatians. MeanwhUe, if we remember that a short time pre
viously the emissaries and letters of commendation which came
thence had given much trouble to the Apostle in Corinth, the
unselfish character of this conciUatory expression of feeling will
appear in so much the stronger light.
It is true that Paul wrote the Epistle to the Eomans for the
purpose of winning over the mixed community which existed
there, and guarding against divisions in it, before his old adver
saries had again engaged in personal attacks upon him on this

TENDENCY TOWARDS PEACE. 47
new scene. It is the more interesting, therefore, to observe how
the relation of Paul to the Judaizers of the community at Eome
shaped itself after these painfiU experiences. The Epistle to the
Philippians, written during his imprisonment at Eome, gives us
particular information on this head. Aud this is in fact precisely
ofthe kind which we should expect from the antecedents, from the
Epistle to the Eomans on the one hand, and the earUer Epistles
on the other. Paul's tone in this Epistle appears as a mixture of
the concUiatory temper of the Epistle to the Eomans with the
personal irritation which, as we have seen from the earlier let
ters, was the result of immediate contact with his opponents.
This miadure of feelings is certainly a peculiar feature, which is
found only in this Epistle, and which has therefore given occa
sion for doubts as to its authenticity ; but we ought to consider
how well this feature suits both the character of the Apostle and
his situation at the time, and, on the other hand, what consum
mate art would have been required to give this highly character^
istic colouring to any letter written at a later period.
In order to strengthen his beloved community anew in their
proved faithfulness, Paul, weU knowing that he was not doing
so for the first time, but feeling that he could not too often or too
deeply impress this point upon them, sets before them again
(iU. 1 f ) the contrast between the evil workers who boasted of
their fleshly (Jewish national) advantages, and himself, who
could boast of the same and yet higher fleshly advantages, but
dispensed with aU boasting of the kind (such as being a Jew, a
Pharisee, and zealous on behalf of the law) — nay, held these
apparent advantages to be really loss for Christ's sake, i. e. with
regard to the only true good, righteousness by faith, to the
attainment of which that apparent advantage could only be a
hindrance, if the slightest value were attached to it. Those
K-vves and KaKoi ipydrai (ver. 2) Can be no other than his Judaiz
ing opponents, who were again preparing to throw difficulties
in the way of the Apostle in his present field of labour ; the
same class of persons as he describes in no gentler terms than

48 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
ipevSaTrocTToXovs, ipydTas SoXiovs, and StaKovoDS traTava (2 Cor.
xL 13), and whom, in wrathful scorn for their mania for circum
cision, he wishes to be castrated ; just as he describes them in
Phil. iii. 2 as the Kararop-yv, whUe the true circumcision is that
of the Christians (ver. 3) — cf Eom. U. 28 f : TrepiTopty KapSias iv
TrvevpaTi, o-v ypdpp,aTi, ov 6 eTraivos o-vk i^ dvOpclnrcov dXX iK tov Oeov.
And as, in the passage just quoted from the Epistle to the
Corinthians, he promises to the deceitful workers and servants
of Satan, who disguise themselves as servants of righteousness
and apostles, a fearful end worthy of their deeds, he now simi
larly speaks (iii. 18 £) of (those who were well known to his
readers as) " enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruc
tion ;" these were the advocates of circumcision, with whom we
, have become acquainted in the Epistle to the Galatians, to whom
Paul's doctrine of the cross of Christ as the end of the law was
an offence, not probably Jews (for why should their fleshly mode
of life and enmity to the cross cause the Apostle so much
anxiety, as if their Jewish mode of life could be a dangerous and
misleading example to his community !), but Jewish Christians,
Judaizing opponents of the gospel of Paul. He may, it is true,
have judged these opponents somewhat too harshly in attributing
to them, in ver. 19, a sensual disposition, but it exactly accords
with the mode of judging adopted by these Corinthian oppo
nents, to whom he also (2 Cor. ii. 17) ascribes a KUTryXe-ieiv toi-
Adyov TOV Oeov, an avaricious motive for their mission and their
agitation, thus also strongly marking his own disinterestedness
in contrast to them (2 Cor. xi.). FinaUy, Paul expresses himself
with no less severity against these personal opponents in PhU.
i. 15^17, where he charges them with preaching Christ out of
hatred against him, not with purity of purpose, but with maUg
nant party interests, and with the intention of aggravating the
pain of his imprisonment by diminishing the regard in which he
was held by the community. We cannot teU to what extent the
Apostle's judgment may here be tinged with personal bitterness;
it is quite possible that the Judaizers may have made use of

TENDENCY TOWARDS PEACE. 49
Paul's imprisonment as an argument against him, by represent
ing it as brought upon him by his own fault, through his violent
attacks upon the law; and ver. 20 may refer to this, where the
Apostle expresses his confidence that he wUl in no respect come
to shame ; and also ver. 13, where he says that his bonds were
manifest in Christ, L e. he bore them in consequence of no per
sonal guilt, but as the Apostle of Christ.
Now it is to be observed that the more distinctly the personal
excitability of the Apostle is shown by aU this, so much the
more striking is the perfect tolerance which he displays in
speaking of the work of his opponents in itself (irrespective of
their personal behaviour to himself) — " for the rest, however it
be, whether as a pretext (for interested party objects foreign to
the gospel), or for the truth's sake, Christ is preached, and I
rejoice at it, and wiE still more rejoice" (ver. 18). This is un
questionably very different language from that in which Paul
spoke, in Gal. i. 7 f , of the preachers of the erepov e-vayyeXiov.
Tliere he denies that there is in truth any other gospel at all
than his own, and declares the preaching of Jewish Christianity
to be a simple " perversion of the gospel of Christ." Here, on
the contrary, he sees in the work of the Judaizers also a real
preaching of Christ ; he concedes to his opponents the character
of Christians, and rejoices at their success for the sake of the
general advancement of Christ's work, although they were influ
enced by motives of hostiUty to him, and their spirit is very
different from his. Is such tolerance as this possible for a cha
racter like that of Paul ? It would be difficult to answer this
question a priori, but it is answered by the Epistle to the Romans,
iu which we traced the turning into the path of peace and recon
ciliation as &fact. One great reason why the genuineness of the
Epistle to the PhUippians has been doubted, is, that critics have
overlooked this fact, which really decides the question. If the
Apostle shows himself to us in the Epistle to the PhiUppians
also, as a man not free from human weakness, from the irrita-
biUty and passionateness common to aU choleric natures and
VOL IL ' E

50 ORIGINAL POSITION OF PAULINISM.
pioneering spirits, yet we can see from this his last Epistle, how
he has learnt more and more to separate the personal element
from the great end at which he is aiming, party interests from
the common object of Christ's kingdom, which stands above all
individuals and all parties in the Church. And it is precisely
this, after all, which is required of true servants of Christ in all
ages— not absolute neutrality, which would imply either repre
hensible indifferentism, or superhuman elevation of mind, but
the power always to distinguish their own party from the kingdom
of God, and the self-denial always to subordinate the former to
the latter. Paul gradually came to see that the gospel of Christ
was hot identical with the gospel of Paul, but was above both
Paulinism and Judaism: would that every ecclesiastical party
and sect could learn from him to practise the like humUity !

CHAPTEE IX.
PAULINISM UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF
ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
(the epistle TO THE HEBREWS, THE EPISTLE TO THE
COLOSSIANS, AND THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS.)

The Epistle to the Hebrews.
The old contest of the Apostle with his Judaistic opponents
presents itself to us in the Epistle to the Hebrews in a new and
most peculiar phase. The Hebrews to whom it is addressed are
Jewish Christians (whether in Palestine or, as is more probable,
in Alexandria, is for our purpose irrelevant), who were stUl so
persistent in their attachment to the Jewish worship, that their
complete relapse into Judaism, with which they had never com
pletely broken, was to be dreaded. It was not their object to
maintain the validity of the Mosaic law in the Christian dispen
sation, and to force it even upon the GentUe Christian commu
nities (as the Galatian Judaizers wished to do) ; it was not
therefore the preservation of Christian freedom from the law, and
the opposition of faith and works of the law, that had to be
maintained against them. It was enough to bring them to see
that Christianity was capable of affording them, not oiUy in
equal measure, but in a far higher degree, that religious satisfac-
e2

62 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
tion which they still sought, and thought to find mainly in the
Jewish worship.=— nay, that Christianity alone could give them
perfect satisfaction; consequently that it was by no means
necessary, in addition to this perfect thing which they possessed
as Christians, to hold fast also the incomplete satisfaction of
Judaism, or to long to return to it. In arguing with such
Jewish Christians as these, who valued Judaism, not as a posi
tive body of authoritative law, but as an institution of worship
which afforded religious satisfaction, and therefore as something
which was actuaUy felt to be a means of salvation, it would evi
dently have been to no purpose to represent the Mosaic system,
as had been done in the old Pauline dialectic, as something which
had come in between promise and fulfilment, and maintained itself
as a third in opposition to both ; it was necessary to recognize
the element of salvation which was contained in Judaism, but
to prove its imperfection as compared with Christianity. The
Epistle to the Hebrews does this by conceiving Judaism as the
type of Christianity, and the latter as the fiUing up of that copy
which preceded it. If this relation is, as must be aUowed, a
more positive one than that which Paul estabUshed between the
Law and the Gospel, yet it is as Uttle favourable as anything can
be to the independent significance of Judaism, and to the hold
ing fast of it.as a part of Christianity. The cardinal doctrine of
Paulinism, that Judaism was from the beginning to be only a
religion of relative truth and temporary validity, destined to be
abrogated on the appearance of the perfect religion of which it
was the type, is not less firmly held by the writer of the Epistle
to the Hebrews, than by Paul himself, and so far he must un
questionably be regarded as a foUower of Paul, and his doctrinal
writings essentiaUy belong to the history of the development of
PauUnism. It is certain, however, that the way in which this
cardinal doctrine is established and expanded in the Epistle to
the Hebrews, is essentiaUy different from that adopted by Paul.
The writer of this Epistle transfers the essential results of Paul's
doctrinal system to a very heterogeneous region, that of the

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 53
Alexandrine notion of the universe, and endeavours to establish
them independently upon these premises ; and of course the ideas
of Paul, when thus transplanted, do not remain unchanged, but
undergo essential modifications and alterations. But it would
be equally one-sided to regard these modifications as a simple
advance of PauUnism directly from the teaching of Paul to that
of John, and to take them as a retrogression from Paulinism to
Jewish Christianity. The doctrinal system of the Epistle to the
Hebrews forms in fact a third, resulting from these two oppos
ing views of primitive Christianity ; it is a thoroughly original
attempt to establish the most essential results of Paulinism upon
new presuppositions, and in an entirely independent way — a way
which, proceeding on lines of thought regarding the constitution
of the universe which were widely spread amongst the educated
people of that time, necessarily had far greater power of diffusing
general enlightenment than the dialectic of the old Pauline sys
tem; which was so highly wrought up to an individual stand
point. From these considerations it is perfectly intelligible that
the Epistle to the Hebrews possesses deep significance, almost in
a greater degree than the Epistles of Paul himself, with reference
to the further development of Paulinism ; and the Epistle to
the Colossians, and the Epistles of Barnabas and Clement, as
well as others, plainly point to the same fact.
Paul had attempted to estabUsh the independence of Chris
tianity with respect to Judaism, and the abrogation of the latter
in the first place, by proving logicallythe opposition and incom
patibUity of the ideas of law and the promise of favour, works
and faith. In doing this with the presupposition of the imme
diate divine inspiration of the law, to which he also adhered, he
involved himself in difficulties, his solution of which displays
great individual power and daring, but is hardly calculated to
produce general conviction. The author- of the Epistle to the
Hebrews attempts to solve the same problem, not directly by
means of a dialectical exposition of the differences between
Judaism and Christianity, but with the assistance of a view of the

54. PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
universe which, belonging in truth neither to the one nor to the
other of these opposing systems, possessed for that very reason
peculiar advantages as a means of reconciling them, and of de
veloping from Judaism an independent Christianity. The opposi
tion of the invisible, imperishable, archetypal world, to the visible,
perishable world of appearance copied from the former character
ized the Alexandrine theory of the universe; and it is this which
the Epistle to the Hebrews, with great intellectual power and
originality, applies to the relation of Christianity to Judaism, in
order to establish on firm grounds the principle of the absolute
truth and perfection of the former, transcending space and time,
as contrasted with the merely figurative and temporary signifi
cance of the latter. As John afterwards identified the Logos of
Philo with Jesus Christ, in order to mark out Christianity as the
only absolute revelation of God, the essential and all-embracing
manifestation of the Divine glory, favour, and truth, as specifi
cally distinguished from all other religions, and raised infinitely
above them, — so the Epistle to the Hebrews applies the Kocrpos
voyros of PhUo (which according to that philosopher represents
nothing but the concrete development of the Logos into its
different determinations) to Christianity, to the entire Christian
dispensation, and to the sum of the Christian blessings of salva
tion. And as that application of Philo's notion of the Logos to
the person of Christ was suggested ?ind brought about by the
intermediate notion of the " word of the Creator" spoken of in
the Old Testament, and the later Jewish idea of the wisdom of
the creation, so also the primitive Christian idea of the Messiah's
kingdom was a connecting link which suggested the appUcation
of the Kocrp-os voyros of Philo to the blessings of Christian salva
tion. The latter was characterized by its very name, " the king
dom of heaven," as a higher world, like the Kocrpos voyros, a
sphere of higher supersensuous and imperishable life. In addi
tion to this, it had assumed, in the imagination not only of
Jews, but also of Jewish Christians (as is proved by the Apoca
lypse of John), the form of the heavenly Jerusalem, of the ideal-

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 55
ized theocracy of Israel, or of a heavenly original of the imper
fect earthly theocracy of the old covenant. From this point it
was evidently no great step for an Alexandrine Christian to
combine the religious conception of the Idngdom of the Messiah
or of heaven, with the philosophical idea of a heavenly or arche
typal world. This combination naturally met with the same
fate as the appUcation of the idea of the Logos by John ; the
philosophical idea, by being transplanted into the region of reli
gious intuition, became something very different from what it
was before ; in the place of the ideal abstraction, we find the
complex tissue of concrete moments derived from actual religious
self-consciousness and from events of history. Hence it is quite
intelligible that precisely as the Logos-Christ of John is some
thing very different from the Logos of Philo, so the heavenly
world of the Epistle to the Hebrews is very different from Philo's
Kocrpos voyros. The latter is an abstraction of thought void of
content, the former a reUgious form of conception filled with
the richest materials, for it contains within itself nothing less
than the whole Christian consciousness of salvation, for which
it serves to give expression, in distinct forms of thought, to its
inward fulness of life and perfection. As this change necessarily
takes place the instant a phUosophical idea is transplanted into
the region of religious intuition, the difference as to matter which
arises from this cause gives no just ground for doubting of their
identity as to form, either in this case or in that of the Logos of
John. Thus then the Epistle to the Hebrews constructs, out of the
Alexandrine idea of the Kocrpios voyros, a transcendent reality
(to iTrovpdvia Ta ev rots o-vpavots, viU. 5, ix. 23), which forms in
the first place the opposite of this present world. That is to say,
it is related to the latter (avry y ktIo-is, ix. 11) as the original
sanctuary which Moses saw in heaven is related to the earthly
one which he prepared according to that pattern, or as the
original which in its origin and essence is divine, heavenly,
supersensuous, perfect, and eternal, is related to the finite and

56 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
the sensuous, which is merely an imperfect copy (vrr6Seiypa) and
likeness traced from the shadow (o-Ktd) of the divine pattern
(viii. 1 — 5, ix. 23), and is distinguished as the, visible (ra
/BXerropeva, XL 3), tangible (xii. 18), changeable, that can be
shaken (o-aAeud/ieva, xu. 27), from the. original pattern, which is
the invisible (rrpdypara ov ^Xeiropieva, xL 1) that Cannot be shaken
(rd p,y a-aXevopeva, xiL 27), and eternal. As the dwelling-place
of God, this higher world is caUed otkos Oeov (x. 21), a-Kyvy dXyOivq .
(viU. 2), IJ Toiis Oep,eXiovs 'exovcra TroXis (the city which has firm
foundations, xi. 10), Trdrpis, JrdAts eiroi;/3dvtos (xi. 14, 16), Sio)]/ opos
Kal TrdAts Oeov ^covros, lepovcraXyp iTTOvpdvios (xU. 22), and finally
jBaa-iXeia da-dXevros (xU. 28). As this latter expression suggests
a combination of the archetypal world with the Messiah's king
dom, so also the preceding passage contains clear evidence that
the heavenly and archetypal world simply coincides with Chris
tianity in the mind of the writer. For Christians are here told
that they are not come to the tangible mount (Sinai) like the
nation of the Old Testament covenant, but to the Mount Zion,
the heavenly Jerusalem. Now if the Christian has already gone
to this heavenly city of the Messiah, so that he has entered into
a bond of citizenship with it, and receives and enjoys its gifts
and powers (TrapaXap,pdvovTes fSaa-iXeiav, XU. 28 ; yevcrdpevoi. Tijs
Scopeds Tys irrovpaviov Svvdpeis re peXXovTos alavos, vi. 4, 5), then it
is clear that we can understand by this nothing else than the
reality of the blessings of salvation thrown open in Christ, the
Christian dispensation. Christianity is thus represented as a
world absolutely raised above everything earthly and temporal,
as the sphere of the only true and lasting reality, of the divine
life, in comparison with which everything else, including there
fore the religious dispensation of the Old Testament, is defined
as the unsubstantial and perishing — in short, as mere finite
existence. It is true that this identification of Christiamty with,
the heavenly archetype of the world has also its reverse side. If
Christianity is only so far the perfect existence as it is identical
with the future world, then it is itself only something future

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 57
which cannot actuaUy be possessed in this present world, but,
on the contrary, can only be an object of hope on this side the
grave. Thus from the transcendence of the higher "heavenly
world" as to place, foUows necessarily the transcendence of the
"future world " as to^ time, of the alw p.eXXwv (vi. 5), or the
olKovpevy peXXovcra (U. 5). By this also, as both passages plainly
show, nothing else is to be understood than Christianity, the
object of the Christian doctrine of salvation (;r6|0t ¦^s XaXovpev,
il 5), the totality of the powers of salvation which are already
given to the Christian here to enjoy, as " powers of the world to
come," as " heavenly gifts " or " the holy spirit " (vL 4, 5).
Let us observe here how the Epistle to the Hebrews forms pre
cisely the required medium and the harmonizing transition from
the primitive Christian views to tlwse of John. According to the
former, that which is perfect and heavenly begins with the
second coming of Christ, and therefore belongs whoUy to the
future, and Christianity stUl falls under the category of things
present, imperfect, only preparatory for that which is perfect, and
is. accordingly not absolutely, but only relatively, distinguished
from Judaism, which was a previous stage of preparation. Ac
cording to John, on the other hand, eternal Ufe is already present
in Christian truth, in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ
his Son (John xvii. 3), and Christianity is thus the absolute, and
is specificaUy different from everything that is not Christian.
Now the Epistle to the Hebrews takes up this peculiar interme
diate position: on the one hand, it regards Christianity (like
John) as something heavenly and perfect, and thus affirms its
absolute exaltation above everything that is not Christian ; but,
on the other hand, it regards the perfect (with the primitive
Church) as something yet to come, and transcendent both in
time and place ; these two ideas combine to produce the very
pecuUar view of the Epistle to the Hebrews, according to which
Christianity belongs to the allov peXXcov, and the ala>v ovtos
denotes the pre-Christian age, which was terminated by the
appearing of Christ. It therefore says of him that God has

58 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
spoken to us through him, irr' icrxdrov Twi' ¦fjpepiov TOVTcov (L 1),
that he has completed the reconcUiation eTrl o-wTeAetgi twv atwvuv
(ix. 26); his work thus forms the conclusion of the period of the
world, and the landmark between aliov ovtos and alcov peXXcov,
and Christianity therefore falls within the latter. This paradox,
that Christianity is the future aeon, is the most pregnant expres
sion of the whole Christian view of the Epistle to the Hebrews ;
it sees perfect salvation (the Scoped iTrovpdvios) thrown open objec
tively in Christianity, but it does not yet feel it as a complete
subjective possession ; it is rather an object of hope in a future
life ; but this future life, again, is not one that is.whoUy shut up
within itself, to which the present life of the Christian is merely
related as a preparation for it, but it projects itself into this pre
sent life, as a real operative power of salvation ; it is not merely
a future life in point of time, the reaUzation of which is only to
be hoped for in the future (the second coming of Christ), but
this life, though future in time, is already perfectly real in the
present, as the life which has its abode in tlie heavenly world. For
this reason the Christian can already really participate in this
olKovp,evy peXXovcra at the present time, can have attained to
citizenship there, and " taste the powers " of it.
If we inquire how this view is related to the genuine Pauline
view, we must admit that they agree in principle, whUe we can
not faU to notice that the form in which they are presented is
entirely different. That salvation is objectively present in Chris
tianity, and is yet at the same time a thing to be hoped for in
the future, is also the fundamental view of Paul, which he
expresses in the words io-coOypev r-y iXTriSi, Eom. viii. 24. But
according to Paul, the objectivity of Christian salvation is secured
by the cardinal doctrine of the justification and . sonship of the
believer, which is evidenced to him by the indwelUng of the
spirit of sonship : that it is still unreaUzed, is again a conse
quence of the real spiritual life of sonship being stUl perpetuaUy
hampered by its opposite, the flesh; therefore those drapx^jv
TrvevpaTos exoVres Still Constantly crrevd^ova-iv vioOecriav aTrex^fX"

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 59
opevoi, T^v d7roAvT/)0)o-iv tov o-coparos (ib. 23). Here then the two
fold nature of the Christian consciousness, of the imoOypev —
iXrriSi, results from the dualism of spirit and flesh, — a psycholo
gical dualism which, before its final (eschatological) solution,
undergoes progressive relative elimination by means of the im
manent reUgious-moral process of living in the spirit. Because
the Christian really has the spirit of sonship, therefore he knows
the fact, iarcoOypev, and it is only because he still lives in the
flesh, and its power over him, although ever diminishing, is still
felt, that he is stUl also one who hopes, one dTreKSexopevos ryv
vloOecriav. The dualism of the Epistle to the Hebrews, on the
other hand, results from the metaphysical opposition of the
heavenly, invisible, and eternal world, to the earthly, visible, and
perishable world. Because the former of these is thrown open
to him through Christ, because he has attained to it by faith,
and has tasted of its powers, the Christian, according to this
teaching, also knows that salvation is assured to him ; but as it
is still a world of the future, and the exact opposite of all that is
earthly, so the Christian while on earth always thinks of it as in
the far distance, as the object of his hopes, rather than as a
possession. The relative eUmination which was possible in the
case of the psychological duaUsm of Paul, by means of a process
that went on within the man, is not possible in the case of this
metaphysical duaUsm ; only an anchor of hope reaches from the
Christian life on earth into that other world of real Christian
salvation (Heb. vi. 19 : -yv iXTriSa los dyKvpav exopev T'^S fvxv^
da-4>aXy re Kal fie^aiav e'urepxopievyv els to icrcorepov tov KaTaTreToxr-
paTOS, OTrov TrpoSpopos vrrep 'ypcov elcryXOev lycrovs), an anchor of
hope, the hold of which depends on Jesus Christ's having gone
before, and which must be firmly held by waiting in patience
and in the hope of faith. More than this cannot be done here ;
the chasm between this world and the future world cannot reaUy
be bridged over ; the solution of the opposition is not a religious-
moral one going on within the Christian, but it is itself some-
thinw that transcends the sphere of the present — namely, the

60 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
second coming of Christ, the expectation of which as very near
at hand is therefore much more essential to the Epistle to the
Hebrews than to the older system of Paul. In this respect the
Epistle to the Hebrews is certainly far behind Paul ; it external
izes and fixes again the opposition of the natural and the Chris
tian elements in man, which Paul had partiaUy reconciled in the
inwardness of the Ufe of the spirit that proceeds from God. But,
nevertheless, we cannot see in it a relapse into Jewish Chris
tianity, but an attempt to establish the absolute exaltation of
Christianity above everything not Christian, upon the metaphysical
opposition of tlie supersensuous to the sensuous world which was
peculiar to Alexandrine speculation. If this exaltation of Chris
tianity to an absolute cosmical significance was purchased, in the
first instance, by throwing it back into a transcendent sphere
dissevered from the present world, it was reserved for Christian
theology, in the course of its further development, to bring it
down again from that transcendent height into the actuality of
the present life, and thus for the first time to bring the absolute
ness of its idea into harmony with the historical events of its
appearing. The first step to this was the declaration of John,
" The word became flesh."
As Christendom is identical, in the Epistle to the Hebrews,
with the invisible heavenly world, so also is Christ a being from
that world ; the heavenly origin of Christ, his pre-existence, is
from the very beginning taken as a self-evident fact : here also
the teaching of Paul is evidently presupposed. But the author
of this Epistle had a two-fold object in his Christology, occasioned
by the views against which he had to contend. Since his oppo
nents (probably under the influence of the Essenes) set the
angels above Christ, at whose earthly humUiation, especiaUy his
sufferings and death, they seem to have taken offence, this writer
endeavoured, in the first pla,ce, to prove most distinctly the
unqualified exaltation of Christ above the angels ; and, secondly,
to justify also his earthly humiliation and sufferings from the
standpoint of a divinely ordained moral course of action, a

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 61
necessary condition of his exaltation. Whilst the Christ of Paul
is " the second (or spiritual) man from heaven," and at the same
time the very image of God and the archetype of man, the
Epistle to the Hebrews, on the other hand, places the Son of
God whoUy above everything that is human, or even arche
typal of humanity, and conceives him as a specifically divine
being, drra-vyacrpa Tys 8d£ijs Kat x^-P'^'^ryp tijs •UTroo-Tdoreais Oeov (i. 3).
That this description is not to be understood merely in the sense
of the Pauline eiKoiv Oeov, but is rather intended to declare the
metaphysical connection of the nature of Christ with that of
God and his origin from God, is plainly shown by the unmistak
able way in which the Christological passage before us alludes
to and leans upon the analogy contained in the Book of Wis
dom, where crocftia is described as drpls t?Js toC Oeov Swdpecos, Kal
aTroppoia tiJs to{) TravTOKpdropos So^ys elXiKpivys, aTra-vyacrpa (f>ioTos
diSiov Kal eaoTTTpov Trjs tov Oeov ivepyeias, Kal elKcov T'^s dyaOoryTos
a-UTOv. pta Se ovcra Trdvra Sij^aTat Kal pevovcra ev avry TrdvTa Kaivi^ei,
&c. (vii. 25, 26). According to this, a-o(f>ia is the splendour that
issues from God, because it is also the effluence (dTroppoia), as it
were the effulgent flame (drpis), of his power and glory, which
indicates the unity of its nature with that of God, up to the
point of canceUing its independent substantive existence; the
latter is, however, affirmed by the expressions d7raijyao-/oia, 'io-oTr-
Tpov and eiKcov, according to which a-o4>ia, as the reflection and
effulgent splendour of God, is indeed aU that it is only through
Him and by Him, but is notwithstanding another beside Him.
These two ideas are precisely what the description in the
Hebrews contains, " The effulgence of his glory and the impress
of his nature." According to this, Christ is the exact image and
the perfect expression of the Divine nature, so that in his own
nature he is only a duplicate of the nature of God, forming
indeed a nature of his own which belongs to him, but which yet
is in complete unity with that of God and an effluence from it.
Moreover, the added words, <f>epo}v re rd rrdvra t$ p'ypaTi TIJS
Swdpecos avTov, may remind us of the passage we have quoted

62 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
from the Book of Wisdom, vii. 25, 27, drpXs rys Swd/iews and
Trdvra S-vvarai. As, in this passage, o-o^ta is not only the service
able instrument of the omnipotence of God, but is herself the
representative, the personified power of the Almighty, and thus
takes the place of the. creator or maintainer of the universe him
self, representing the Godhead in respect of its creative power,
so also in this passage from the Hebrews a much higher position
is assigned to the Son with reference to the world, than was
assigned to him by Paul when he conceived the pre-existent
Christ as the intermediate instrument of the creation. In this
passage he is himself in independent possession of the word of
power, by which he maintains the universe, and is therefore the
active subject of the omnipotent wUl to create and maintain it,
or personified omnipotence itself, just as the Alexandrine o-o^t'a,
and subsequently the Adyos of John, is itself Ufe and light, and
not merely the intermediate instrument by which life and light
are produced. But although the Christology of the Epistle to
the Hebrews goes far beyond that of Paul himself, and (precisely
Uke that of the Epistle to the Colossians) raises Christ to the
cosmical principle through the introduction of Alexandrine phi
losophy, yet it has this in common with the older Christology of
PaiU, that it has not yet bridged over the chasm between the
historical view of the earthly Eedeemer and the absolute view
ofthe eternal pre-existent Son of God — nay, it brings this chasm
most prominently into notice. As the Christology of Paul, in
spite of the conception of Christ's pre-existence, and without
attempting to reconcile the opposition of the two ideas, persisted
in regarding the appearance of Christ on earth as a condition of
poverty and humiliation, which was foUowed by his exaltation,
but not until his resurrection, as a reward for his previous
humiliation (PhU. ii 8, 9), so we are now taught also by the
Epistle to the Hebrews that God placed Jesus for a short time
below the angels, and then, on account of his undergoing death
(Std TO TrdOyp,a, cf PhU. U. 9, Std — ), crowned him with glory and
honour (U. 9) ; that God made him the heir of all things (L 2,

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 63
WyKe, the historical aorist indicates a, definite historical fact) ;
that Christ, after having completed his work of cleansing man
kind from sin, sat down at the right hand of majesty in the highest,
and became so much more mighty than the angels, as he had
obtained a more excellent name than they (i. 3, 4). How this
historical commencement of Christ's dignity as our Lord from the
time of his exaltation is to be reconcUed with his having origin
aUy established the world at its beginning (cf>epcov rd Trdvra t^
p-qpaTi T'rjs Swdpecos a-vTov), is not indicated in the Epistle to the
Hebrews any more than in any of Paul's Epistles. We can
therefore only suppose that such reconciliation had not yet
entered into the writer's field of vision, because he had not yet
made the absolute view of the person of Christ, as a pre-existent
(and cosmical) principle, the central point of his entire concep
tion, as John subsequently did. The Epistle to the Hebrews
raises, it is true, the pre-existent person of Christ still higher
than Paul, in making him a cosmical principle, but this concep
tion remains in the background, without exercising any real
influence on the writer's view of the historical Christ. On the
contrary, he gives far more weight to the human and moral point
of view than Paul ; he says of Christ, that he was tempted in aU
respects as we are, only without sin ; that he, although a son,
learnt obedience from what he endured ; that he offered prayers
and supplications with tears to Him who was able to rescue him
from death, and was heard because he feared God ; that he was
made perfect through suffering (iv. 15, v. 8, vii. 2, 10). While
in Paul's writings Christ in heaven is the pattern of the Chris
tian, it is, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the earthly and espe
ciaUy the suffering Eedeemer who is the example of patient faith,
the leader and captain of aU those who enter into glory through
suffering (xU. 2, ii. 10, vi. 20). This stands in the most intimate
connection with the peculiar conception of the work of Christ
which we find in the Epistle to the Hebrews.^
1 It is quite possible that the traditions regarding the earthly life of the Redeemer,
preserved in Jewish-Christian circles, were more accessible to the author ofthe Epistle

64 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
In this respect also the Epistle to the Hebrews takes up t]
sagne ground as PaiU's Epistles, inasmuch as the death of Chri
is in both the central point of the whole work of redemptic
In Heb. x. 5 — 10, it is said that God has prepared a body f
his Son, in order that he might come upon the earth and do tl
wUl of God, namely, do away with the sacrifice of animals, i
which God had no pleasure, by the better sacrifice of his ow
body offered once for all. The rroietv to OeXypa Oeov for the pu
pose of which God to crcopa KarypTuxaTO for his ^^Ketv (to tl
earth), consisted in the Trpocr<f>opd tov crcopiaTOS tov 'lya-ov Xpurro}
here also the whole appearance and Ufe of Christ on earth coi
verges towards his death as the true central point of the redemj
tion. But this fundamental idea is not carried out in its detai
in the Epistle to the Hebrews in the same way as it is by Pau
According to him, the death of Christ is pre-eminently a sacrific
of reconcUiation, ordained by God himself, in which Christ take
the part rather of the passive victim than of the active sacrificin
priest ; in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Christ is at once the victu
and the sacrificing priest, and in fact with special emphasis laid o
the latter. Here, therefore, the main point, on which the sign;
ficance and the value of this sacrifice depends, is not what ha
befaUen him through the ordinance of God, the purely objectiv
fact, but the part which he himself takes in it, the subjectiv
moral action. And in close connection with this is the fae
that this sacrificial death is not so much an expiatory sacrific
offered to the avenging justice of God for the redemption froi
the curse of the law of the sinner who deserves to be punishec
but rather a sacrifice of purification and sanctification, the signi
ficance of which relates immediately to humanity, to its puri

to the Hebrews than to Paul ; but this would hardly be sufficient to account for tl
stress which the former lays on the moral exaraple of the suffering Jesus. A moi
probable reason for this is the hortatory purpose which he had in view, in consi
quence of the danger his readers were in of taking offence at the idea of a sufferii
Messiah, as well as of stumbling at the sufferings they thamselves had to undergo fi
Christ's sake (x. 29 — 35). But the main cause is, doubtless, the dogmatical point i
view in which the whole work of Christ is represented in this Epistle.

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 65
fication from the defilement of guUt and its redemption from the
consciousness of it.
It is the object of the Epistle to the Hebrews to prove to its
readers that Christianity also not only contains all this, but that
it alone contains in a perfect manner, so as entirely to satisfy the
religious consciousness, that which the cultus of the Old Testa
ment contained in an imperfect 'and merely typical way. For
this purpose it represents Christ as the true and real sacrifice,
which has actuaUy accomplished that which the Old Testament
sacrifices, especiaUy the sacrifice of the day of atonement offered
annually, and that of the consecration of the covenant offered
once, were unable to accomplish perfectly, and could only repre
sent in an external form apprehensible by the senses. WhUe its
doctrine is thus founded upon the presupposition of the positive
analogy between the type and its fulfilment, it displays in every
possible Ught the essential difference that is to be found within
this formal analogy, namely, the distinction between the perfect
Christian and the imperfect Jewish ordinances of salvation.
The first and most obvious difference is, that the old high-priests
offered animals, and Christ offered himself; the former entered
into the earthly sanctuary with the blood of animals, Christ
entered into the heavenly sanctuary with his own blood ; and
that the former sacrifices had to be repeated every year, but
Christ, by his sacrifice offered once for aU, completed the recon
cUiation with God for ever (Heb. ix. 1 — 10, 14); lastly, that
those priests, being sinful men, must always offer sacrifice for
themselves first (v. 3, ix. 7), "but Christ, as the sinless one, offered
himself, through the eternal Spirit of God, as a sacrifice without
blemish (ix. 14), and now, after his exaltation, being absolutely
and entirely severed from the realm of sin, and raised above the
heavens, is able to enter evermore into the presence of God, and
to plead for his own (vii. 24 — 27). Now the difference of the
effect wrought in the two cases, corresponds with these differences
in the sacriflcers, the offerings, and the place of sacrifice. The Old
Testament sacrifices of animals were fleshly ordinances of the
VOL. II. F

66 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
law {SiKaib)paTa crapKos, ix. 10), which could not make the sacri-
ficers perfect as to their conscience, but oiUy sanctify them with
regard to the purification of the flesh (ib. vers. 9, 13) ; that is to
say, they brought about only a levitical purity, placed the sacri
flcers and the people for whom the sacrifice was made merely in
a condition of theocratic holiness, through an external sauctifi-
cation (which affected their flesh) ; but so far were they from
being able to take away sin, that they rather served to renew
every year the recoUection of uncancelled sin, and so could not
take away the consciousness of sin and guilt, could not bring
about a perfect or entirely satisfactory condition as regarded the
conscience, could not purify the guilt-stained conscience and
reconcile it to God (x. 1 — 4, 11, ix. 8 — 10). On the other hand,
the sacrifice of Christ, as it was itself presented blameless through
the mediation of the unchangeable Spirit, so also it effects in a
corresponding manner the cleansing of pur conscience from dead
works, (which has the further result of causing us) to serve the
living God (ix. 14) ; it enables us, being sprinkled in our hearts
and relieved from an evU conscience, to enter with the fuU con
fidence of faith into the sanctuary, the entrance to which Christ
has opened to us by his blood (x. 19 — 22) ; in short, it produces, hy
the cancelUng (dOeTya-is, ix. 26), the taking away (rrepieXetv, x. 11),
the forgiveness of sin (dcfieo-is, x. 18), the everlasting perfection of
the sanctified (rereXeicoKev els to Str;veK6S tovs dyia^opevovs, X. 14).
These passages, taken alone, are sufficient to show, without the
slightest ambiguity, that the cleansing of the conscience, which the
Old Testament sacrifice could not effect, and which the sacrifioe
of Christ did effect, consists in nothing else than the doin^ aivay
with the consciousness of guilt. If any one has once been cleansed,
then he has no consciousness of sins, that is to say, no more
consciousness of guilt (pySepiav exeiv o-weiSycTiv dpaprmv tovs dira,^
KeKaOappevovs, X. 2) ; if a man's heart is sprinkled, then he is freed
from an evil conscience (ippavncrpivoi Tds KapSias diro o-uwiSiyo-tws
Trovypds, X. 22). And as being freed from an evU conscience, or
from the consciousness of guilt, is necessarily conditioned by the

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 67
forgiveness of sins, the word KaOapi^ecrOai may be considered
equivalent to the expression, d<^£o-ts ytVerat (ix. 22), and the can
celUng (dOe-fycris, X. 26) of sin is no other than the TrepieXetv or
d<t>aipetv dpapTias (x. 11 and 4), which forms the opposite to the
abiding a-weiSycris and di/d/tvijo-ts dpapTiZv (ib. vers. 2 and 3), and
which must therefore signify the doing away, not with the power
of sin upon the will, but with the tormenting and defiling con
sciousness of sin (consciousness of guilt) in the conscience.^ Nor
should the expression, KaOapiet ryv a-weiSycriv diro veKpZv epycov els
TO XaTpeveiv Oeto (ZvTi, in ix. 14, throw any doubt upon this well-
grounded conclusion. This text refers, no doubt, to the moral
worship of God, to the renewing and sanctifying of our lives ; but.
this is expressly described as only an intermediate result and
purpose of Christ's sacrifice, whereas the purpose directly aimed
at by it is the cleansing of the conscience. But this is not caUed
a cleansing from " dead works" in the sense of freeing the con
science from the doing of evil, or from the works of the law, which
is impossible, for the simple reason that the conscience is not and
cannot be the subject of moral action, either of bad works or of
works of the law; but the conscience always means only the moral
self-consciousness, in which the moral worthiness or unworthi
ness of its deeds makes itself felt to the ego, and which is defiled
by the consciousness of such deeds as belong to the domain of
spiritual death. Accordingly it is cleansed from dead works by
the removal of the tormenting and defiUng consciousness of such
deeds as belong to death and deliver man over to death ; for its
being clean consists in the cessation of this consciousness of the
guilt of sin (cf x. 2). And to this we must refer the dTroX-in-pcoa-is
TCOV irrl T-y TrptoTg SiaOyKy Trapa/Sda-ecov (ver. 15), which Christ, aS
the mediator of the new covenant, has accomplished by his death,
in order that those who are called may receive the promise of
the eternal inheritance. The connection of these words with
^ 'K.aOapicrpbv riov dpapricov ¦jroirjcjdpEvoQ, i. 3, is also to be understood in this
sense. Although this text, taken by itself, might be applied to moral cleansing, i.e.
doing away with the dominion of sin, yet all the above-mentioned parallel passages
support the other interpretation, namely, taking away the guilt of sin.
F 2

68 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
ver. 14, shows that this dTroAiJtpwo-ts is virtually identical with
the cleansing of the conscience, in the sense of redemption from
the consciousness of guilt. This is suggested, morever, by the
addition of the clause in which the purpose of Christ's mediation
is stated ; for the attainment of the promised inheritance was
impossible before Christ came (cf xi. 39 f), because the trans
gressions committed under the first covenant had resulted in
guUt, the real forgiveness of which had not been purchased by
all those expiatory acts which were enjoined by the Old Testa
ment. Nor is this conclusion in any way affected by the repeated
use of the word dyid^eiv as the effect of the sacrifice of Christ.
The fact that this word (ix. 13 and 14) is replaced and explained
by KaOapi^eiv, shows that dyid^etv, as the effect of the death of
Christ, does not denote moral sanctification, or giving a new
direction to the wUl; besides which, the word as used in ver 13,
apart from the context, could not possibly refer to moral sanc
tification; for what meaning could be conveyed to our minds
by saying that the blood of goats could moraUy sanctify those
who are defUed (place them in the condition of being morally
renewed), in relation to the purifying of the flesh? But the
blood of sacrifices has this real significance, that it "sanctifies"
those who were defUed with regard to external theocratic purity ;
that is to say, it places them in the condition of belonging to
God, according to the relations established by the theocratic
covenant. 1 Accordingly we are compelled by analogical reason
ing to understand the dytd^etv, which is the effect of the death
of Christ, to mean the sanctification by which we truly belong
to God in accordance with the relations established by the new
covenant (xiii. 11, 12). This is made especiaUy clear by x. 10,
¦yyiacrpievoi icrpev Sid tijs Trpocrcfiopds rov criopaTos 'IijcroC Xpicrrov 6</)a7ra^.
The word i<j>dTra^, as well as the connection with the expressions
TrepieXetv dpaprias and d<^eo-ts which foUow (vers. 11 and 18), shows
^Cf. Weiss, p. 515. Riehm, however (Lehrbegriff des Hebraerbriefs, p; 576), endea
vours to connect with this also " the freeing from the bondage of sin in principle,
conseciuently moral renovation : but for this the text affords no ground.

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 69
that what is here referred to is the placing us once for all in the
condition of those who, in consequence of the forgiveness of sins,
are freed from an evil conscience, and have access to God, there
fore in the condition of belonging to God, without being disturbed
by any consciousness of guilt (vers. 19 — 22). And thus Chris
tians are called dyia(6pevoi, ii. 11 and x, 14, not with reference
to the condition of moral sanctification, which is a continual
process upon which they have entered, but with reference to the
condition of belonging to God, which they have accepted through
sanctification by the blood of Christ ; and the present participle
used here denotes that which happens without reference to any
particular time, that is to say, which repeats itself in each
individual case, and is so far never ended (like SiKaio-upevoi
Eom. iii. 24, and peXXei Xoyi^eo-Oai, iv. 24). This sanctification
consisted under the old covenant in the external sprinkling with
the levitical purifying blood of animals, but under the new
covenant it consists in the sprinkling of the heart in order to
freedom from an evU conscience, in the cleansing of the con
science from the consciousness of guilt. It was guilt which had
made complete communion with God and the attainment of the
promised inheritance impossible. By canceUing this, therefore,
a new covenant relation of complete communion with God is
consecrated (the " access to the heavenly sanctuary, to the throne
of favour, to the city of God, &c.-, is opened") orthe reconciliation
with God is effected.
In this fundamental idea, that we are reconciled with God by
the death of Christ, the Epistle to the Hebrews entirely agrees
with Paul ; but the Pauline working out of this idea, the satis
faction of the avenging justice of God by the death of him who
is vicariously punished, is not found in the Epistle to the
Hebrews. It is true that it approaches very nearly to this
thought, and it could not be otherwise ; for its author applies to
Christ throughout the propitiatory sacrifices of the Old Testa
ment as a type, and these are certainly (cf above, Vol. I., p. 95 f )
founded on the idea of a vicarious sacrifice. It is doubtless

70 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
the notion of such a sacrifice that suggests the expression, that
Christ has become a merciful and faithful high-priest before
God, in order to make reconciliation (lAdo-Keo-^at) for the sins of
the people (ii. 17) ; that the redemption from former transgres
sions has been brought about by the death of the mediator of the
new covenant (ix. 15), because according to the law everything
is purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no
forgiveness (ib. ver. 22) ; that Jesus tasted of death for every
man (ii. 9), being once offered to take away the sins of many
(dvcvey/cetv, which does not contain the special notion of vicarious
expiation, but only the general one of taking away, dO'eTya-is,
TrepieXetv [cf 26 and X. 11], ix. 28). This, however, makes it
the more striking, that our author nowhere gives decided ex
pression to the idea of the expiation of the wrath of God, the
removal of the enmity of God against the sinful world, not even
where there was the very strongest inducement to do so, as, for
instance, where the necessity of Christ's death is the subject
under discussion. The purport of the passage to which reference
has just been made (ix. 15 — 22), is to show why it was that the
redemption must have occurred precisely Oavdrov yevopevov. How
natural it would have been, or rather how necessary, for one who
held Paul's doctrine of reconcUiation, to remind his readers here
ofthe evSei^is SiKaioa-ijvys Oeov, of the KaTdpa tov vopov, under which
the innocent one had been sacrificed as a vicarious substitute for
the guUty (according to Eom. iii. 25 ; Gal. iU. 13; 2 Cor. v. 21, &c.).
Instead of this, the necessity of the sacrificial death of Christ is
deduced from the literal meaning of Sia^^KTj, because a " testa
ment" cannot come into force until the death of the testator — a
deduction which fails in two ways ; first, because the bloodless,
natural death of the testator would have been quite sufficient
for this "testament" to come into force ; and, secondly, because
this explanation is in no way applicable to the corresponding
covenant-sacrifice at the rrpcoTy SiaO-JKy, where the SiaO-qKy (con
tract) came into force without the death of either of the con
tracting parties. Equally unlike Paul is the reason assigned

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 71
for the necessity of Christ's tasting death for every man, in the
other passage that has been quoted (ii. 9) : instead of showing
dogmatically that it was necessary, the author teUs.us that "it
was proper" that, as the other sons of God, so also the captain of
our salvation should be brought through suffering into glory
(errpeTre ydp, &c., ver. 10), — an assignment of a reason for the death
ofChrist which is not less different fromthe teaching of Paul than
the doctrine of ^otus on this point is from that of Anselm, or
the Socinian doctrine from that of Luther. Under these circum
stances, we can hardly resist the conclusion, that the writer of
the Epistle to the Hebrews had adopted, in its general outlines,
Paul's fundamental doctrine of redemption by the death of Christ,
but had rejected the method of working it out in detail which
had been suggested to Paul by his Jewish beliefs with regard
to God and the law,^ probably because his Alexandrine education
tended in an opposite direction ; instead of connecting the recon
ciling effect of the death of Christ in the first instance with the
wrath of God that was to be appeased, he connected it directly
with the removal of man's consciousness of guilt. The road was
thus opened to a deeper and more thorough apprehension of
redemption than that which is contained in the juridical form
of Paul's doctrine, though at first a gap was still left between
the means and the end, between the death of Christ and the
removal of the feeling of guUt. The inference that this spiritual

^ Weiss, p. 512 f., zniRiehm, p. 541, allowthat Paul's idea of vicarious punishment
is not directly stated in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but they believe that it raust be
assuraed as a presupposition upou which the above passages rest. But why should
this presupposition have constantly remained in the background, if it were really
familiar to the writer ? Why should it not at least have been expressed where it
wonld so materially have advanced his object, namely, the theodicy with reference to
Christ's death ? Is it not rather to be inferred that, whether in conscious or uncon
scious divergence from Paul, he had not by any raeans made this Pauline thought his
own? Kostlim-well remarks (Johann. Lehrbegriff, p. 435), ." The principle of vicarious
suffering is not interposed as a third, between the offered Christ and the cleansing.
effected in man, but the means and the effect are one." But the question may well
be asked, whether this "being one" is really conceivable; and if not, how our author
arrived at this extraordinary conclusion ? Kostlin has not explained this ; and I
believe the only explanation is the one above given.

72 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
effect must also be brought about in a spiritual way, was first
drawn by the theology of John, which placed the redeeming
work of Christ in the self-revelation of the Aoyos.
The less, however, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
was able to attribute to the death of Christ an objective relation
to God, the more he appears — as if by way of compensation — ^to
emphasize the significance of suffering and death as regards the
'person of Christ himself. He has endured the csross as the cost of
(dvTt) the joy which lay before him (was held out as the prize
of victory), and, despising the shame, has seated himself at the
right hand of the throne of God (xiL 2). He has been crowned
with glory and honour because he suffered death ; for it was
becoming that he who led many chUdren to glory should also
perfect the captain of salvation (who as a leader opened the way
to salvation) by suffering (in the same way as aU the others,
iL 9, 10, cf xU. 6 — 11). Although a son, yet he learned obe
dience to that which he suffered, and being made perfect, he has
become the cause of eternal blessedness to aU who obey him (v. 9).
It may be asked, wherein does this TeXeiovcrOai consist, which
denotes in the first instance the fruit of suffering as it affected
Christ himself, but afterwards, as we shaU presently see, its
redeeming effect as regards men ? In U. 10, TcAetwo-at is used as
equivalent to S6^y Kal Tip,y ia-Te(j>av<op,evov in ver. 9, and there
fore denotes the exaltation and glorification in heaven of him who
had been humiUated in suffering death. Again, in v. 9, reXeiiodeis
is not the moral completion of learning obedience by suffering,
but it is a new moment which is added to this epaOev d<j> av
'eTraOev as its ultimate consequence,^ which must have taken
place before Christ could be in a position to be the cause of
^ Riehm overlooks this, when (ut supra, p. 344) he insists that TeKeicoBiiQ should
be understood to mean "moral perfection," which not only contradicts ii. 10, hut
makes it necessary to suppose that the word rekuovv has two meanings inconsistent
with each other, one of which applies to Christ aud the other to Christians. It is true
that Riehm appears to think that in the case of the latter also, the placing in the
condition of subjective holiness is included in the meaning of the word : hut this is
decidedly erroneous.

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 73
blessedness. But what this condition is, we have to gather
partly from the immediate context of this verse itself, and
partly from ver. 7, where it is said that Christ entreated
the Father, o-wfetv Ik Oavdrov, and was heard because of his
piety. This piety is then described in ver. 8, whereupon
ver. 9, with the word reXei-coOeis, evidently takes up again
the idea of ela-aKova-Oeis from ver. 7, and so declares that he
was rescued from death, which of course refers in this case to
his exaltation after his resurrection. After he had thus actually
attained to o-coTrjpia from death in his own person, in consequence
of his prayer, a-d^eo-Oai iK Oavdrov, being heard by God, he was
able in like manner, and for that very reason, to become the
cause of the like a-coTypia to all others also, who entered upon the
same road of vTraKo-^ as he had taken himself. This it is which
makes him the dpxyyos rys crcoTypias avTcov, because both the road
(Std TraOypaTCov), and also the goal (TeAeiioo-at and €is Sd^av dyayetv)
• are the same for both — the condition of crcorypia alcovios, of Sd^a
Kat Tip-q (ii. 9, 10, comp. with v. 9). TeTeXeicop,evos shows that this
condition is established once for all, and cannot be lost, both
when the word is used in reference to Christ as the everlasting
high-priest, in opposition to the transient and weak human high-
priest (vU. 28), and also when it is applied to the blessed in
heaven (xU.' 23, Trve-ipacri SiKaiu)v reTeXeiiopevcov) ; in perfect agree
ment with which, the attainment of this condition of promised
blessedness by the latter is called TeAeioCo-^ai (xi. 40, TcXeicoOcoa-i,
parallel to Kopiia-acrOai eirayyeXiav in ver. 29). Thus far, then, the
term is used in a simple and consistent sense ; it denotes, in the
passages that have been quoted, a condition of perfection, which
is at the same time a condition of finality, the ultimate end and
conclusion of an imperfect state which preceded it — in fact, to put
it precisely, the perfect and final condition of the future life, as
opposed to the imperfections of the present life. But now
reXeiovv is also applied to inward effects produced at the present
time, which at any rate are quite distinct from the completion in
a future life. It is thus used when it is said of the law that it

74 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
Std to oot^s dcrOeves Kat dvcoc^eXes ovSev iTeAetwcrej' (vil. 18 f.) ; that
its sacrifices could neither KaTd o-weiSycriv nor ets SiyveKes, reXeicoa-ai
TOV XaTpe-vovra (ix. 9, X. 1) ; that Christ, on the contrary, by one
sacrifice TeTeXeicoKev els StTjveKes tovs dyia^opevovs (x. 14). This
TeAetoio-at is explained by the paraUel expressions, dyid^eiv (ix. 13),
KaOapi^eiv ryv crvveiSycriv (ver. 14), p,ySepiav 'en c'x"'' <rvveiSya-iv
dpapTicov and KeKaOappevovs (x. 2), d(j>aipetv dpaprias, and TrepteAeti/
dpapTias (x. 4, 11), -yyiacrp.evoi, dyia^opevovs (vers. 10 and 14),
ippavTicrpevoi Tds KapSias dTrb crvveiS-ycreoys Trovypds (ver. 22). Now
since these expressions, from what has been said above, denote
the act of setting free from the defiling consciousness of guUt
and consecration to the ^condition of belonging to God, which is
part of the (new) covenant relation, the same thing must also be
expressed by the word TcAeiovv,-^ together with the kindred idea,
that this very condition of a purified conscience reconcUed to God
is the perfect condition, which truly corresponds to man and to
his relation to God, and is therefore the only religious condition
which can impart absolute satisfaction. It is, however, self-
evident that this idea of TeAetovv is most intimately connected
with that which was first found. In both cases the word denotes
a placing in a perfect and perfectly satisfying state ; only in the
one case this state is to be understood as the inward reUgious
satisfaction of the feeUngs ; in the other case, as the perfectly
satisfying existence of the whole man in the final completeness
of the future life; in the former sense, TeXeiow is the Pauline
SiKaiovv. in the latter, it is the Pauline So^d^eiv. And as, according
to the teaching of Paul, crcoTypia and KXypovopia, and therefore also
1 It is so few true, that reKeiovv and dyiai^eiv are synonymous ; but it is too much
to say that they are " interchangeable ideas, which" completely coincide with each
other" (Riehm, ut supra, p. 588), beoause this is to leave out of view the relation
of the word reKeiovv to the idea of final completion, which is not contained in
dyidJ^eiv. The same remark applies also to Weiss^s identification of reKeiovv with the
PauUne SiKaiovv (N. Tie. Theol. p. 516). It is rather an idea which comprehends
both SiKaiovv and SoKdZeiv, and of these the latter only is the moment which is com
mon to Christ and the Christian. If we overlook this, as these two commentators do,
we are placed in the dangerous position of being forced to assign an entirely different
meaning to the same word in two different cases.

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 75
rrvvSo^aa-Oyvai, are as good as already attained in principle along
with the state of justification, because they are ideally secured
(ous IStKatdxre, tovtovs Kat eSd^ao-ev, Eom. vUL 30 and 17, V. 9 — 11),
so also the Epistle to the Hebrews may denote by the same term
both the perfection of the final state and the complete satisfac
tion of the Christian consciousness in this life, because the former
is as good as already present in the latter, being ideaUy secured.
And these two ideas can coalesce here all the more easily, because
the world of perfection, in which the final completion of the
future life occurs, is, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews,
not merely a world of the future, but a reality existing at this
moment, and projecting itself into this present world, with its
powers and gifts in which the Christian already has a share.
Thus, then, it is in the reference to tlie heavenly world, that these
various views of Christ's work coalesce, and the whole con
ception assumes an objective character. As the TeXewva-Oai of
Christ himself consisted in passing through sufferings and death,
from his earthly life of weakness to the heavenly life of ever
lasting perfection, so his TeAetoJo-at ets SiyveKes TOvs dyia^opevovs
consists in his opening for them once for aU the entrance into
the heavenly sanctuary (et'o-oSov tcov dyicov iveKaivia-ev yp,tv, X. 19 f).
That this entrance into the heavenly sanctuary was not yet
revealed in the old covenant, is denoted by the curtain that veUed
the holiest in the tabernacle (ix. 8) ; and whereas the high-priest
only entered once a year into the sanctuary behind the curtain, and
sprinkled it with the blood of the sacrifice, so Christ has opened
the way, once for all, and for aU his own, through the curtain,
i.e. his flesh (x. 20); that is to say, by devoting his body to
death, he has put aside the separating curtain that hung before
the heavenly sanctuary (an evil conscience, ver. 22), and has on
our behalf gone before us into the inmost sanctuary behind the
curtain, into heaven itself (vi. 20), and has sprinkled and purified
this sanctuary with the blood of a better sacrifice, his own blood
(ix. 23), and has hereby become a perfect high-priest for ever'
separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens, and there-

76 PAULINISM. AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
fore exempt from all earthly weakness (vii. 26 — 28) ; so that we
also have now a firm anchor of hope for our souls, which reaches
into that heavenly sanctuary (vi. 19), and may accordingly enter
tain the joyful assurance that, with true hearts and perfect faith,
being sprinkled in our hearts, and freed from an evil conscience,
our bodies also being washed with pure water (of baptism), we
shall enter into that heavenly sanctuary, the house of God, where
we have Christ for our mighty priest (x. 22). It is easy to
recognize the dogmatic idea that runs through all this imagery
drawn from Old Testament types. It is, that Christ, by devoting
himself to the suffering involved in his work of redemption, has,
first for himself, and then by the same act for humanity, initiated
a new covenant relation between God and man, has opened for
mankind that full communion with God which had tiU then
been hindered by the consciousness of guilt, and has thus become
the author of our blessedness, the- mediator of a new covenant of
redemption. The objectivity of the new reUgious relation of
humanity now reconcUed to God, the objectivity, that is, of the
Christian principle, which Paul fixed by the objective ideas of
dTToAvTpuo-ts, KaraXXayy, StKataxrts, finds expression, in the Epistle
to the Hebrews, in the figure of the opening of the heavenly
sanctuary. As we have from the beginning recognized in the
heavenly world of the Epistle to the Hebrews the idea of the
perfect religion, of the fuU communion of man with God, which is
projected into another world remote from this both in time and
place, and yet really extends into the present life of the Chris
tian consciousness, so the opening of this world by Christ, the
forerunner and leader of faith, is no other than the opening of
the Christian consciousness of full communion with God; and
the double aspect of this consciousness, — which knows, on the
one hand, that it is already tn possession of this fuU, unbroken,
joyful communion with God ; and yet looks forward, on the other
hand, to its absolute satisfaction in undisturbed perfection only
in the completeness of the future Ufe, — is reflected in the double
meaning of the word TcAetovv, as well as in that of alcov peXXm,

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 77
inasmuch as both denote perfection, partly as transcendent in
the future state of completion, partly as immanent in the Chris
tian consciousness in this life.
It is to be observed, further, that this idea of the opening of
the upper world by Christ, is also to be found in John. As
Christ is he who came from heaven, so also he wUl ascend again
into heaven, in order to prepare mansions for his own there.
He is the way; through him alone we come to the Father. When
he is raised, he wiU draw his own after him (John iu. 12, 14, 17).
But whUe, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, Christ hy his
death unlocks the sanctuary in heaven which was tiU then shut
up, and opens the road to it by preceding us thither, he is repre
sented by John as being able to say to his disciples at the very
beginning of his ministry," " Indeed I tell you that from this
time you shaU see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascend
ing and descending upon the Son of Man" (John i. 52) ; he
has not to hope for joy and glory as a future crown of victory
(Heb. xii. 2, ii. 9), but begins his course at once by dispensing
abundantly the wine of the higher joys of humanity, and thus
revealing his glory (John U. 11). As he himself the only-
begotten of the Father, the life and Ught of the world, did not
first need TeXewva-Oai, in order to become the atVtos crcoTypias, so
also is the reXeiovcrOai of Christians already realized in their com
munion of life with God and Christ and with one another in this
world, and their joy is full (xvU. 23, tVa Jo-t TeTeXeuopivoi els ev,
and XVL 24, 17 x"/'" vp,cov -y TreirXypcopevrj). And this view makes
it perfectly easy to explain how it was possible for the Epistle
to the Hebrews to retain the Pauline connection of the work of
redemption with the death of Christ, in spite of its presupposi
tions which point in a different direction. For if redemption be
regarded as the throwing open of the sanctuary in heaven, it is
of course a most obvious idea that the death of the body is the
decisive turning-point, the transition from the earthly to the
heavenly world. In this sense, the death of Christ is, to the
mind of John also, the decisive moment of the i^povcrOai, which ia

78 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
connfected with the communication of the powers of blessing, of
the holy spirit (xU. 32, xvi. 7) ; only it cannot be denied that
the figure of the grain of wheat which dies that it may bring forth
fruit (xU. 24), is much more applicable to this way of looking at
the death of Christ, than that of the propitiatory sacrifice, the
relation of which to the exaltation of Christ and his opening
the heavenly world is only carried out in the Epistle to the
Hebrews by means of the Old Testament system of types.
There is yet one other view of the work of redemption to be
noticed in this Epistle, which certainly has more affinity to John
than to Paul, — the view, namely, that Christ by his death over
came the devil, as the beirig who has the power of death (ii. /4).
This relation of redemption to Satan is not found in the earUer
teaching of Paul, but John, on the other hand, gives it a remark
able prominence ; the whole world of opposition to God is repre
sented by him as a realm which is centred in the person of the
devU who is its ruler, as the kingdom of God is centred in the
person of Christ; consequently Christ's appearance on earth
may, according to this doctrine, be regarded as his coming to,
destroy the works of the devU. The Epistle to the Hebrews
takes a narrower view, inasmuch as the devil is regarded, not as
the representative of all wickedness, but as wielding the power of
bodily death, that is, the representative of evil, of the punishment ,
of sin, as it were the executioner and jailer of sinful humanity ;
consequently redemption from him does not at all mean, as it
does according to John, the conquering of wickedness, but only
the liberation of man from the fear of death, which weighed upon
humanity as a curse (ver. 15). Now as death is mainly to be
feared on account of the judgment which is to foUow it (ix. 27),
freedom from the fear of death can only consist in freedom from
the terror of judgment, or, regarded psychologicaUy, from the
consciousness of guUt. And so this Karapyetv tov to Kpdros exovra
rov Oavdrov turns out to have the same meaning as KaOapi^eiv ryv
(j-vveiSya-iv, only with this difference, which is worthy of note,
that the latter expression characterizes the effect of the redeem-

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 79
ing death of Christ as subjective, influencing the consciousness
of man directly, whereas the former makes this subjective libe
ration objective, by regarding it as the doing away with a hostile
and enslaving power. Thus the Epistle to the Hebrews substi
tutes for the objective transcendent relation which the death of
Christ, according to Paul, had to the avenging justice of God,
the relation to the representative of it, that is to the devU. An
approach to this view is to be found in Paul's teaching also, in
the way in which he, to a certain extent, gives to the anger of
God a substantial form in the law, representing mankind as held
in prison by the law, and having to be ransomed from its curse.
As the law is here regarded objectively, as the divine anger or
avenging justice, apart from God himself, the next step was made
easy, namely, the substitution for the curse of the law, of the
personal agent who carries it into effect, the devil. This would
recommend itself all the more to our Alexandrine author, because
this was the only means by which the hostile principle to be
overcome could be distinctly separated from God. WhUe Paul
taught that there existed that remarkable dualism between the
retributive anger of God and his reconciling love, which required
adjustment by means of the vicarious expiatory death of Christ,
this dualism in God himself, which did not accord with the
Alexandrine idea of God held by the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, is by the latter taken out of God's nature, and repre
sented as the opposition of the two cosmical powers, Christ and
Satan. And thus from a compromise between the dualism of
the Pauline doctrine of reconciliation and the Alexandrine
monistic idea of God, sprang that remarkable theory of redemp
tion which satisfled Christian thought for more than a thousand
years, according to which redemption consisted of a transaction
(a warfare, or a law-suit) between God or Christ and the devil.
The Epistle to the Colossians also throws Ught upon this rela
tionship of the two ideas of doing away with the curse of the
law (the handwriting of. the law which was against us) and of
conquering the spiritual powers which were hostUe to us; in

80 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
CoL u. 14, 15, the two are placed side by side, and evidently
regarded as parallel, whilst in the Epistle to the Hebrews the
latter takes the place of the older view.
The idea of redemption stands in exact correspondence with
that of faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews as elsewhere, and
neither of them can be rightly understood apart from its con
nection with the other. Now we have seen that redemption
consists subjectively in being freed from the consciousness of
guUt, and from the fear of death connected with it, and object
ively in the opening of the invisible heavenly world of perfect
and everlasting life, of the house of God, of the heavenly city.
This is precisely the object of faith also as here conceived, a con
ception of it which is neither that of Paul nor of the Jewish
Christians, but something different from both. For it is defined
as iXTri^opievcov VTrocrrao-is, rrpaypdrcov eXeyxos o-u pXerropeveov (xL 1),
that is to say, confidence with regard to things which are to be
hoped for, and conviction of invisible reaUties. The fact that
these two definitions are not coupled by any conjunction, shows
that they do not indicate two different objects of faith, but two
sides of one and the same object, namely, the invisible world, on
the one hand, as a reality at the present time, of the existence
and active operation of which we may be convinced (by the
experience of its effective power), and, on the other hand, as stUl
an object of hope, since the opening of it is stiU set before us as
future — as o'lKovpevy pieXXovcra. Thus, then, the first part of faith
is the conviction of the existence of God, the primordial invisible
reality, and that not as barely existing, but as in Hiring mutual
relation with man, desiring, to be sought by man, ahd rewarding
this seeking with corresponding results, or allowing himself to
be found by man (rria-Teva-ai Set TOV Trpo<repx6pf.vov T$ Oei^ oti eo-Tt
Kat Tots iK^yrovcTiv a-vrov purOoSorys ytveTat, xL 10). NoW this IS an
iXm^opevov for the iK^yrSv, a hoped-for result, which, however,
proves itself to him as a positive reaUty, as Trpdypa and S-ivapis
and Scoped, by the very fact of his Trpocrepxea-Oai (vi. 4, 5), but yet
in such a way that something further ever remains to be hoped

- THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS ' 81
for. The obedience of Noah to the command that he should buUd
the ark, while nothing was as yet to be seen of the predicted flood,
was an act of faith ; the obedience of Abraham to the call which
summoned him to a land as yet unknown to him, as his future
heritage, was an act of faith ; in the same way Sarah trusted
in the divine promise, in spite of the probabUities against it ;
Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac, thinking that God was
able to raise him again from the dead ; Isaac and Joseph showed
in their last wishes their faith in the future of their nation, and
in the divine promises regarding it ; in faith Moses preferred a
partnership in suffering with the people of God to the temporary
enjoyment of sin, the ignominy of Christ (taking part in the
sufferings of the Messiah with the Messianic nation) to the
riches of Egypt, for " he looked forward to the bestowal of the
reward ;" in faith he went out of Egypt without fearing the fury
of the king, for " he was steadfast as if he had seen the invisible
God with his eyes." All these and numberless other holy men
who performed in faith the acts recorded in the Old Testament,
and endured sufferings and death, did not receive the pro
mised blessings of salvation, but only saw them from afar, and
were thoroughly persuaded of them, and joyfuUy haUed them
(ajTrrrarrdpevoi), and Confessed that they were strangers and pUgrims
on the earth, in saying which they made it clear that they sought
as their true fatherland what could be no earthly country, but a
better one, that is the heavenly country which God was pre
paring for them (xi. 1 3 — 1 6). That is the same heavenly world into
which the Christians have now entered (rrpocieXyX-oOaTe, xii. 22),
since it has been opened to them by Christ who has prepared
the way ; therefore those holy men of the Old Testament could
not be made perfect before, not without us Christians (py x^pts
yp.!ov TeXeicoOcocTi, xi. 40). According to this, the faith of the Old
Testament is not only in some degree analogous to that of the
New as regards its content, as it was shown to be in the in
stance of Abraham's faith in Eom. iv., but it has precisely the
same object, only with this difference, that the holy men of the
VOL. II. G

82 ¦ PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
Old Testament only saw and greeted this object from afar, while
the Christian, on the contrary, has reached it, and, as the way of
access to it has once been opened for him, is able at all times to
approach the throne of God's favour with joyfulness ; in short,
the relation in which the holy men of old stood to the promised
salvation was that of hope only, but the Christian stands to it in
the relation of present enjoyment, combined with hope. In both,
faith is directed to the oUovpevy p,eXXova-a as its object, but
to the holy man of the Old Testament this world is still only
p,eXXoucra : he knows that he is stiU outside of it, as a stranger
and pilgrim waiting for and striving towards his heavenly father
land (eKSexea-Oai and opeyecrOai, xj. 10, 16). His faith,, thereforej
consists only in the confident hope, Which, trusting in the divine
promises, gives up everything in order to become a partaker in
the object of them. The Christian, on the other hand, already
actually possesses, in the act of believing, a share in the imperish
able kingdom (JBamXeiav dcrdXevTov TrapaXap-fSdvovres, xU. 28), has
already obtained the perception of the truth (x. 26), has already
become peToxos Xpiurov (iU. 14), is dyiaa-Oeis (x. 29), <j}coTia-0eis (32),
yevcrd/ievds Te T'fjs Soipeds tijs iTrovpaviov Kal peroxos yevyOels Trve-vparos
dyiov Kai KaXov yevcrdpevos Oeov pypa, Svvdpeis' re peXXovros atuvos
(vi. 4 f ) ; he finds himself in possession of a treasure in heaven
which exceeds all earthly riches (e'xetv iv eavrots KpeiTrova VTrap^w
iv ovpavots Kal p^evovcrav, X. 34). Christian faith is thus present
actual experience of the promised blessings of salvation, at least
so far as they are of an inward and spiritual kind — the holy
spirit, the perception of the truth, freedom from the conscious
ness of sin, rejoicing at the access to the throne of favour.
But in so far as the full reaUzation of that which was from the
beginning the object of all the promises, is only possible in the.
perfect and unchangeable world of the future life, in the actual
alibv p,eXXcov, JAttis also belongs to Christian faith, and is an essen
tial moment of it ; nay, this faith proves its truth and its power,
just as that of the Old Testament does, in Kaprepetv, py d^ro^aAeiv
T'^v Trappya-iav, iu inrop,ovy and paKpoOvp,ia (x. 35 — 39),

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 83
If we compare this notion of faith with that of Paul, we are at
once struck with their difference in two respects, namely, in the
subjective form and the objective content. Hope is indeed, accord
ing to Paul, an essential consequence, but not an actual moment
of faith, because the content of faith is not the future, world, but
the historical Christ who died and rose again for us. He realizes
to himself the Christian principle of salvation in the most concrete
form, as the person of the Eedeemer, and fixes it most definitely
in his death and resurrection. Not so the author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews. He never regards Christ as an object of faith,
neither the person of Christ in generaL nor his death or resur
rection in particular ; but Christ is in his eyes simply the person
who has procured for faith its complete content, by having first
won it for himself by his own TeXeiovcrOai ; he is his forerunner
on the road of faith, who, having brought faith into full manifes
tation in himself (TeAettoTijs Trto-Teos), has by this act become the
example and guide of those who follow in his steps (dpxyXbs
srta-Teois, XU. 2). With these passages in view, the attempt has
been made, but not quite justifiably, to place the idea of faith, as
explained by the Epistle to the Hebrews, on precisely the same
footing as that of the Jewish Christians (of James for instance).
It cannot indeed be denied that the faith of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, having Christ for its example only, and not for its
object, does not bear the specific Christian stamp so directly as
that of Paul; but it is notwithstanding very far from being
merely faith in (in the sense of hope of) the impending return of
Jesus the Messiah to govern his promised Messianic kingdom. In
the Epistle to the Hebrews, the blessing of salvation is not regarded
merely as the perfection of the future final condition of those
who are saved, but it is drawn into the present time also, as a
possession which the Christian already has in himself, although
its true place is in heaven (x. 34, e'xetv iv eavTots iVap^tv ev
ovpavots). The Christian knows that he has already become a
partaker of Christ (UL 14), having been cleansed in his con
science, having devoted himself to God, and entered into com-
G 2

84 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
munion with Him ; his religious consciousness, in short, being
completely satisfied, and that in consequence of what Christ
has accomplished for him (in that he TCTeAetuKev i<j>dTra^ tovs dytafo-
pievovs, X. 14). The essential matter, then, with which we are
concerned, in the justifying faith of Paul, namely, the inward
appropriation of the principle of Christian salvation, is not want
ing in the Epistle to the Hebrews ; nor is that mysticism alien
to it which possesses, in the consciousness of reconcUiation with
God, substantial salvation, the blessed communion with God
of peace and love — in short, the "perfection" of the reUgious
relation to God, as an inward reality. It is only in the form that
its author differs from Paul, and he does so in a way that involves
a disadvantage in one respect, no less than it gives him a certain
advantage over Paul in another. In the Epistle to the Hebrews,
the blessing of Christian salvation, of reconcUiation and com
munion with God, is apprehended under the conception of the
future heavenly world which Christ has opened for us, and is
certainly thus removed from us and made transcendent (whether
we regard it in reference to place or to time), and this may weU
appear unsatisfactory as contrasted with the immanent Pauline
idea, Xpto-Tos ev ipoi, because a preponderating importance is given
to the moment of hope. Inasmuch, however, as that heavenly
world to which Christ has opened the way for us, is after aU .
essentially no other than the representation of the kindom of
God founded by Christ, of the perfect communion with God
opened by Christ — in short, therefore, of the religion of redemp
tion, this is in reality only the pure kernel of the PauUne object
of faith, without its dogmatic husk, in the shape of the vicarious
death and the resurrection of Christ. Consequently the faith ofthe
Epistle to the Hebrews is calculated, by the imaginative mysti
cism of its ideal Christian world, to fascinate minds which would
be repelled by the dry dogmatical form of the faith of PauL .
Now although righteousness is directly united to faith in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, as well in the writings of Paul, yet it
is at once evident that this is done in a different way, because in

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 85
the former case the presuppositions of the Pauline doctrine of
justification are altogether wanting. It is said in xi. 4, that Abel
ipapTvp-qOy etvai SiKaios through faith, and in ver. 5, that Enoch
pep,apTvpyTai, evypecrryKevai Tiji Oe^, and in ver. 7, that Noah Std
Tricrrecos (that is to Say, by his act of faith in building the ark
before there was anything to be seen of the flood) KaTeKptve tov
Kocrpov, Kai tiJs KaTd TTicrTtv StKatocrvvjjs lyeveTO KXypovopos. This
righteousness corresponding with faith consists therefore in that
disposition of the mind and that course of action which is
pleasing to God, of which faith, or the firm trust in the divine
promises, is necessarily the foundation, for we " cannot please
God without faith" (ver. 6). All the examples of the righteous
ness of faith adduced in ch. xi. show the power of faith as
manifested in suffering or acting according to the wUl of God,
and for this these heroes of faith received from God the testimony
of their righteousness (ver. 39). The faith which manifests itself
by obedience is accordingly already in fact righteousness, and
therefore has no need to obtain righteousness bymeans of justifica
tion. This righteousness is consequently by no means the Pauline
SiKaiocr-vvy Oeov OX iK Oeov, which is bestowed On man only through
a judicial act of God (the act of justification, StKatWts), before
which act man is so far from possessing it, that he is, on the con
trary, dcrefiys. The author ofthe Epistle to the Hebrews knows
nothing whatever of such a judicial act, nor of imputed righteous
ness, because allthe juridical forms taken from the standpoint of
the law, under which Christian salvation is here represented, are
alien to his Alexandine standpoint. The Epistle to the Hebrews,
therefore, does also contain the essential matter, the doctrUie of
the reconcUing favour of God, but expresses it in the terms of
which we have spoken above — KaOapi^eiv, dyid^eiv, reXeiow —
which were suggested by his view of the Mosaic cultus as a
system of types. But it was natural that in holding to the con
nection of faith and righteousness, which he found ready to his
hand in Paul, the author of this Epistle should give it another
sense, and especially that he should understand righteousness,
not in the peculiar Pauline sense, but in the ordinary sense of

86 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
inherent character, of righteousness of life. But when thus
understood, it enters into a different relation to faith — it is no
longer the divine gift which faith receives, but the human con
dition which faith produces (ot Std Trta-Teus etpydo-avTO SiKaiocrvvyv,
ver. 33), the property which man acquires (SiKaioa-uvys iyevero
KXypovopos, ver. 7). Since faith is thus really the effective cause
of righteousness, it can no longer be said that God imputes it to
the sinner, but only that He recognizes the righteousness which
is in believers, and which is manifested by their actions and
sufferings, as weU-pleasing to Him, and that this recognition is
expressed to the believer as a divine testimony. Hence such
expressions as StKaiovo-^at or Aoyt^eo-^at StKatocrvvijv are not met
with, but their place is very expressively supplied by papTvpeta-dai
SiKaiov etvai, OX evapecrryKevai Oec^, OX sixo.'ply papTvpetcrOai Sid Trio-recos
(vers. 4, 5, 39). We therefore have here, instead of the PauUne
StKatoo-vvij Oeov, certainly an tSta StKatoo-vvj;, although not 1^ epycov
v6p,ov, but i^ epycov Trio-recos. Paul, however,Ukewise fully recognizes
a real righteousness of life of this kind, resulting from the active
working of faith (see above, VoL I. pp. 211 and 222), although
he seldom applies the word SiKaioo-6vy to this notion of the new
Christian morality, because it far more strongly suggests to his
mind the righteousness of faith. There is, therefore, no essential
contradiction between the doctrine contained in the Epistle to the
Hebrews and that of the genuine writings of Paul, though there is
certainly this diflerence in form, that the former expresses the
thoughts of Paul in other words, and attaches different thoughts
to the word which Paul uses. By doing the first, it forms the
transition from Paul to John, who completely divests Paul's
thought of the legal dress in which it was originally clothed, but
by the second it forms the transition to the doctrine of Paul
as it was modified by the Church, to that hybrid theological
system in which Paul's words indeed are retained, but the
thoughts which are attached to .them are not the thoughts of
Paul. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews deUghts especiaUy
in regarding the Christian Ufe of faith as the moral " worship of

THE EPIS-TLE TO THE HEBREWS. 87
God (AttTpevetv Oe^ (fovTi, ix. 14 ; XaTpe'ucop.ev evap'ecjTCOS T$ OeH^,
xii. 28) ; and this corresponds with the inclination which he con
stantly displays to employ types drawn from the Old Testament
worship. He sets before us, as the "sacrifices" of this Christian
worship that are pleasing to God, " the praise-offering of prayer"
(which we ought constantly to lay before God as the fruit of the
lips which confess his name), " doing good and communicating"
(xiii. 15, 16). Sanctification is understood quite in the Pauline
sense, partly as the object of human striving and conditioned by
human effort, by which alone man can attain to seeing God or
be made partaker of definitive blessedness, partly as the operation
of God who, through the mediation of Jesus Christ, produces in
us that which is well-pleasing to Him, and makes us capable of
doing his wiU (xii. 14, StwKeTe tov dytao-^ov, ov x'^P'S ovSets orperai
TOV KTjpiov : and Xlli. 21, 6 Oeos KaTapTia-ai -vpds iv Travrl epy<j) dya^^,
cts TO TTOiycrai to OeXypa a-vTov, Trottov ev -yptv to dpecrrov ivdnriov avTOV,
Std 'lyo-ov Xpicrrov, cf PhU. iL 12, 13). It is an object of the
deepest solicitude both to Paul and to our author that Christians
should be firmly rooted in the faith, that they should not aUow
themselves to be moved hither and thither by every kind of
doctrine, especially that they should not constantly be incUned
to return to the ordinances of the Jewish law. The latter is
even more decided than Paul in distinctly calling upon the
Jewish Christians once for aU to free themselves entirely from
everything Jewish, to separate themselves from aU connection
with Judaism, to give themselves up to Jesus who was cru
cified before the gate, outside the camp (the symbol, of the
Jewish bond of reUgion), and to bear his reproach : instead
of repeatedly looking backward and being thereby constantly
tempted to relapse into Judaism, they should rather seek their
future country (i.e. the heavenly kingdom of Christ which is
exalted above aU limited nationalities, xiiL 9 — 14). Such a relapse
would be sinning wUfuUy against better knowledge, and renounc
ing the gracious gifts of the future world which had already been
experienced, treading the Son of God under foot, accounting the

88 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
blood of the covenant a mean thing, doing despite to the spirit
of grace, crucifying the Son of God afresh, and openly mocking
him (x. 26 — 31, vi. 4 — 8). For this sin there was no more
expiatory sacrifice, for it consisted in the rejection of that one
sacrifice, which is for ever valid; there was therefore nothing
remaining for it but a fearful expectation of judgment, of that
retributive vengeance which will descend the more heavily
on the faUen Christian, in proportion as that which was given
to him, and which he despised, was the greater in comparison
with the Old Testament blessings of salvation (x. 29, xii. 25).
To those who have forfeited their title to favour, God is a con
suming fire; it is fearful to fall into his hands (x. 31, xU. 39). If
we consider that these passages refer not merely to particular sins,
but to a denial of the Christian faith in general, and a direct
backsliding from the Christian to the Jewish religion, the
strength of the language used by the writer wiU be quite intelU
gible. The sentiments of Paul on this point were much the same
(cf Gal. V. 2 — 4, vi. 7, ^eos ov pvKTypi^erai). To escape this
fearful danger of relapse and the divine punishment of it, there
was all the more need of the greatest earnestness; of a dis
position which consists no less oifear and timidity in view of the
terrible award of justice at the hands of a holy God (Xarpevcopev
peTa Seovs Kal evXafieias, xU. 28, cf. Phil. ii. 12, jiteTd cpojiov Kal
Tp6p,ov), than it does at the same time of holding fast to the blessed
and comfortable hope of his award of favour. As faith knows
God to be pia-OarroSoryv rots iK^yrovcriv avTov (xL- 6), SO it must
prove its earnestness and zeal by the TrXypo^opia t^s eAn-t'Sos dxpt
TeAovs (vi. 11), holding fast that confidence which is sure of
recompense (py dTrojidXyTe t^v Trappycriav ipw, yris e'xet purOa-
TroSocriav p,eydXyv, X. 35). Hope in the o'lKovpivy piXXo-vcra IS, we
have seen, the sure anchor which reaches into the sanctuary of
the upper "world, into which Christ, as our forerunner, has entered;
and therefore it is only by keeping fast hold of it that our con
nection with this heavenly world, that is, with the object of
Christian faith, the salvation thrown open to us in Christ, can

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 89
be retained. This holding fast and persevering through affliction
and tribulation is the paKpoOvpia and vTropov-j by which faith
must prove its strength and power of endurance. Consequently
this is sometimes connected with faith, and sometimes regarded
as exactly synonymous with it, and spoken of as the condition
of attaining to the promised salvation (vi. 12, Std irtWews Kat
paKpoOvpias KXypovopovvTiov tos eirayyeAias: 15, paKpoOvp-qcras eTreTvxe
T^s eTrayyeAtas : X. 36, vrropovys exere XP^'""'; ''"* ro OeXypa tov
Oeov Troiycravres KopurycrOe Tyv ejrayycAtav). True faith is reaUy
the disposition which confidently takes firm hold of the invisible
world which is the object of its hopes, and is therefore the
opposite of cowardly drawing back from fear (of vTroo-TeAAeor^at,
X. 38 f.).i
The exhortation to steady perseverance even under the suffer
ings which may be the consequence of faith, is strengthened by
the expectation of the speedy coming again of Christ, at which the
oiKovpevy peXXovcra wiU have entered into the present time, "Eti
ydp piKpov ocrov dcrov, 6 ipxopevos ijfet Kat ov xpovtei, X. 37. Theft
will follow the change of this perishable world, and the com
mencement of an immovable order of things (xii. 27), when man
shall have entered into that sabbath rest which has been kept
for the people of God from that first promise of a time of rest,
which was not yet fulfiUed to Israel. Since, according to the
fundamental view of this doctrine, the o'lKovpevy peXXovcra is the
world of perfection, of heavenly and unchangeable existence,
which is realized at the instant of the second coming of Christ,
^ This is also "a thoroughly Pauline idea, that it is only by holding fast with firm
ness and perseverance, under sufferings if need be, to the object of faith, that the
ultimate end of aiorrtpia can be attained (of. Phil. iii. 10 — 12 ; 2 Cor. iv. 17 f. ;
Eom, viii. 17). According to Paul also, it is standing fast in the faith which makes ua
manly and strong (1 Cor, xvi. 13), and therefore, as in the Epistle to the Hebrews, faith
is the foundation of perseverance. Only Paul raakes this strength of faith to be the
consequence of its susceptibility, which quality is thrown into the background iu
the Epistle to the Hebrews, by the preponderating iraportance given in it to the
{\TriZ6fieva. Therefore also the sense of the words 6 S'lKaioQ ix TriareioQ Znatrai in
Heb. X. 38 ("the righteous will obtain final salvation as the consequence of his perse
verance in faith"), is different from that of the sarae expression when used by Paul
(who means that " he who is justified by faith wiU be blessed"). Compare Weiss, p. 527.

90 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
while the alcov ovtos comes entirely to an end and the a'lm
p,eXXcov (which, however, is already in a certain sense present)
will have come into complete present existence — it is plain that
a provisional kingdom of glory interposed between the Trapova-ia
and the end of the world (a millennium) is quite out of the
question. On this point, the eschatological ideas of the Epistle
to the Hebrews diverge essentially from those of the Apoca
lypse and of Paul, and take the line which through John has
become predominant in the Church. Since the aliov peXXcov of
primitive Christianity was thus made identical with the upper
heavenly and eternal world of the Alexandrine phUosophy, it
necessarily ceased to be regarded as a world that was again
limited by time, and which belonged to earthly and sensuous
space, L e. as a mere provisionaUy final state, a miUenntal king
dom of Christ ; it passed into the absolute and definitive final
state, which was beyond time and earthly space, and the mU-'
lennium was thus done away with. For the same reason, because
the primitive Christian antithesis of the present and future
world was fused with the Alexandrine antithesis of the lower
and upper world, a further result foUowed, namely, that the
second coming of Christ lost much of its significance for the
individual, because the individual at his death enters at once
into the upper world, and hence departed believers are described
in plain terms as TrvevpaTa SiKaicov rereXeicopivcov^s.^. 23).^ For the
^ Riehm, indeed, (ut supra, p. 797) says that the resurrection awaits those also who
are already Trvevpara Sixaloiv reTtXeiiopiviov, and consequently "of course" the
final S6%a, so that for thera also the final fulfilment of the promises falls within the
time of the Trapova'ia. But this must not be assumed iu this off-hand way as a matter
' ' of course." On the contrary, it appears to me far more probable that the fulfilment
of the promises has been completely realized to those who have once entered into tbe
heavenly holy of holies, and who enjoy the visible presence of God, and that their
TerAHiiiaQai is absolute. With respect to the resurrection, however, it is very sug
gestive that it is enumerated in the Epistle to the Hebrews among those doctrines
which one who is advancing towards perfection should leave behind him (vi. 2). It is
not indeed said in this passage that the writer raeant to deny this doctrine, but it is
certainly intimated that it does not fit in with his Christian system. Moreover, it is
a fact that he does not say a single syllable about it in any of the passages in which
he speaks of the future hopes of the Christian ! This is very easily explained by the

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 91
same reason, the judgment is here removed from its place at
the end of the world, which is ordinarUy assigned to it, and
connected immediately with the death of the individual, as his
passage into the upper (supersensuous) world (ix. 27). This
alteration in the eschatological view is logically involved in the
idea of the TeAetoio-ts, as explained above, of which so much is
made in the Epistle to the Hebrews — ^if this is already inwardly
present in the spirit of the Christian, it is clear that it will fuUy
and absolutely reaUze itself when he lays aside his sensuous
body, that the final state is entered upon by the individual imme
diately upon his entrance into the supersensuous world, and
that this is independent of the later event of the irapovo-ta, which
accordingly possesses significance only for the Christian com
munity on earth, while Paul makes it the real beginning of the
final state for those who have faUen asleep, not less than for
those who survive. Alongside of this view, however, we
have already found in the writings of Paul another view,
according to which the final condition of the individual Chris
tian is, as in the Epistle to the Hebrews, immediately connected
with the death of his body ; and indeed we have seen that this
latter view was an original product of his Christian system,
more especially of his Christian psychology (rrvevp-a ivoiKovv,
Eom. viii. 11), which nevertheless he did not reconcile with that
other view which he got from Jewish Christianity. It wiU
occasion the less surprise, therefore, that the Alexandrine fol
lower of Paul has exclusively adopted Paul's specificaUy Chris
tian eschatology, and supported it with his Alexandrine meta
physics. If we now, in conclusion, look once more at the relation in
which Christianity, as it is conceived in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, stands to Judaism, we shall find here also a remark
able impress of the principles of Paul. For its author always
consideration that our Alexandrine author fixed his regard much more on the upper
heavenly world, than on the future end of this world, of which the resurrection from
the dead is an essential moment.

92 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
takes the same ground as Paul with regard to practical doctrine,
simply presupposing the result of his contests as a fixed axiom,
namely, the independence of the Christian community with regard
to Judaism. He declares the forsaking of the Christian assembly
in order to take, part in the Jewish worship to be eKova-uos
dpapTdyeiv, and requires his readers to break off all communion
of worship with Israel, and " to come to Jesus who was crucified
without the camp." As the death of Jesus on the cross consti
tuted an actual breach with Judaism (and had thus become the
turning-point of Paul's independent Christian consciousness),
so should the Christian community likewise " bear his reproach,"
so that they might regard themselves as thrust out, so to speak,
with Christ from the camp of the Israelitish religious community
(xiii. 12, 13, compare the same idea expressed in a different
figure in Gal. vi. 14). The Epistle to the Hebrews, then, assumes
the same practical position with regard to Judaism as Paul,
but the theoretical arguments by which it is here estabUshed
are different and original. Paul apprehended Judaism from the
standpoint of the exacting and judging law, and accordingly
placed it in direct opposition to the gospel : the former causes
wrath and Idlls, the latter reconciles and gives Ufe ; in the one
we are under the curse, in the other we are under the favour of
God. The Epistle to the Hebrews, on the other hand, appre
hends Judaism from the standpoint of the cultus, the central
point of which was the expiatory ritual, and accordingly makes
it bear to Christianity the positive relation of a preparatory in
stitution, which copied Christianity in anticipation. Hence it
necessarily followed, that its author represented the Christian
ordinance of salvation entirely under the type and in the figures
of the levitical ordinance of cultus contained in the Old Testa
ment — ^^Christ as high-priest, his work as a sacerdotal expiatory
sacrifice in order to the purifying consecration of the sinful
nation ; the Christian life of faith likewise as a sacerdotal service,
its fruits as a sacrifice pleasing to God ; the final state as a sab
batical rest ; the Christian community as the people of the Lord,

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 93
and their state of salvation as free access to the heavenly holy
of holies, as having come to the hiU of Zion, to the heavenly
Jerusalem, to their heavenly country. Now aU this is so far
from being founded on the idea that Christianity is merely a
higher form of Judaism, and that Judaism was the substance of
Christianity, that, on the contrary, Judaism is here for the first
time plainly declared to be reaUy an utterly unsubstantial
shadow, while Christianity is the original and essential substance.
This thought is so clearly and distinctly unfolded under various
forms in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that it is not easy to mis
understand it. It was implied first of aU by the statement that
Christianity was not a copy of Judaism, but that Judaism was a
copy of the heavenly sanciniary which is essentially identical
with Christianity. What is this, in reality, but saying that Chris
tianity, although apparently the later, is notwithstanding, accord
ing to the essence of things, the earlier, that it is eternal ; while
Judaism is in comparison of only temporary validity, not having
its end in itself, but in the appearing of that perfect thing for
which it was only a preparation ? Hence also the promises and
the hopes of the holy men of Israel pointed from the beginning
to an object that reached beyond the limits of the Israelitish
theocracy, to a sabbath rest in a heavenly country that lay
beyond Canaan ; it was the heavenly TraTpLs towards which
Abraham had already turned his eyes ; it was the reproach of
Christ which to bear was esteemed by Moses, in view of the future
recompense, as greater riches than the treasures of Egypt ; there
fore all these holy men did not attain to the completion of the
promises before the holy men of the new covenant, but at the
same time with them (ch. xi.). Just as we cannot help think
ing, in connection with this, of the passages in John which refer,
to Christ or his day having been seen by Abraham and Isaiah
(John viU. 56, xiL 41), so also, finally, the idea, pecuUar to this
Epistle, that Christ is a priest after the order of Melchisedec, forms
an exact pendant to the religious phUosophy of PauL
The carrying out of this typical paraUel into detaU (chap, vii.)

94 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
certainly reminds us very strongly of the fanciful treatment of
types at a later period, but the whole idea of the type is evi
dently no other than that of Paul, when he represents Christ
as the antitype of Adam, or as the seed of Abraham, to which
the promise made to Abraham belonged (Eom. v. 12 — 21; Gal.
iU. 15 — 29). In these passages the independence of Christianity
with respect to Judaism is supposed to be assured by its being
represented as virtually anterior in time to the Mosaic institu
tions, through its immediate connection with the pre-Mosaic
Adam or Abraham ; whUe the Mosaic law is represented as
having been interposed between the type (promise) and fulfil
ment as a third which was altogether subordinate, and which
possessed only temporary validity. • And the typical connection
of Christ with the pre-Mosaic Melchisedec has precisely the
same meaning. As Melchisedec, owing to his having neither
father nor mother, nor beginning nor end of life, is exalted
above all human priesthood, and further above the Mosaic
priesthood of Israel by the blessing of Abraham, and by his
taking tithe from him, and through him from the levitical priest
hood, so Christ, the antitype of Melchisedec, is likewise priest of
a higher order than the Mosaic priests ; and the latter are thus
¦ only interposed between the type and its fulfilment, and have
-already testified through their father Abraham their iaferiority
to the priesthood of Melchisedec and of Christ. Accordingly the
whole Mosaic ordinance of priesthood, and consequently the
Mosaic institutions in general ("for where the priesthood is
changed, the law also must necessarUy be changed," vU. 12),
was from the beginning ordained merely as a temporary con
necting Unk, to last tiU the appearing of the true priesthood of
Christ, from which its abrogation at the appearing of Christ
follows as a self-evident consequence. Thus the Epistle to the
Hebrews has reached, by a somewhat different road, the same
result which Paul reached by his speculations regarding the
law, and the promise, and its fulfilment — the assurance of the
independence of Christianity with regard to Judaism, by repre-

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 95
senting its roots and types as dating back before the institutions
of Moses, and as the fulfilment and completion of the original
religion that existed before Moses — that is to say, as we should
understand it, as the realization of the idea of religion, in com
parison with which every other religion has merely a temporary
and relative value.

The Epistle to the Colossians,
We have seen that the Epistle to the Hebrews is addressed
to Jewish Christians who believed that they had not found in
Christianity the complete religious satisfaction which they de
sired, and points out to them that they required nothing more,
since the final completion of their religion (TeXeicocris) had been
once for all given in Christ, who was exalted above all finite
things, even above aU the angels, and was the absolutely " per
fect" (TeTeAetoi/ievos) Mediator between God and man. The Epistle
to the Colossians pursues the same object, and from the "same
standpoint — that of an Alexandrine follower of Paul. Its author
also opposes a Jewish-Christian party, which thought that it had
not attained to the fulfilment of its Christian life (TreTrXypZcrOai)
in Christianity, and therefore sought to supply this supposed
want from elsewhere in such a way as to endanger the position
of Christ as the sole head of the community and source of their
salvation, as wfell as the purity and freedom of the evangelical
life. But whereas the Jewish Christians against whom the
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews contended, thought to
supply the supposed defect of Christianity only by the Jewish
worship and ceremonial law (even with regard to food, xiii, 9),
the question with the false teachers of the Epistle to the Colossians
was not of a return to the Jewish ritual, but of an advance to a
speculative and ascetic refinement of Judaism, which was amal
gamated with Christianity, and represented as the complete ful
filment of it.

96 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
They represented to the community at Colosse, which consisted
chiefly of GentUe Christians, that their simple Christianity was
still def ective, . and required to be supplemented in two ways —
theoreticaily by a deeper wisdom, which should penetrate the secrets
of the supersensuous world, the world of angels, by a visionary
and philosophizing method ; and practically by a higher holiness
of life, which should enable them to enter into relation with the
pure angel- world, by putting restraint on earthly pleasures. This
practical side pf the false doctrine is treated of in U, 16 — 23,
The very first sentence, Kpiveiv iv fipcocrei, •y iv Troa-ei, y iv pepei
eoprys, -rj vovpyvias, y cTal3/3dTcov (in ver, 16), goes beyond simple
observance of the Jewish law, at least with regard to Trdo-ts, and
reminds us of the "weak brethren" at Eome, who abstained
from the enjoyment of wine and meat with an asceticism which
went beyond the law (whether derived from the Essenes or not
we cannot tell). But the conclusion of the passage shows stiU
more plainly that the precepts of these false teachers regarding
abstinence and purity were not those of the Mosaic law, since
they are referred (ver, 22) to the ivTdXp,aTa Kal SiSaa-KaXiai tUv
dvOpcoTrcov. It is plain, however, from ver, 23, dTtvd ia-n Adyov
p,ev e'xovra crocjiias, that their ascetic principles were ihtimately
connected with their notion of "wisdom." It is possible that a
dualistic view of matter was also a part of this higher wisdom,
which may have been the ground of the dcj^eiSia o-dpaTos, and the
p,y dip-g, pySe yevar-y, pySe Oiyys : for if matter be impure and de
filed, material pleasures ought to be limited as mlich as possible.
At all events, a pecuUar doctrine about angels must have been
included in it, as this is expressly stated in ver, 18 (to which
ver. 23 also clearly refers). The connection between those doc
trines and the practices described above is, without doubt, that
the apparent humility of an ascetic spiritualization of themselves
was supposed to bring men into such a condition of mind, that
they could enter into real contact with the pure world of the
angels, and penetrate into the secrets of the higher world by reve
lations made to them in ecstatic visions. This is referred to in

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 97
ver, 18, OpycTKeta tcov dyyeXcov, d ecopaKev ipftaTe-ocov, etKrj cpvcriox'pevos
im-o TOV voos T'^s crapKos avrov. It is not merely regarding angels
with respect and reverence (as the Essenes did) that is referred
to in this passage, but their boasting of what had been " seen,"
i, e, of angelic visions, and seeking in them a satisfaction, which
the author of this Epistle rightly describes as being puffed up
with a feeling that is distinctly not spiritual, but fleshly, as is
the case, in fact, with all ecstatic manifestations of that kind.
As, however, ecstatic iUumination always blindly over-estimates
its own supposed revelations, and exalts itself above the revela
tion of history, or even disdains it altogether, so in this case the
doctrine regarding angels, and the worship of them, was con
nected with a derogation of Christ's position as the only source of
salvation to the Christian community. Accordingly, ver, 19 pro
ceeds, Kat ov KpaTcov T'^v KecftaXyv, i^ o-u rrdv to crcopa . . . . av^ei Tyv
ay^ya-iv tov Oeov. How We are to Understand this " not holding
by the head," is to be inferred from other controversial passages
in this Epistle, It does not imply a complete falUng away from
Christianity, but a kind of Ebionitish apprehension of the person
and the work of Christ, which does not recognize in him an all-
sufficient and final revelation of God, nor place aU the fulness of
salvation in simple faith in him. These false teachers appear to
have placed Christ in a subordinate or co-ordinate relation to
their angel world, either regarding him as a mere man who had
received revelations from the higher world through angels, or as
himself an angelic being, but only one out of the entire body of
heavenly existences in which the divine life manifests itself in
partial powers and in appearances. But if the fuU revelation of
God (Trdv TO TrX-qpcopa T^s Oeoryros, ver, 9) had thus not been made
in Christ, then his work was not the complete redemption of
mankind from the realm of the powers at enmity with God, from
the dominion of darkness, and had not completely placed them
in the kingdom of light of the higher world. But if Christians
are not fuUy redeemed (TrerrXypap-evoi, U, 10) by Christ, then must
VOL. II, H

98 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
they complete their redemption themselves, and this they must do
by " putting off the body of the flesh " (direKSvo-is tov (rcoparos rys
a-apKos, ver, Yf), by which they are connected with the realm of
demons, because the i^ovcria rov o-kotovs which has dominion over
matter has in their impure material body the sphere in which it
exercises its power. The putting off of the body of the flesh, to
which the rights of demoniacal powers over us (xeipoypa^ov toi?
Soypao-iv, ver, 14) are attached, must take place partly by cir
cumcision (iL 11), which casts away the foreskin, the symbol of
Gentile sinfulness,^ partly by means of that kind of ascetic
spiritualization which unsparingly suppresses the desires of the
body (d(^etSta criopaTos, ver, 23), Thus the Ebionitish Christology
presents to us again the same practical result which foUowed
from the Gnosticizing theories of angels and demons, namely,
the principle of asceticism.
Thus the different passages which belong directly or indirectly
to the controversial part of this Epistle agree very well with one
another, and unmistakably present to us the features of a false
doctrine, which, although it may have originally proceeded from
that of the Essenes, nevertheless essentiaUy belongs to the
Ebionitish Gnosticism,^ Moreover, it may decidedly be re
garded as the precursor of the later Montanism (which sprang
from that very region), in respect of the visionary element in
which it moves, as well as its demand for a completion of his
torical Christianity by means of a practical, ascetic perfection.
It is certain that a false doctrine of this kind could. not have
existed in the time of the Apostles, If Christian Essenism
^ That circnmcision was recomraended by the Colossian false teachers to the Gfentile
Christians as a means of TrETrXtipwcrai, appears in the highest degree probable from the
connection between ii, 10 and ii, 11, Still, we must allow it to be possible that it was
not circumcision itself, but only mortification of the fiesh that was recommended as
a kind of raoral substitute for it (so thinks Hofmam'n, Comm, on Col,).
^ This is the opinion of Baur (who calls them " Gnostic Ebionites"), Mayerheff
("Cerinthians"), Lipsius ("Christian Esseneisra in its transition to Gnosticism'),
Nitzsch ("a connecting link between the Essenes and Cerinthians"), Holtimaam
(" ascetics and theosophists of the Essene school who have passed over to the Chnstran
sphere of thought, more precisely Gnostic Ebionites ").

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 99
dates from the destruction of Jerusalem,^ a false doctrine so far
in advance of it as that which is controverted in the Epistle
before us can hardly be assumed to have appeared before the
end of the first century. But there is so much that is genuinely
Pauline both in the beginning and in the practical latter portion
of the Epistle to the Colossians, comprising the personal remarks
and greetings with which it closes, that it is almost impossible
to regard the whole of this Epistle as a later production. It
appears therefore to be a justifiable hypothesis, that an original
letter of Paul to the Colossians had been retouched by a later
writer, in accordance with the later needs of that community.
.How this was done, whether by the interpolation of single sen
tences and words into the original text, or by substituting con
tinuously a new text for the old, it would be difiicult to ascertain
accurately. The dogmatical explanations of the two first chap
ters of the Epistle, which are entirely confined to controversy
against the false doctrines, may in any case be attributed to the
later reviser ; although particular turns of expression are found
in them which may have been retained from the original text.
The views of the reviser are those of an Alexandrine foUower of
Paul, and resemble those of the Epistle to the Hebrews, with
which some of his expressions (cf ii. 17) exactly accord.^
' Cf. Ritschl, Altkath, Kirche, p, 222 f. To regard the Colossian false teachers,
as Ritschl does {p. 232 f. ), as " precursors " of the Christian Essenes, who date from
A.D. 70, is hardly admissible. See, on the other hand, Holtzma'nm,, "Epheser-und
Colosserbiief," p. 291: "It was not till the beginning of the second century that
attempts lyere made on an extensive scale to give to Christianity the form and fashion
of an ascetic theosophy of the Jewish stamp ; and the earliest data for resistance to
these attempts are found in the interpolated Epistle to the Colossians. The existence
of a false doctrine, according to which the TrX-rjpcopa was not concentrated iu Christ,
but spread over the whole upper world of spirits, is as improbable in the age of the
Apostles as it is natural in the age of Gnosticism,"
^ Eivald has also observed the mixed character of this Epistle, but thinks it may
be accounted for on the hypothesis of the joint authorship of Paul and Timotheus,
which is not suificient, Hitzig and VTetsststarted the theory of interpolation, and
Holtzmann has quite recently worked it out in the work before quoted, I consider
that his reconstruction of the genuine text shows great critical ability, but is not quite
convincing in certain parts. As to the time when the original groundwork of the
Epistle was composed, I would assign it to the imprisonment of Paul at Csesarea, to
which date the contemporary Epistle to Philemon may probably, and the kindred
II 2

100 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
The main error of the Colossian false teachers lay in their
opinion that historical Christianity did not present to mankind a
complete religion, but needed, both on its theoretical and its
practical side, to be supplemented by theosophy and asceticism.
Their refutation therefore consists in the positive establishment of
the fundamental Christian truth, that complete religious fulness,
the perfect and perfectly satisfying religion, is given in historical
Christianity. This is carried out in connection with the nature
of Christ and the nature of salvation. The fulness of the God
head has revealed itself in Christ ; complete redemption and the
universal reconcUiation of the world is brought about by him ;
therefore we Christians are perfected in him, i, e, we have
attained to the full possession of salvation, so that we neither
need any higher wisdom — for aU the treasures of wisdom (so far
as religion is concerned) are comprehended in the knowdedge of
Christ ; nor do we need any higher angelic holiness — for by
virtue of the death of Christ, appropriated by us in baptism, we
are presented before God as holy and blameless, and the supposed
higher holiness, which consists of an external a|^ticism, would
be only a falling back from the substance to the appearance or
shadow. And thus the simple evangeUc preaching of Christ,
with the power that it has to guide into the right way, and to
genuine portion of 2 Tim, iv. 9 {not 6) — 21 certainly point. But the essential point
on wl|ich I differ from Holtzmann is, that I do not consider the reviser of the Epistle
to the Colossians to be identical with the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians. In
the first place, in the particular passages which come into question, the Epistle to the
Ephesians appears to stand in a relation of dependence to the Epistle to the Colos
sians, while the latter never clearly stands in that relation to the former. And
secondly, the character and object of these Epistles are essentially different. There is
neither any trace in the Ephesians of the false teachers of the Colossians, nor is there
in the latter any trace of that tendency to the union of the Church which is the domi
nating idea of the former. There will be an opportunity, when the doctrine of the
. Epistle to the Ephesians comes to be stated, of showing the difference of the dominant
principles of these two Epistles, as shown jn their most important parallel passages.
Here in commenting on the Colossians no notice can be taken of the other later Epistle,
My opinion is, that nothing has hitherto been so great an obstacle to an accurate
understanding of either of these two Epistles as mixing them up together, and over-
.looking the deep divergence of their main scope and purpose which underlies their
apparent similarity.

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 101
instruct, is sufficient to present every mom (and not only the
spiritual Gnostics) "perfect in Christ" This is the fundamental
idea of that portion of the Epistle which is concerned with the
refutation of the false teachers, viz,, from i. 12 to ii, 23.
It is quite clear from the above, that the Christological exposi
tion in i, 15 — 22, not only forms a part of the refutation^ of the
false teachers, but is reaUy the central point of it, just as the
Ebionitish Christology of the false teachers was the real ground
of their py Kparetv ryv Kecj>aX-^v. The intention of this Christo
logical exposition is to set forth Christ as the only and perfect
mediator between God and the world ; with the same object also,
his complete exaltation above all worldly and created things, as
weU as his being the very image of Godj and contaimng the ful
ness of God, are insisted upon. He is, according to L 15 — 17,
etKwv TOV Oeov rov dopdTov, rrpcoTOTOKOs rrda-ys KTicrecos, " for in him,
by him, and for him, were aU things, both in heaven and earth,
both visible and invisible, created ; he is before aU things, and
all things subsist by him," As these words express an instru
mental relation of Christ to the creation of the world, they evi
dently refer to the pre-existing Christ,^ What is here said about
him decidedly goes beyond Paul's notion of Christ being the
image of God, and accords with the Alexandrine doctrine of the
Logos, which was clearly present to the mind of the writer here,
although he does not use the word itself The very addition of
TOV dopaTov suggests this ; for it points to the Philoiiic idea, that
God who is Himself concealed can only be made evident by
means of the Logos, and is therefore in need of this alter ego in
order that He may come forth from his seclusion and enter into
relation with the world. This is a metaphysical thought which
was far removed from the Christology of PaiU, because the latter
}¦ The denial of this evident fact by Hofmann, Comm, z. Col, p, 159, is an un
tenable fiction, only invented for the purpose of keeping out of view the Gnostic
Ebionitish character of the false teachers, which was not agreeable to his apologetic
tendencies, ' Schleier'macher's attempt to refer these words to the work of redemption as the
" new creation " may now be regarded simply as an exegetical curiosity.

102 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
did not proceed from a metaphysical idea of God at all, but from
the idea of the exalted Christ, Again, when Christ is here caUed
TrpcoTOTOKos Trdcrys KTicrecos, we are reminded of TrpoiTdTOKOs ev
jroAAots dS6A<^ots, Eom, vUL 29, as well as of TrpioTdTOKos « twv
veKpcov, which immediately follows in ver, 18 ; but whereas both
these latter predicates are appUed to the historical Christ, and to
the moment of his resurrection, when he became the first of
spiritual men and of the perfected sons of God, the expression
first quoted refers, not to the historical Christ and his temporal
relation to the Christian community, but only to the pre-existent
Christ and his eternal relation to the created world in general,
and is therefore as far removed from the real ideas of Paul as
it is verbally in close accordance with Philo, who repeatedly
describes his Logos as the TrpwTdyovos and Trpea-jS-vrepos vlos Oeov in .
comparison with the world. When, therefore, his relation to the
world, and indeed to the creation and maintenance of it, is so
described in the verses following, that the more general expres
sion with which he commenced, ev avT$ iKricrOy Td Trdvra, is
turned into St' aiJTOv Kat ets avTov eKTurOai rd irdvTa .... Kat Ta
TrdvTa ev avT$ crvvecTT-fiKei, this goes decidedly beyond the old
Pauline Christology, according to which Christ was indeed the
personal instrument of the creation of the world (St' avTov, 1 Cor.
viiL 6), but not ihe ultimate end of Jt^lon the contrary, ets avrov
was distinctly reserved by Paul for God alone, so much so, that
Christ was finally to give back into the hands of God the domi
nion which God had lent to him, in order that God himself
might be Td rrdvra iv Trdcriv (1 Cor. XV, 28 compared with Eom.
xi. 36). Moreover, that the world should subsist by Christ
(o-vveo-TijKev ev avT^, ver. 17), goes beyond the part of an inter
mediate agent in the act of creation, and makes Christ to be
permanently the centre and the turning-point of the creation,
and thus simply a cosmical principle, which no longer agrees
with the Pauline idea of the "heavenly or spiritual man,"
although it quite accords with the Alexandrine notion of the
Logos, as is the case with the Christology pf the Epistle to the

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 103
Hebrews, where the expressions used in i. 3 (dTravyao-^ua t^s Sd^ijs,
and cftepoiv rd Trdvra rep pypaTi rys Swdpecos avrov) are perfectly
analogous with those of the Epistle to the Colossians, After
Christ has thus been described as the creative and sustaining
principle of the world, absolutely exalted above all other beings,
our author descends from this height of metaphysical contempla
tion to the historical relation of Christ to the community, as that
of the head to the body (ver, 18), The comparison of the com
munity to the body of Christ is indeed to be found in the early
writings of Paul, but not the designation of Christ as the head of
this body, Christ was rather represented by Paul as the spirit
which animated the body of the community ; his designation as
" head " is very characteristic of this Epistle ; it symbolizes that
absolute dependence of the community on Christ, of which the
cosmical position of the pre-existent Christ would form only the
metaphysical background, and on which the controversy with
the Ebionitish Gnostics of necessity essentiaUy turned, (Finally,
the same comparison is made from yet another point of view
in the Epistle to the Ephesians, There Christ is not only the
head on which the whole body depends, but also the head
which finds in the rest of the body its necessary completion
(rrX-ffpcopa) ; and at the same time again, in accordance with Paul,
the spirit which animates, penetrates, and fills the whole; —
evidently the most enlarged conception of the relation between
Christ and the community, which must have had as its basis
both that of Paul and also that of the Epistle to the Colossians,)
When, again, the position of Christ as head of the community,
which, as we have seen above, was founded on his metaphysical
place in the universe, is also referred to the historical moment of
the resurrection, when he became the "first-fruits," the first-born
from the dead, in order that he might be the first of all men, this
historical foundation of his TrpoiTevetv does not well agree with
what precedes and follows (ver. 19), but agrees all the better
with the genuine Pauline Christology, in which Christ's position
as the first-born (rrpoyTOTOKos, Eom. viii. 29), and his being the

104 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
first-fruits (mrdpxy t5v KeKoipypevcov, 1 Cor, XV. 20), is connected
with the resurrection in language simUar to that used here. It
is therefore quite possible that these words, os icrnv dpxy, irpcoro-
ToKos eK veKpcov, iva yevijrai ev Trdo-tv avTos TTpcoTevwv, are retained
from the original text of Paul's letter, and that they have
become the point of connection for our entire Christological
exposition (in which case the meaning of ev Trdanv, " among aU,"
would be fixed with so much the more certainty by the paraUel
passage in Eom. vUi, 29, whereas in connection with their pre
sent larger context they may appear to be doubtful). The con
jecture that we have in ver, 18 a remnant of genuine Pauline
Christology inserted into the later Christology of the reviser of
the Epistle, will appear the more probable when we observe that
ver. 19, again, contains an expression which is in striking con
trast to the words of ver. 18, which immediately precede it. For
while the latter connect the exaltation of Christ with the resur
rection, and therefore presuppose his previous earthly Ufe to
have been a condition of humUiation (cf PhiL U. 7 f, 2 Gor.
vm. 9), according to ver. 19 the whole fulness of the Godhead
already dwelt in Christ during his earthly Ufe. For -to rrXfipcopa
must in any case be explained by the more definite parallel pas
sage in ii. 9, as rrX-ypcopa Tys Oeoryros. This entirely excludes the
relation to the whole realm of redemption, or to the community,
which, though found in another connection in the Epistle to the
Ephesians, has been introduced quite unjustifiably here. " The
fulness of the Godhead" which dwelt in. Christ "bodUy," can
only mean the whole of that portion of the revelation of the
divine life and beiag which was offered to the world, or the ful
ness of the divine powers of salvation and redemption, which by
their historical appearance in the world have given rise to a
religion of completed revelation and of perfect salvation. This
is placed beyond all doubt by the connection of the two pas
sages, L 19 and 20 and iL 9 and 10, which perfectly accords
with this view. It is a question of only secondary importance
here, whether the writer found the expression already used by

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 105
the false teachers to indicate the invisible powers (the angel
world or later geons) in which the divine essence had unfolded
itself It is well known that the later Gnostics used the expres
sion for their world of seons ; it has not yet been proved that
the earlier Ebionitish Gnostics of our Epistle likewise did so,
but it is not of course for that reason impossible. The use of the
words in i. 19, without any kind of explanation, makes it cer
tainly probable that the writer ventured to assume that they
were famUiar to his readers; in that case, then, he simply
intended to say to the false teachers — the fulness of the divine
life is not distributed amongst the many beings who make up
the spiritual world, so that we can only come into contact with
it by means of asceticism to make us Uke the angels, and by
visions of angels, but it has come down into the one man Jesus
Christ, so that in him, in his historical personaUty, it has, as it
were, found its " body," the form of manifestation which compre
hends its unity. This is the force of the words, ii. 9, ev avTo!
KarotKet jrav to rrX-ypcopa tijs SedTijTOS a-copaTiKcos : and the last WOrd
is neither intended to teach the true humanity of Christ in
opposition to a Docetist Christology (of which no trace is any
where to be found), nor does it indicate a heavenly body of
llight,^ an idea which would be quite out of place in connection
with this passage, but it is meant to emphasize the way in\
which the fulness of the Godhead came to dweU in the one his
torical Christ, in opposition to the supposed plurality of the
abstract spiritual forms of the false teachers. This would be
^ This view, which Weiss also defends, p. 428, misapprehends the real gist of the
passage before us in connection with what follows, and consequently that of the entire
controversial portion of the Epistle, that is to say, the'insisting on the concrete notion
of Christ as'the bearer of revelation, who appeared in historical reality, in opposition
to the abstract spiritual beings of a fanciful and unhistorical Gnosticism. The use of the
present tense, /caroocet, cannot be made an argument against the interpretation we are
maintaining, for it is self-evident that the indwelling of the fulness of the Godhead in
the historical person of Christ has suffered no diminution in consequence of his exalta
tion. The point, however, did not lie in the exalted Christ, but in the historical
earthly Christ, because it is his earthly work of redemption on which all the following
declarations regarding salvation (vers. 10 — 15) depend. This connection has indeed
been generally overlooked, both in this passage and in i. 19 f.

106 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
perhaps most suitably translated into the categories of modern
thought by the expression " concrete actuality." But if we look
more closely into this idea, we shall find that two different
thoughts are contained in it — the being apprehended in unity,
and the having appeared historicaUy. Because the fulness of
the Godhead is apprehended in its unity in Christ, he is speci
fically different from all other spiritual beings, Ke^aXy Trdcrys
dpxys Kal i^ova-ias (ver. 10); and because it has actuaUy and his
torically appeared in him, therefore he has become for us, the
Christian community, the ground of our complete redemption
(Kat icrre iv a-urQ TreTrXypcopevoi, ibid.). Thus the historical earthly
person of Christ is distinctly indicated by the connection be
tween ii. 9 and iL 10, as well as by the word crcopariKcos. The
very same thing is intimated by the two aorists evSoKycre and
KaroiKycrai in i. 19, and by the connection with the foUowing
verse ; that is to say, the aorists denote a definite moment of
time, when it was weU-pleasing to God that the fulness (of his
revelation) should take up its abode in Christ. This verse can
not possibly therefore refer to the eternal being of God in the
pre-existent Logos, but to the indwelling ofthe fulness ofthe
revelation of God in the historical Eedeemer Jesus. Now it
would certainly be possible, with reference to what goes before,
to understand the resurrection of Christ to be the moment of
this KaroiKya-ai, Only this interpretation is distinctly forbidden by
the close connection with what foUows, where the reconciliation
of the universe by the cross of Christ, therefore by the earthly
Christ, is added, as the wider object of the divine evSoKetv, to the
former one, and is thereby evidently indicated as subsequent to
it.i Accordingly, we must refer evSoKycre and KaroiKya-ai to the
^ Compare with this R. Schmidt, ut supra, p. 209 : " Unless the statement of the
indwelling of God in Christ is to stand quite apart from the connection, it must be
understood to be only a presupposition for the intended restoration of all thmgs
(ver. 20) ; but for this very reason the moment at which that indwelling commenced
raust not be plaped in a period subsequent to the realization in principle of this resto
ration." This appears to be incontrovertible, and moreover to be completely esta
blished by the parallel passage, ii, 9 and 10, when rightly understood. What Weiss,

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 107
beginning of the earthly personality of the Eedeemer, to the
time when the pre-existent image of the invisible God, and the
mediator of his revelation, became man. The connection of the
two verses wUl then be as foUows — because the historical Ee
deemer Jesus was no other than the primordial bearer of the
divine image, and the mediator of the divine revelation in the
universe (vers. 15 — 17), and because as having appeared in time,
he also during his whole appearance on earth bore the fulness
of the divine powers of life in himself (ver. 19), therefore he was
able to complete the work of reconciliation, and that perfectly,
that is to say, in perfection both extensively and intensively —
as extending over the whole universe without exception (ver. 20
and ii. 10), and as securing unconditionally for every individual
the final end of religion, that of being pleasing to God. We
must accordingly admit that i. 19 and iL 9 contain a declaration
that the historical Christ during his earthly existence bore in
himself the fulness of the Godhead, and by this alone was quali-
I fied for his work of reconciliation ; and this is a thought which
I is distinctly opposed to the genuine Christology of Paul ; for
\ according to thisj even in its latest form which it assumes in the
) Epistle to the Philippians, the earthly life of Christ was a condi-
^ tion ©f humiliation and emptiness, and by no means one in which
r he possessed the fulness of the Godhead ; but, on the contrary,
\ the putting off of the divine shape is there made the condition
of the possibility of the work of Christ. The passage before us
also goes far beyond the view of the Epistle to the Hebrews. It
has already taken up the ground of the theology of John, in
which likewise the stress is mainly laid on. the point of the
eternal Logos having appeared in a bodily form in the person of
Jesus (compare o Adyos o-dp^ iyeveTo with a-cop,aTiKcos), and con
stantly dwelt in him (comp. icxK-qvcoa-ev iv -rjptv with KaTotKet).
As, again, in the Christology of John, so also in the Epistle to
p. 428, says against it is very unsatisfactory, and is probably due rather to his wish to
harmonize this passage with the Epistle to the Philippians, than to an unbiassed con
sideration of it.

108 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
the Colossians, the work of Christ is only the reaUzation in time
of that which Christ was essentially from the beginning in rela
tion to the world. If Christ, according to Col. i. 16 f, is, from
the very beginning, the central point which holds the world
together, by whom and for whom aU things were created, then the
purpose of his work, on earth corresponding thereto, is no other •
than this — to establish in reality that unity which the world
always possessed ideally in him, who is its transcendent prin-.
ciple, but which did not yet actuaUy exist (or which had ceased
to exist),^ and to do this by bringing together to himself — the
ideal centre — that which was separated, by reconcUing to unity
in himself that which was severed. This doctrine of reconcUia
tion agrees closely with the Christology of the Epistle before us,
while it differs not unessentially from the genuine Christology of
Paul. Its most striking peculiarity is its relation to the heavenly
world, to the invisible spiritual powers. As in ver. 16 the whole
of that which is created in Christ, by him and to him, is set
forth in the words Td ev to^s ovpavots, Kal Ta irrl rys y^s, to opaToi
Kat Td dopara, eire Opovoi, etVe Kvpioryres, eiTe dpxal etVe i^oviriai, SO
now in ver, 20 the whole of that which is reconciled by him and
to him is set forth in the words etVe Ta cTrt t^s y^s, etTe rd iv tois
ovpavots. And both expressions evidently serve the sam8» pur
pose, namely, to emphasize the exaltation of Christ alone as the
Kecj}aX-y Trdcrys dpxys Kal e^ovcrtas (U, 10), in opposition to the
false teachers who degraded him by placing him below their
angel world. From this controversial point of view, we shall
have to consider more closely the idea of a reconciUation of the
heavenly world of spirits. It is evident that the false teachers
' Whether dTroKardXkdcrauv implies the restoration of a unity which originally
existed, but which had been lost through sin, cannot be inferred with certainty from
the composition of the word ; and as there are no other means of deciding the point,
it is better to regard it as an open question. And this is the case also with regard to
that other question — how far the angel world also was in need of reconciliation.
Our author has never reflected upon this, because the only thing that concerned him
was, that the whole of the angel world, far frora being able to become an independent
raeans of salvation, is in sorae way or other connected with the sole mediation of
Christ, the absolute mediator between God and the world.

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 109
obscured the perfection of Christ's work of redemption in two
ways — first, by their positive worship of angels, whereby they
sought other mediators of communion with God, beside and
above Christ ; and, secondly, by their opinion that the Christian,
by virtue of his material body, was always subject to a certain
dominion of hostile spiritual powers, from wlUch he could escape
only by spiritualization (and circumcision). When our Epistle
teaches, in opposition to this, that Christ was also a reconcUer
for the heavenly beings, and head of every power and dominion
(amongst them), we must take this to have two meanings— first,
that there was no being, even in the angel world, independent
of him, which could be an independent mediator of com
munion with God, for that they all were rather themselves
also bound in some way to his mediation ; and, secondly, in
the sense that there were no longer, for the redeemed Chris-
) tian, any hostUe spiritual powers from whom they had to free
themselves by their own redemption, since, on the contrary, aU
such hostUe powers had been deprived of their dominion by the
cancelling on the cross of Christ of our bond, the ground of their
claim against us. The apparent discrepancy, that the heavenly
powers are represented in one passage as reconcUed by Christ
(i. 20), in another passage as conquered by him (iL 15), is simply
explained by the two-fold relation in which the mediation of
Christ alone is opposed to the Gnostic Ebionitish ideas regard
ing angels and regarding salvation. Especially interesting is the
turn of thought found in U. 15 in connection with ver. 14.
The reconciling effect of the death of Christ is here represented
under two different forms— as the blotting out, taking out of the
way, and naUing upon his cross, of the bond which bore witness
against us in the commandments ; and again as the stripping and
leading away in triumph of the (hostUe) spiritual powers and
dominions (of the invisible world, which must be meant here after
what has been said in i. 16). The xetpdypa<^ov Tots Sdyjuao-tv, 6' yv
vT^evavriov ¦fjp.tv (ver. 14), cannot possibly denote anything but the
law, so far as it is the ypdpp,a aTroKretvov (2 Cor. Ui,), or the KaTdpa

110 , PAULINISM 'AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
TOV vop.ov, from which the death of Christ upon the cross ransomed
us. But the pecuUar expression here used has evidently been
chosen with reference to the fact, that the literal law which inflicts
the curse on the transgressor is regarded as a "bond," which gives
over the sinner who is indebted to the hostile spiritual powers,
as a prisoner to them. And so these powers take here (as in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, see above p. 78 f,), the place which is
assigned by Paul to the personified law. What Paul represented
as ransoming from the law which held us in bondage under its
curse, is here parted into two conceptions — the bond, the original
notification of our being accursed by the law of the command
ments, is taken out of the way and nailed to the cross, Le, the
debt which is recorded against us according to the letter of the
law, ceases to stand in the way as a wall of partition between us
and God ; and the hostile powers, which, as representatives of
the punishing law, were, so to speak, the legal holders of that
bond, and held us by virtue of it under their rule and govern
ment, have been deprived of their power over us by the canceUing
of the bond ; or again, by our debt being done away, we are re
deemed from the disastrous condition into which we had faUen
in our separation from God — that is to say, in the words of our
Epistle, God has rescued us from the power of darkness, and
transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, to the end
that we may have in him redemption, that is to say, the forgive
ness of sins (i, 13 f ), But here, as above in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, it is to be observed, that with this relation of the
reconcUing death of Christ to the hostUe spiritual powers, or to
the dominion of darkness, the original Pauline relation of it to
the anger or the avenging justice of God, has disappeared, God
appears throughout in these passages only as one who procures
reconcUiation (elpyvoTroiycras, dTroKar-yXXa^ev, vers, 20, 21), and not
at the same time (as in Paul) as one who has to be reconciled ;
and whereas Paul speaks of an enmity of God which weighs
upon us, and which has been reconcUed "(Eom, v, 9 f), the
enmity to be reconcUed according to Col, L 21 is only on our

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. Ill
part, called into operation by our disposition, which is alienated
from God, and by our evU deeds. We have here, therefore,
exactly the same turn given to Paul's theory of reconciliation as
in the Epistle to the Hebrews ; — the relation in which reconcilia
tion stands to God, to his anger or avenging justice, is replaced
by a two-fold, viz,, an objective and subjective relation ; first,
by the relation to the hostile spiritual world, the devil and his
kingdom, from whose power Christ has released us; and, secondly,
by the relation to the subjective religious consciousness of man
kind, which is changed from a state of alienation from God, and
severance from Him by sin, to a state of reconcUiation. Both
these views are connected with the transition from Paul's theory
of redemption to that of John,
Moreover, the teaching of the Epistle to the Colossians with
regard to subjective salvation is in a great measure determined by
its opposition to the false teachers. The same is the case with
the general descriptions ofthe Christian state of salvation: "God
has made us fit (to receive) the heritage of the saints in light, for
He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness, and transferred
us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemp
tion (through his blood^), the forgiveness of sins" (i, 12 — 14).
The "heritage of the saints in light " is the future glory (Sd^a),
into the inheritance of which Christians are already instaUed as
chUdren of God (Eom. viU. 17, &c,). This certainty of the in
heritance at some future day, which is given at the same time
with sonship, is here expressed by tKavwo-as ¦ypds, meaning that
He has placed us in a state in which we are fit, and therefore
certain, to possess that inheritance at some future time. The
means by which God has placed us in that condition are stated
in the next two verses, the transference from the state of sin to
that of his favour is expressed by "rescuing us from the dominion
of darkness, and transferring us to the kingdom of his beloved
Son." The expression i^ova-ia tov o-kotovs is not merely suggested
by the word ^o)Tt in the preceding verse, but is certainly used in
^ These words are riot found in the best MSS,

112 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
allusion to the false teachers, according to whom even Christians
were not yet entirely free from the i^ovcria of the hostile spiritual
powers, but had to practise asceticism in order to free themselves
entirely from it ; it is thus an anticipation of the idea expressed
in iL 15. "The kingdom of the Son of his love," as the kingdom
of God is here remarkably designated, forms the expressive con
trast to the dominion of darkness. In the writings of Paul we
neither find the kingdom of God caUed the kingdom of Christ,
nor Christ called the Son of the love of God ; but both these
expressions are suitable to the purpose of this Epistle, and are
especiaUy apposite in this context, inasmuch as the fullest pos
session of every blessing of salvation, and absolute security
against all the powers of darkness, are guaranteed to the Christian,
if he can see in Christ the focus of all divine love, and regard
him as wielding all the sovereignty of God. FinaUy, we are told
in ver. 14 by what means that transference from the kingdom of
darkness into that of Christ has been brought about— "In Christ
we have redemption : that is to say, the forgiveness of sins." It
should be noted that in this passage, as in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, dTroAvrpoio-ts is identified with d^eo-ts dpapTicov. whereas
in Paul, according to Eom. iii. 24, it is an objective institution of
'la-od for redeeming the sinner from his avenging justice by means
of the ransom of Christ's propitiatory sacrifice, which has as its
consequence — as another objective act of God — ^the acquittal of *
the sinner, or declaring him to be righteous, which then in tum
produces the subjective state of freedom from the consciousness
of guilt, or of peace with God (Eom. v. 1). Thus in Hebrews
ix. 15 f , and likewise in CoL i. 14, dTroAwpuo-is is immediately
related to the Uberation from the consciousness of guilt, or to
the subjective state of certainty pf the forgiveness of sins which
we have in Christ, in beUeving in him as the Son of the love of
God. We find, therefore, that just as above in the account of
the work of Christ there is no trace of the original PauUne notion
of God as one who had to be reconcUed, so here also the juridical
notion of acquittal or justification is absent ; the word StKatow ,

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 113
does not occur in our Epistle ; instead of it we have a notion
which does not occur in Paul's Epistles, dcf>ea-is dpapTicov, not in
the sense of a divine act, but of a human state of freedom from
guUt, which we possess as a subjective blessing of salvation in
our communion with Christ by faith (this is tho only way in
which ev Cf exopev, &c.. Can be understood). We must also con
nect with this state of absence of guilt the words of ver. 22,
according to which the purpose of the death of Christ was
7rapao-T^o-at vpas aytovs, Kat dpcopovs, Kal dveyKX-qrovs KaTevcinriov
avrov (sc. Oeov) : for the connection of the dominating ideas,
dTroKaraAdo-o-civ and elpyvoTroietv, forbids US to understand these
three predicates as referring to moral purification or renovation,
and compel us rather to refer them to the peaceful relation of
man to God undisturbed by any consciousness of guilt, or to
harmonious communion with God, and therefore to take dytos
in the sense in which dytdfeo-^at is used in the Epistle to the
Hebrews. This perfection of the Christian consciousness of
salvation is also expressed in ii. 10 by the pregnant words, Kat
icrre iv avTif) rrerrXypcopevoi, which infers the Christian's complete
fulness of salvation from the indwelling of the complete fulness
of God in Christ. We have here the same intimate connection
between TrX-jpapa in reference to the nature of Christ, and
TreTrXypcocrOai, as we have in the Epistle to the Hebrews between
the vtos ets aiwva TeTeActwp.evos and the TeAetovtr^at of the Chris
tian ; but as the word TeAetovo-^at refers partly to the present, as
inward cleansing of the conscience, and partly to the future, as
external glorification, so also TreTrXypcocrOai in this passage is in
the first instance only the redemption and giving of new life,
which consists in the complete forgiveness of sins (ver. 12 f),
and not yet the full possession of ^loy, or, if it is the ideal pos
session of it, yet not the real enjoyment of (orfj ; for it is ex
pressly said in iU. 3 f , that the foiiy of the Christian is for the
present hidden in God with (the exalted) Christ, and wiU only
be revealed when he is also revealed (at his second coming) to
Christians, and in his Sd^a, According to this, the fo)^ attovtos —
VOL, II. I

114 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
for it is of this alone that he is speaking — is indeed at the pre
sent time in the possession of the Christian (y ^loy vpiov), but it
has not yet become inherent in him, he has not yet got it as iv
¦ eavTif pevovcrav (1 John UL 1 5), but it is at first only a possession
laid up for him in heaven in the hands of Christ and God.
This is precisely the same view as that of the Epistle to the
Hebrews (cf especially X. 34 — e^etv ev eavTois Kpeirrova iVapfiv
ev ovpavots) ; and both are a mean between the Tria-revopev oti
cTV^'ycropev of Paul and the exopev ^toijv ev eavTots of John.
Finally, with regard to the words in i. 28, tva 7rapao-T^o-o)/iei/
Trdvra dvOpcorrov TeAetov ev Xpurrcf, it is questionable whether
they are to be understood in the sense of the words dytos Kai
dpoip,os Kal dveyKXyTOS in VCr. 22, and TrerrXypcopevos in U. 10, aS
referring to the perfection of the state of Christian salvation,
which requires no completion from without, or to the moral
perfection which is the object of the striving after sanctification.
The latter is more probable for this reason, that the subject
treated of is not the immediate object of the work of Christ, but
the ultimate end of vov^eTetv and StSdo-Ketv, of pastoral edification,
which must at all events keep in view at the same time moral
perfection. But even then the repetition of the words Trdvra dv-
OpcoTTov suggests the thought that Christian perfection is not a
privUege of individual (Gnostic) Christians, depending on secta
rian wisdom or asceticism, but an end which is attainable by
every Christian, by the practically and theoreticaUy edifying
power of the universal preaching of the gospel.
We see, from what has already been said, that it is a main
object of our Epistle to impress deeply on its readers the perfec
tion of the Christian salvation. Its author, therefore, carries out
this idea, not merely in a general way, but also in particular
relation to the special points in which the false teachers thought
that simple Christianity, especially that of the GentUe Chris
tians, required to be supplemented. If these teachers affirmed
that the Gentile Christians were stiU subject, through their
fieshly body, to the dominion of the unclean spiritual powers,

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 115
unless they escaped from it by the symbolically purifying act
of circumcision, and by ascetic abstinence from any defiling
contact with matter, they were- refuted in two ways : in the
first place, the hostile spiritual powers, to whom the Gentile
Christians were supposed to be still subject, had already been
stripped of their power over men by the death of Christ, as a
conquered foe is stripped of his armour (cf supra, p, 110) ;
secondly, the Gentile Christians had put off, by the circumcision
of Christ, at their baptism (ii, 11 f ) their fleshly bodies, through
which they were supposed to be subject to those powers; so that
their redemption, regarded both objectively and subjectively, has
already been perfectly completed, and stands in no need hence
forth of any self-redemption by their own power. This concep
tion of baptism as the " circumcision of Christ " — that is, as the
Christian analogue or counterpart to the circumcision of the Jews
— makes its first appearance here ; and the point of comparison
depends on this, that baptism, as the being buried with Christ—
that is, as a mystical appropriation of the death of Christ — is an
ideal putting away of the fleshly body, just in the same way that
circumcision, as the symboUc putting away of one part of the
body, denotes the putting away of the whole. The idea that
baptism is the being buried with Christ, is taken, so far as the
words are concerned, from Eom, vi,, but whether it has the same
meaning as in that passage, where it denoted the cessation of
the life of sin, becomes very doubtful when we consider the
continuation of the figure on its positive side. In baptism we
have also been raised with Christ, by faith in the power of God
which raised him from the dead ; that is to say, God has also by
virtue of the same power raised to life with Christ those who
were dead in their transgressions and in their uncircumcised
flesh (those who had been GentUes), by pardoning all our trans
gressions (vers, 12, 13), Here the sense is decidedly different
from that of Eom. vL, in spite of a great similarity in the
words. That baptism in the latter passage is not said to be the
I 2

116 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
(TvveyepOyvai, is probably no mere accident, but is connected with
the fact, that in the context the participation of Christians in the
resurrection of Christ is in the- flrst place connected with their
assuming his likeness after their death (cf supra. Part I. p. 195),
and their present newness of Ufe, in the moral sense, is deduced
from that ground as its necessary practical consequence. 2weyep-
OyTe in our Epistle, on the contrary, certainly does not refer to the
future life, but exclusively and immediately to the new inward
life that begins with baptism. But this expression, again, has
not, like Kaivorys ^(oys in Eom, vi, 4, the sense of a new moral
direction given to the Ufe, but that of a new reUgious privUege,
namely, that of the forgiveness of sins, which is conferred on
man through his faith in Christ, This is made perfectly clear
by ver, 13, where crwe^cooTroiycrev is explained by xapto-d/tevos yptv
Trdvra Td TrapaTrrcopara, which is further carried out in the par
ticiples of vers, 14 and 15, which aUude, as we have already
seen, to the doing away with the guilt which separates us from
God, and subjects us to the dominion of darkness, If this latter
is a disastrous condition, a state of spiritual death, then rescuing
us from it by placing us in the state of salvation (in "the
kingdom of the Son of his love ") is giving us a new religious
life, even though the full fuij is stUl only an ideal possession,
and not yet an actual reality (cf supra, remarks on Ui, 3), But
this does not hinder the Christian's state of salvation from being
a perfect unconditional one.
From the existence of this complete salvation is then deduced,
as its practical consequence, in the first place the negative pro
position, that bodily asceticism is not only not necessary for a
Christian, but is rather a falling hack from the essence to the
appearance, from the higher striving to the lower earthly one.
For all the externaUties, on which the practice of the false
teachers turned, stood in the same relation to Christianity as the
bodiless shadow to the real substance (the Epistle to the Hebrews
had already placed the ritual ordinances of the Old Testament

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 117
in the same light); they belonged to the sensuous elements of the
world (o-Toixeta tov Kocrp.ov),'^ to which the Christian has died with
Christ ; therefore he should no longer occupy himself with pre
cepts which relate only to the use of sensuous and perishable
matter, and which can only possess significance for those who
stUl cling in their reUgious and moral Ufe to the sensuous
world. So far, therefore, is this false asceticism from being of
any service towards true Uberation from the life of the flesh, that
it rather conduces, on the contrary, " to the contentment of the
flesh" (to the satisfaction of the cravings of fleshly pride, ver, 23
— wpos TrXycrpovyv rys crapKos, COmp, with ver, 18, eiKy (jivo-iovpevos vrrb
TOV vohs rys aapKos a-uTov). Instead then of striving after that
which is earthly, as the ascetics also do after their fashion, the
true Christian should, on the contrary, seek the possessions of
the world above, which he knows to be the home of Christ who
is his Ufe, This turn of thought at once reminds us of the
Alexandrine opposition between the upper and the earthly
.world (cf the Epistle of the Hebrews), and also of Phil, iu, 20.
This is, however, made the occasion for the exhortation to true
Christian sanctification, by laying aside the old and putting on
the new man. And the turn of thought is peculiar here, being
kindred with that of Eom, vUi, 13 and Gal. v. 24, but coloured
by the Alexandrine phUosophy, iii. 5, veKpcoa-are Td p.eXy vpG>v to
irrl Tys yTjs, by which are meant the iTriOvpiai Kal TraO-rjpaTa Tys
a-apKos. The description of the new man as one who is renewed
ets eTTtyvojtrtv kot' etKova tov KTtcravTos a-urov, ver. 10, is also peculiar.
The latter words refer to the image of Christ, the Son of God,
who is also the image of God, to whose likeness, according to
Eom. viiL 29 also, the chUdren of God wUl be conformed. But
that iTTiyvcocTis should be represented as the distinct purpose of
' The notion has certainly this sense in Col. ii. 20, which agrees with Gal. iv, 3 — 9 ;
but whether it has the same sense in ver, 8, is not so clear ; it almost appears as if it
should be explained there by Kara rriv TrapdSocxiv rwv dv9pcuTrwv which precedes it.
It is not impossible that the reviser found the notion in the original text of the letter,
and gave to it in ver, 8 this erroneous raeaning.

118 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
this renovation, is a peculiar feature which conclusively indicates
the standpoint of this Epistle,
If these false teachers, in support of their theoreticEii and
practical divergences, boasted of a higher wisdom (U. 23, and
<j>iXocTo^ia, ii, 8), our Epistle not only shows that their supposed
higher wisdom was false, because it was unchristian and inju
rious to the fundamental truths of the Christian consciousness,
but it also sets forth in opposition to them the true wisdom, which
consisted simply in the deeper knowledge of Christ, and of the
divine secrets revealed by him. It developes such deeper know
ledge of Christ and his works in i, 15 — 22, by proving to its
readers the perfection of their Christian salvation, from the abso
lute significance of Christ as an eternal mediating principle
between God and the world. But the author of this Epistle
also desires for his readers an independent increase in every kind
of Christian wisdom and spiritual insight (i, 9), a growing in the
(Christian) knowledge of God (ver, 11) ; they must be strength
ened not only in love, but also unto all the richness of complete
insight (rrXovTOS TTjs TrXypoc^opias rys crvvecrecos), unto the know
ledge ofthe secret of God .(the Father), and Christ (i,e, of God
revealed in Christ as the Father), in whoin are hidden aU the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge (ii. 2 f ). Whereas, in the
writings of Paul, this deeper knowledge appeared rather as a
mere individual advantage, which was desirable indeed, but
not absolutely necessary to the Christian Ufe of salvation (cf
1 Cor, viU. 7), the Epistle before us (i, 28) makes instruction in
every kind of wisdom the means by which all Christians are to
attain that perfection in Christ which is necessary for every one ;
nay, that deeper kind of knowledge is itself the ultimate end of
Christian renovation of life (iii, 10, dvaKatvov/,tevov ets irrlyvcocriv).
As we thus find our author thoroughly participating in the ques
tioning spirit of his time, it is the more important to observe in
what way his Christian yvtoo-ts differs from that which he was
opposing as unchristian. The former can be no other than

THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. 119
irriyvcocris tov pvcj-Typiov rov Oeov XpicrTov, the development of the
treasures of knowledge, which are already implicitly contained
(d^dRpvi^ot) in the historical revelation of God by Christ. The
heretical yvioa-is, on the other hand, ov Kparet ryv Ke<j>aX'jv, puts in
the place of the historical revelation of Christ, its own visionary
revelation of angels, and the vain suggestions of a fleshly reason
(ii. 18 f). The former yvoia-is also goes beyond the historical
region of appearance, and reaches back to that which is eternal,
heavenly, and transcendent (the idea); but it does not tear away
that which connects these two spheres, and therefore, in its
¦highest flights of speculation, it ever remains upon the solid
ground of historical fact, and in harmony with the traditional
beUefs of the community (JiefSaiovpevoi r-y Tricrrei KaOcos eSiSdxOyre,
ii. 7). The latter, on the contrary, in losing its connection with
the historical head of the community, allows itself to be removed
drro T^s IAttiSos tov evayyeAtov, ov '^Kovcrare tov KypvxOevros iv rrdcxy
KTia-ei T-Q VTTO TOV ovpavdv (L 23), Le, it loses its connection with
the common consciousness of universal — " catholic" — Christian
ity ; it becomes heretical. The Epistle of Barnabas,
The mixed Alexandrine and .Pauline spirit of the Epistle to
the Hebrews receives its most distinct and characteristic expres
sion in the Epistle which has come down to us under the name
of Barnabas, oiice the companion of Paul, to whom it was first
ascribed by Clement, the Alexandrine Father. Internal evidence,
however, shows that it can hardly have been written by this
wavering follower of Paul and quondam Levite; it is without
doubt the work of a Gentile Christian, who had been educated
in the Alexandrine school, and whose tendencies were hyper-
Pauline. He addressed it to GentUe Christian readers towards
the end of the first century, in order to warn them against
Judaizmg errors (ut non incuramus tanquam proselyti in iUorum

120 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
legem, cap, 3).^ This Epistle tnarks a notable turning-point in the
history of the doctrine of Paul, On the one hand, it exhibits its
anti-Judaistic tendency when it had reached that extreme Umit,
which it was on the point of changing in an unorthodox direc
tion, and becoming heretical Gnosticism ; on the other hand, it
shows at the same time the positive body of Pauline doctrine in
such a state of weakness and decadence, that its amalgamation
with other doctrinal views, to form the confused compound of
which the doctrine of the Catholic Church consists, was inevitable.
The fundamental idea of this Epistle, with which the whole of
the first and theoretical portion of it (ch. iL to xvii.) is occu
pied, is thus expressed by its author in the first chapter — iva
pieTa Tys Tricrrecos vp,cov reXeiav e'x'fjTe Kai tijv yvMcrtv — he Wishes to
impart to his readers, in addition to their faith, the higher per
fection of wisdom. The object of this higher wisdom which
went beyond faith, is the religious past and future (prseterita
et futura, ch. i. and v,), or " the three dogmas (i. e. fundamental
truths) of the Lord^ — the hope of Ufe (prophecies of Christ
in the Old Testament), commencement (in the present), and
completion (in the mUlennial kingdom of the Messiah)." With
regard to the last, however, the writer expressly declares later
on (ch, xviL), that he wiU pass it over, on account of the
difficulty of understanding it, and therefore confine himself to
the present and the past. It is the relation between these with
which he is in fact mainly occupied; namely, the religious
history of the Jews, in its relation to the present, to Christianity.
He desires to impart to his readers some profound disclosures
which have been made to him by the Spirit regarding this ques-
' Of, with this and what follows, Hilgenfeld, Apostol. Vater; Ritschl, Altkath, K,
p, 294 f, ; Reuss Gesch. d, h, S, N, T, p, 232 f,, and Hist, de la Theol, Chret, au siMe
Apost, II, 305 f, ; Lipsius, "Barnabasbrief," in Schenkel's Bibellexikon ; Hefele,
Apostol, Vater ahd Sendschreiben des A. Barnabas, Tiib. 1840; and especially MiiUer,
Erklarung des Barnabasbrief es, Leipzig, 1869 (the three last assign the date of the
composition of this Epistle to the reign of Hadrian, about A, D, 120, as does also
Volkmar; whereas Weizsacker, "Zur Kritik des Barnabasbrief es," Tiib, 1863, assigns
to it an earlier date, namely, the reign of Vespasian ; but the interpretation of the
passage from Daniel in ch, iv, which refers to Nerva contradicts this view).

THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. 121
tion of reUgious history, which was so important for the Church
at that time, in order to guard them by this means against the
danger of Judaizing, These disclosures consisted in an alle
gorical and typical interpretation of the ceremonies and narra
tives of the Old Testament, such as we occasionaUy find in Paul
himself, but constantly in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where it
is carried out in a methodical way, in order to demonstrate the
completion and exaltation of the Old Testament worship in
Christ, The typology of the Epistle now before us, however,
is distinguished from that of the Epistle to the Hebrews, not
only by the far greater accumiUation of types of the most
diverse character, and by the greater boldness, not to say want
of taste, displayed in their interpretation, but chiefly by the
difference of the end proposed. In the former, it was not in
tended, by the typical appUcation of the Old Testament worship
to the reconcUing work of Christ in the character of a high-
priest, to deny the relative claims and the relative truth of
the former, but only to prove its relativity, and consequently
its merely temporary vaUdity, as compared with its absolute
and eternal completion in Christianity, In the latter, on the
contrary, not only is the typical anticipation of Christianity in
the laws and the history of Judaism set forth in the minutest
detaU, but no truth or justification whatever, even in a relative
sense, is aUowed to Judaism, The Jewish law, in its Uteral
externality, is represented as not only abrogated in Christ, but
as having been perverted from the very beginning, and as a
misunderstanding, caused by the devil, of the purely spiritual
wUl of God, The object of the typology of the Epistle of Bar
nabas is therefore two-fold : in the first place, it is positive and
apologetic, to exhibit what was apparently new in Christianity as
having already existed in the past in the types of Judaism; but,
secondly, it is also negative and polemic, to prove, by showing
the true spiritual sense of the ritual law, that Judaism, which
understands it literaUy, is a perverted reUgion,

122 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
Under the former category may be classed the foUowing inter
pretations : — Chap. vi. The promise of Moses to the IsraeUtes,
that they should inherit the land (yijv) that flowed with mUk
and honey, signifies that they should hope for Jesus, who was to
be revealed in the flesh ; for man is earth (y?} Trdo-xovo-a or earth
as passive matter), since Adam was made of earth; but mUk
and honey (children's food) indicate our new birth, inasmuch as
when we are renewed by the forgiveness of our sins, we get a
child's soul ((OS rraiSicov e'xetv t^v ^vxqv). In the Same passage the
opportunity is taken of interpreting the " hearts of fiesh," which
God has promised to give instead of hearts of stone, to mean that
Christ would come in the flesh. Chap, vU. The sacrifice of Isaac
is a type of the sacrifice of the body of Christ on the cross ; his
drinking vinegar and gaU is forefigured by the command to fast.
In the same chapter we find an extraordinary interpretation of
the meaning of the two goats, and the strange ceremonies con
nected with them. Chap, viiL The red heifer whose ashes were
sprinkled for purification is a. type of Christ; the priests who
sprinkled the ashes were types of the EvangeUsts, the staff used
for the purpose was a type of the cross, the hyssop was a type of
the dies mali et sordidi in the kingdom of Christ, In chap, xi.
the question is propounded, whether God had also thought fit
to foreshow baptism and the cross by any sign. Both are un
doubtedly found ; in the first place, Jeremiah has indicated the
rejection of the healing waters of baptism by the Jews in U. 12 f
(" They have forsaken me, the living fountain ") ; the connection
of baptism and the cross especiaUy is contained in Ps. L 3 — 6,
which speaks of the tree which is planted by the water-side; and
when, in Ezek. xlvii. 12, beautiful trees are mentioned wMch
grow from the river, the meaning is, that we descend into the
water of baptism covered with the defilement of sUi, but come
out of it bearing fruit, namely, the fear of God and hope in
Christ in our hearts. The cross is likewise typicaUy represented
in many ways (chap. xiL) — in the .figure of Moses stretching out

THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. 123
his arms in prayer; in the brazen serpent which Moses raised in
the wilderness; in the number 318 of the persons circumcised
by Abraham,
As we have here the fundamental Christian doctrines of Christ
being made man, and of his pacrificial death, of baptism for the
forgiveness of sins, and of the new birth, typicaUy indicated in
the Old Testament, so we also find the ritual law of the Old Testa
ment regarding circumcision, forbidden meats, the Sabbath, and
the temple, turned into Christian allegories. Of circumcision,
it is said in chap, ix, that God desired only a circumcision of the
heart and ears (with reference to Jer, iv, 4, vii, 26, ix, 26, and
other passages), not that of the flesh ; but the Jews, deceived by
a wicked angel, had transgressed his command. Should it be
objected that (bodily) circumcision is a mark of the covenant,
then aU the Syrians, Arabians, and Egyptians have it ; and it is
asked whether these also are supposed to belong to the covenant
of God, Moreover, the blessed cross of Jesus is foreshown in the
number of persons whom Abraham circumcised by the form of
the Greek letters which make 318, namely, T, which represents
300, and IH, (The writer considers this notion to be the pearl
of his discoveries, ovSeis yvya-icorepov epaOev drr epov Adyov !) In
chap, X, the spiritual meaning of the forbidding of meats is
shown. The prohibition to eat swine signifies that we should
not be Uke men who are fond of pleasure ; that against eating
eagles, hawks, and the like, refers to idlers and men who prey
upon their fellows ; that against sea-fish refers to those who are
condemned to the depths of darkness through godlessness. But
as if these spiritual explanations were not sufficiently profound,
StiU further references to fleshly sins and unnatural abominations
are inferred from the siUiest fables- about the natural history of
the hare, the hysena, and the weasel, whereby for the first time
exere TeXeiav rrepl tijs fSpcocrecos yvZcriv. Finally, the directions re
garding ruminants with divided hoof is referred to those who
ruminate upon the word of God with devout meditation, and
lead a righteous life, Moses and David understood aU this in a

124 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
spiritual sense (ev 7rvei5p,aTt iXdXyirev), but they (the Jews), in con
sequence of thek carnal disposition, had taken it as referiing to
food. " We now understand these commandments aright, as the
Lord has willed ; therefore has He circumcised our ears and
hearts, in order that we may understand this." Chap. xv. shows
that the ordinance of the Sabbath refers to the opening of the
kingdom of God at the return of Christ, for " we cannot keep
holy the day of God untU we are ourselves made holy." "There
fore (namely, with reference to the beginning of the new world
which is set before us), we joyfully greet the eighth day (the
beginning of the new week), on which Jesus rose from the dead,
and after manifesting himself, ascended to heaven." Chap. xvL
shows, with regard to the temple, how those unhappy people set
their hope upon the building, and not on God, as if it were truly
the dwelUng of God, for they honoured Him in the temple in
almost exactly the same way as the GentUes. And yet the Lord
himself had already shown the error of this opinion of theirs in
words like those of the prophet (Isaiah Ixvi. 1): " Heaven is my
throne, and the earth is my footstool ; what house wUl ye buUd
me, and what is the place of my rest ?" Besides, the destruc
tion of the visible temple had, as was long before foretold, actu
aUy taken place. It was equaUy true, indeed, that the buUding
of a new temple by the hands of those who had destroyed the
first had been accomplished in accordance with prophecy, namely,
the buUding of a spiritual temple to the Lord in us who were
formerly Gentiles.^ "For before we beUeved in God, the dweUing

' I cannot, for my part, understand the words vvv Kal avToi ot twv ixBpSiv
inrypkrai dTroiKoSopriaoviriv avrov to refer to the atterapt to re-build in the reign of
Hadrian, for the mention of this would be in plain contradiction to the whole context,
in which the very thing to be shown is, that a future spiritual temple is to take the
place of the original temple which had been destroyed. 'XTrripkrai rSiv ix^pSiv may
mean the Gentiles who were subjects of that same Roman power which had put an
end to the Jewish temple (of. Hilgenfeld, Apost. Vater, p, 28 and Z, f. w, Th, 1870,
pp, 117 f., iu opposition to the views of MiiUer and Yolkmcur). If this interpretation
should appear to be too far-fetched, I should prefer to consider a passage that harmo
nizes so ill with the context as an interpolation, rather than to conclude from it that
the Epistle was not written till the reign of Hadrian, a view which is contradicted by

THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. 125
of our hearts was perishable and weak, like a temple buUt with
hands, fuU of idolatrous worship, a house of demons, because we
did what was hateful to God. But when we received the forgive
ness of our sins, and set our hope on the name of the Lord, we
were created anew and completely transformed. Therefore God
truly dweUs in us, as his abode. How ? His word of faith, his
caU of promise, the wisdom of the law, the commandments of his
teaching. He himself is as a prophet in us. He himself dweUs in
us." What is said of the temple applies also to the sacrifices
(chap. ii,). God has already informed us, through all the pro
phets, that He does not need our sacrifices (referring to Isaiah
L 11 — 14; .ler, vU. 22 f ; Ps. iv.). "He has also declared this
(visible) sacrifice to be valueless, in order that the new law of
our Lord Jesus Christ, which has no compulsory yoke, may have
no sacrifice brought by tbe hand of man," but rather the sacrifice
of the heart, according to Psalm li. 19. The Jewish fasts have
a moral interpretation given to them in the same way in
chap, iii,, according to Isa, IviU, 6 — 10,
In order to leave it beyond all doubt that Judaism in its
historical form, in so far as it is distinguished from Christianity
by a ritual that appeals to the senses, appears to him to have
been from the first a thoroughly worthless form of reUgion, he
distinctly denies to the Jews the covenant relation with God. If ot
only is it sin to speak to the Judaizers — " Their (the Jews') cove
nant is also ours; nay, it is rather ours alone, because they
have lost for ever that which Moses obtained ; they deserved, as
the punishment of their idolatry, that Moses when descending
from Sinai should break the tables of the law ;" thus " was their
covenant destroyed, in order that the covenant of Jesus might
be sealed in your hearts by faith and hope in him" (ch, iv,),
Moses certainly obtained the testament from God upon the
mount, but they were not worthy to receive it on account of
weighty internal evidence, in addition to the consideration that the destruction of
Jerusalem must have been fresh in the memory of those to whom it was addressed
(cf. Chap, iv,, pXe-rrerf, &c,).

126 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
their sins. Therefore the Lord himself (not only through hia
servant) has given it to us, that vje should become the people of
the inheritance, namely, by his having suffered for us. His
appearing on earth and his death had a two-fold purpose — to
fUl up the measure of their (the Jews'-) sins, but to redeem us
from death and darkness, and to estabUsh his covenant by send
ing his word amongst us (ch, xiv,). The whole history of Israel
from the time of Moses to the present is, according to the Epistle
of Barnabas, a history of their rejection on the part of God as
his covenant people. They had already been rejected on Sinai
before the covenant was made at all ; by their constant perse
cution of the prophets, in whom Christ spoke, they accumulated
that guUt, of whieh they filled up the measure by putting Christ ¦
to death; therefore they have now been marked out by the
most fearful signs and wonders as utterly forsaken by God
(ch. v., 6 vtos TOV Oeov ets tovto yXOev iv crapKi iva to TeAetov tSv
dpapTicov Kec^aXaicocry rots Sxco^acriv iv OavaTCO tovs TrpocjiyTas avrov.
ot Trpoc^yrai, drr avTov e'xovTes t^v x°-P'-^j ^'S avTov e7rpo<^ijTevo^av.
Chap. iv. Adhuc et Ulud intelligite, cum videritis tanta signa
et monstra in populo Judseorum, et sic iUos dereliquit Dominus).
Traces of Paul are no less evident here, than is the fact that our
author has gone far beyond him. Paul, too, sees in the cross of
Christ the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence, against
which Israel as a nation has fallen (Eom, ix, 32 f) ; he also sees
this present hardening of their hearts prefigured through the
whole history of Israel, foretold by the words of Moses (x, 19,
xi, 8), of David (xi. 9 f ), Elijah (xi. 3 f ), Hosea (ix. 25 f ), and
Isaiah (x. 16, 20 f , ix. 27 — 29). But the Apostle is convinced,
nevertheless, that God has not (finally) rejected his people, since
He cannot repent of his gifts and his calling (xi. 1, 29) ; for
Israel is still the nation to whom the covenants and promises
were originally given (ix. 4) ; therefore it wUl also be received
again at last, after being for a certain time hardened (ch. xL).
Now this hope, so full of comfort to the Apostle who was born a
Jew, had from the beginning less significance for the Gentile

THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. 127
Christian ; its interest for him became more remote, in propor
tion as the repugnance of Israel to the gospel increased ; and it
is probable that the catastrophe which fell upon Israel in the
destruction of the temple and of the holy city, gave the last
blow to the hope of the future conversion of the people of Israel.
In this respect the Epistle to Barnabas shares the universal view
of the Gentile Christian Church of his own and of a later time
(corapare especially the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of
John). But the point in which he diverges as far not only from
Paul, but also from the view of the Church at that time, as he
approaches to heretical Gnosticism, is the assertion that the
people of Israel never stood in a covenant relation to God, that
their supposed sign of the covenant (circumcision) rested on a
misunderstanding of the wiU of God, which was suggested by the
devil (dyyeAos rrovypos icT6<^ic7ev avTovs, ch. ix.), and that its whole
ritual law, including ordinances regarding food, fasts, the temple,
and sacrifices, had been froni the beginning valueless and per
verted, a carnal interpretation of laws (dogmas) spiritually in
tended. It is true that connecting Unks for all this are to be
found in Paul's writings, and stUl more in the Epistle to the
Hebrews. Paul also places the old covenant, as StaKovta ypdpparos,
in opposition to the new, which was SiaKovia Trve-vparos (2 Cor. iii.) ;
he also sees in the externality of the ritual law, o-Totxeta tov Koo-pov
and a-dp^ (cf above. Part I. p. 71 f), i.e. sensuous, carnal worship;
to him also the Christian alone is the triUy circumcised, with
the circumcision of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter
(PhU. UL, Eom. U. 29), and in the Epistles to the Hebrews and
Colossians, the Jewish ceremonial law is regarded as a mere o-Ktd
TOV o-coparos, an unsubstantial, shadowy prefiguring, which has no
power to make the conscience pure or perfect (Heb. viU. and ix.).
But with aU this, the relative truth and the temporary validity
of the Old Testament ritual law are by no means denied : that
the whole of the Jewish law reposed on divine revelation was to
the mind of Paul an incontestable proposition ; nothing could" be
more remote from his ideas than to connect it, even with respect to

128 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
its literal interpretation, with demoniacal influence ; on the con
trary, the very subjection to the aroixeta rov Koa-pov is referred
to a divine system of education. The only point of connection
for the extreme views of Barnabas is to be found perhaps in
CoL U. 14 f , where the x^''P°yP"-4">v rots Soypacriv is brought into
connection with the powers of darkness, over whom Christ
triumphed in his death. In any case, however, thus much is
clear, that with the view that historical Judaism is a false reli
gion, and reposes on a carnal disposition and fiendish deceit, the
threshold of heretical Gnosticism is already reached. From this
point it was necessary either to advance further, to the assertion
that the God of the Jews was not the one true God, but one
among others, or a power opposed to God, or else to go back to
the standpoint of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which Judaism
was regarded as a preparatory religion, which foreshadowed the
truth in types. The latter was the general view of the Church,
even of the GentUe Christians, while the former was the funda
mental characteristic of the heretical Gnosticism which grew up
on a Gentile Christian soU.
Accordingly the Epistle before us exhibits PauUne doctrine,
when it had arrived, in the course of its struggle with Judaism,
at that turning-point where the two roads parted, one of which led
to extreme inews outside the Church, the other to unHon within it.
An indication that some of the Gentile Christians who foUowed
Paul were on the point of taking the former road, is undoubtedly
contained in these words of ch. iv. : N"on separatim debetis
seducere vos tanquam justificati ; sed in unum convenientes
inquirite, quod communiter dilectis conveniat et prosit. But
this very warning against a proud and unloving separation from
the followers of Paul who boasted of their justification, clearly
shows in what direction the centre of gravity was already tend
ing, upon the whole, in the Gentile Christian communities. The
tendency to union grew henceforth spontaneously, and was the
more necessary, and moreover the easier to carry out, in propor
tion as the extremes, both of the Gentile and the Jewish Christian

THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. 129
party, separated themselves as sects from the universal Church.
The Gentile and Jewish Christians felt more and more that in
the common interests of driving out and combating the extreme
Gnostic views, they were so essentially one, that their former
hostUity gradually disappeared and was forgotten. This process
of fusion, however, was essentially aided by another circum
stance, of which also the Epistle of Barnabas affords the most
striking evidence.
While this Epistle displays the anti-Judaism of Paul at its
highest development, it contains, on the other hand, the positive
teaching of Paul in so diluted a form, that there was no longer
any obstacle arising from this quarter to the fusion of the two
parties in the Church. It is true that we meet with nearly all
the favourite expressions of Paul, but they have become mere
formulae, from which it is only too evident that the original
spirit has departed; consequently there is no systematic connec
tion, no dogmatic argument to bind them together ; and by the
side of the old turns of thought new ones appear, which are in
compatible with them, and the old are used in new combinations
to which they are quite unadapted. The cross of Christ, indeed
stiU occupies the chief place, and the death of Christ is called a
sacrificial death for our sins, of which the forgiveness of sins is
the consequence (chap. v. 7, 8), but this sacrifice is referred
neither to the righteousness nor to the love of God, nor to the
love of Christ, so that nothing remains of Paul's vicarious expia
tory sacrifice; on the other hand, the symbolism of. sprinkling,
for the purification from sin, is applied (chap. vUL) to the death
of Christ, as in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The most important
thing, however, in the death of Christ is evidently, according to
this Epistle, its having been the means of the resurrection and
exaltation of Christ, and consequently of the assurance of our
own resurrection, and therefore of the confirmation of the pro
mises of Messianic life abeady given to the ancients (chap. v,).
By these means — and so not reaUy by his death, but by his re
surrection — he has destroyed the power of death (tVa Karapyrjay
VOL. U. K

130 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
TOV DdvaTOV, Kai t^v Jk dveKptov vdorTao-tv Sei^y, chap. V.); therein
consists the Ufe-giving power of his death (ftooTrot^o-at, chap, vii.),
that the promise of our resurrection, indicated and established by
it, is a life-giving, L e. comforting and encouraging word for us
(r'y Tricrrei tijs eTrayyeAtas, Kai TW.Ady^ ^cooTroiovpevoi, chap. VI.). In
his Christology the author of this Epistle teaches, with the school
of Paul, the pre-existence of Christ, his taking part in the crea
tion, his being the medium of revelation in the prophets ; but
his being made man is, according to him, no longer, as in Paul's
writings, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews, his assumption of
equality with his human brethren, and so a revelation of the
divine image, and of a human pattern for our imitation, but it
. has rather for its object the veiling of the diviiie glory, the sight
of which without this veil would have been insupportable to us;
and at the same time it was an occasion for the Jews to fiU up
the measure of their sins (chap. v.). This approaches very nearly
to the doctrine of the Docetists,^ and reminds us of the later
conception of the Church regarding the overreaching of the devU
by the death of Christ, the devU having been tempted by the
veU of the flesh to form a plot against God, in the contest with
whom his power had thus been broken. But aU this is very dif
ferent to the teaching of Paul. Since the object of faith is essen
tiaUy the future life which is shown and pledged to us through
Christ, it evidently foUows that the notion of faith is, that it
essentially coincides with hope. This so far resembles the
Epistle to. the Hebrews, only it is still more one-sided, since
in the latter the future is also already invisibly present, the
^ There is no trace of any controversy against the Docetists in"any part of the
Epistle. "The appearing of Christ in the flesh is here founded, not on its reality,
but on its necessity, as the' voluntary assumption of a form of existence alien to
the Son of God" (Lipsius). This is represented quite' {differently in the Epistles
of Ignatius, and also as early as in the first Epistle to Timothy, where, ii. 5, the
dvBpco-rroQ is emphasized as decidedly in an anti-Docetist sense, as the fact of Jesus
being the son of man is denied in the Epistle we are considering (chap, xii., 'iSi, 'IriaovQ
ovx o v'loQ dvBpioTrov, oKX 6 vloQ tov 9cov). This presupposes a time when as yet no
Docetist heresy could have disturbed the unsophisticated view of the "apotheosis of
Christ.

THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. ' 131
heavenly world beyond the visible earthly world, with which
the believer in Christ enters into immediate connection ; while
in the Epistle of Barnabas this Alexandrine mysticism, as well
as that originaUy taught by Paul, has been aUowed to drop, and-
thus there remains for faith only the firm trust in the fulfiUing
ofthe promises (ttIo-tis iTrayyeXias, chap. vL), which is synonymous
with hope. Consequently, these two notions are sometimes com
bined into one (the covenant of Jesus is sealed in our hearts, ev
eA;rtSt ttJs Tria-reuis a-vrov, L e. by means of hope, which rests in
faith on him, namely, on his promise, chap, iv.), and sometimes
used as interchangeable (ot eATrifovTes ets avTor — 'lycrow — fi^o-ovTat
ets atoiva, chap. Vlll. ; and Xl., paKdpioi, ot, eiri tov (rravpbv
eXiria-avres, Kare/Sycrav ets to iiScop' Kal dvajSaivopev, tijv lATrtSa ets
TOV lycrow e'xovTes ev Tcj) Trvevpan' os dv aKdvo-j; tovtwv Kat iricTTe-vcry,
fijo-eTat ets tov attova. xil., ov SiJvavTat crcoOyvai idv py iTr avT<j)
iXTrio-cocriv' iXmcrdTCo Tria-revcras). Faith thus apprehended can of
course no longer be, as it is with Paul, the only means of salva
tion, but must be supplemented and propped up by other Chris
tian virtues. So in chap, ii., <^d;8o's Kai vn-opovy, paKpoOvpia Kal
iyKpareia, are caUed helpers (J3oy0oi) and feUow-combatants of
faith : whUst, according to Paul, these virtues proceed from faith
as their natural source, they are here placed side by side with it,
as joint causes of salvation, just as a o-wepyetv occurs between
faith and works according to James. The unloving separatists
who were more Pauline than Paul, and boasted of their justifi
cation, are reminded (chap, iv.) that God will judge every one
according to his works, without respect of persons. We must
take heed, therefore, lest, slothfiUly relying upon our calUng
(KXyroi in the PauUne sense), we faU into the sleep of sin, and
thereby give occasion to the evU one to gain power over us and
thrust us out of the kingdom of God. We must spiritually
become a perfect temple of God, by practising the fear of God,
and exerting ourselves to keep his commandments. An entire
Ufe of faith is of no use, if we do not, in these evU times, strive
in a manner worthy of the chUdren of God that the black one
k2

132 PAULINISM AND ALEXANDRINE PHILOSOPHY.
(the devil) may not steal into us. Our perfection as heirs of the
covenant will only occur at the opening of the future kingdom
of God (chap. vL, cf ii.).
It cannot be said that this emphasizing of Christian moraUty,
upholding the perpetual relativity of our salvation, and pointing
to perfection as the end for which we have evermore to strive, is
in itself unlike the teaching of PauL Paul himself was very weU
acquainted with this ethical point of view, and inculcates it with
no less distinctness when opportunity serves (see above, Part I.
p. 225 f ). But whereas according to Paul the moral striving and
struggling after perfection is only the natural consequence and
development of the new life which is already in us, and walking
after the spirit is the mode of action which proves the fact of
our being spiritual, here, on the contrary, the " becoming spiri
tual" appears to be the end to be striven after by our owm active
exertions in keeping the commandments of God. According to
Paul, the definitive attainment of salvation and inheritance of
the kingdom of God is likewise conditioned by our moral sin
cerity, but this in its turn is only possible in virtue of the firm
basis of our justification received by faith; according to Bar
nabas, the faith that we are already justified is in no obscure
language blamed as self-exaltation and conceit (chap, iv., ws
^'Sjj SeStKato)p,evot!), Does this writer therefore intend to combat
Paul's doctrine of faith, like James ? Certainly not. He too
strikes again a genuine Pauline chord, when he says that faith
was imputed to Abraham for righteousness, and that he thus
became the father of the believing Gentiles (chap, xUi,); that by
the appearing of Christ our hearts, which had already become
subject to death and given over to the unrighteousness of eiror,
had been ransomed from darkness, and a covenant had been
made between us by his word (chap, xiv,); that our hearts are
purified, sanctified, renewed, entirely re-created, and made a
dwelling-place of God, by the forgiveness of sins (chap, viu, 5,
6, 16); that the new law of Christ has no compulsory yoke, and
its true sacrifice is that of the heart (chap, ii,). All these expres-

THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. 133
sions prove thus much, at all events, that the writer intends to
be quite PauUne, But if we look more closely at the meaning
which he connects with these expressions, it is equally clear that
he is not so. This being newly created (chap, xvi,) depends only
upon our having obtained, forgiveness of sins and fixed our hope
on the name of Christ, but not on our having died to sin and
become partakers of the new life of Christ, of the spirit of son-
ship. So also the " dweUing of God in us " is expressly con
nected only with the communication of the word of faith, of the
caUing of promise, of the wisdom of the laws and commandments
of his teaching ; thus the indwelling of God is a revelation of
purer moral laws and higher promises, by which we are driven
to amendment and striving after holiness : this is only reducing
Paul's mystery of faith to the level of mere morality, "The two
moments which are held together in the unity of religious con
sciousness by Paul's notion of faith — namely, the theoretical
beUef and the practical action — are again sundered, and conse
quently with the greater prominence given to works, an increased
weight attaches to the word of the teaching," i
The positive fundamental idea, however, which represented
Christianity at that standpoint, is that ^ of the " new law "
(chap, U,), This afforded a common ground, on which the
foUowers of Paul, to whom this idea would already have been
suggested by Eom, viU. 2 and Gal, vL 2, and the more liberal
Jewish Christians, who Ukewise spoke of the vopos (SacriXiKos of
love (James ii, 8), could understand each other. This was the
basis of the practical union of the Church.
' Lipsius, ut supra, p. 369, ' Cf. Kitschl, ut supra, p. 295.

CHAPTEE X.
PAULINISM m ITS TEANSITION TO
CATHOLICISM.
(the first epistle of plement to the CORINTHIANS,
the first epistle of peter, the epistle tq the
ephesians)

Paulinism having now, through its connection with the Alex
andrine phUosophy, lost its original peculiarity, to assume a form
more agreeable to the common consciousness of the Church, the
further development of the Church itself graduaUy entered on
an entUely new course. When that opposition which gives the
.whole system of Paul its antithetical character, passed away,
his fundamental conceptions could no longer be rightly under
stood, and consequently an alien meaning was all unconsciously
imported into them, even on his own ground, among the Gentile
Christian communities. The need of antitheticaUy setting the
Christian principles in distinct opposition to Judaism, and to a
Jewish Christianity which had grown up with it, diminished
in proportion as the GentUe Christian communities acquired a
feeling of security in their peculiar life and independent posi
tion, and were no longer seriously disturbed by Judaistic pre
tensions. At the same time, however, another need made itself
felt more and more, namely, the need of establishing new rules
for the guidance of moral Ufe, and especially for that of tbe

EPISTLE L OF CLEMENT TO THE CORINTHIANS. 135
Christian community which was becoming more complicated
and active, and to clothe these rules with some kind of authority.
Now the Epistles of Paul themselves contain but Uttle material
to support this side of Christian life, while, on the other hand,
a natural model for the ordering of the Christian community
appeared to be given in the theocratic ordinances of the Israel
itish nation. What was more natural than that they should lay
hold of those Old Testament types ? In so doing there was no
thought of a restitution of the Mosaic law, in the sense of the
Judaizers mentioned in the Epistle to the Galatians, They were,
and continued to be, thoroughly conscious of the new ground on
which they stood as a Christian community, and on which the
old law was obsolete ; but standing on this new ground, and
impeUed by their own practical needs, they sought for a new law
as a guiding authority, not so much for the religious conscience
of individuals, as for the practical life of the community as a
whole ; and they naturally connected this new law with the old,
and placed it in a certain relation of analogy and anti-type to it.
It is the more easy to understand how Christianity itself soon
came to be regarded mainly in the light of the " new law," since
this idea, which was suggested by the practical needs of the Ufe
of the community in general, appeared also to set up in parti
cular a higher dogmatic unity above the opposition of Paulinism
and Judaism, whereby it recommended itself as a kind of
formula of consensus for the estabUshment of the union of the
universal Church.
A remarkable light is thrown on this phase of the develop
ment of PauUnism by
Epistle I. of Clement to the Coeinthians.
This Epistle is a document of the last importance for the
history of the development of Paulinism, because it .shows how
the GentUe Christianity established by Paul aUenated itself from
the original sphere of PauUne ideas, and in substance approached

136 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
to the Jewish-Christian type of doctrine, while of Paul's teaching
it retained only the form of expression, his familiar sayings
without their original meaning ; and how aU this was done with
out any direct reference (either polemical or concUiatory) to a
Jewish Christianity opposed to it. This pecuUar characteri makes
the very various interpretations which this Epistle, more than
any other early Christian document, has received, quite inteUi
gible. Of these interpretations, those are to be considered deci
dedly erroneous which seek to find in it the advocacy of a party,
whether it be that of the Jewish Christians,^ which is plainly
contrary to its tenor, or that of Paul,^ making concessions to
Jewish Christianity for the purpose of conciUation, In the latter
case, we should have expected to find the exact opposite of what
the Epistle in fact contains — the favourite expressions of the
Pauline party, and the praises of the Apostle Paul must have
been avoided, or kept in the background, while the fundamental
ideas of Paul's doctrine might have been much more decidedly
preserved in the subject-matter itself. And how could a par
tisan composition calculated to conciliate the Jewdsh Christians,
possibly assume the form of an Epistle to the notoriously Gen
tile Christian community of Corinth ? No, this Epistle is from
first to last no other than that which it so simply and clearly
professes to be — a friendly letter of remonstrance addressed by
the Eoman community through the pen of their bishop, at the
end of the first century, to the Corinthians, on the occasion of
a disturbance of order and peace, and that not in a soUtary
instance, by the factiousness of unruly and ambitious dema
gogues, in opposition to the authority of their rightful president,
— a calamity which not only seriously endangered the internal
prosperity of the Corinthian community, but moreover threat-
1 Cf, Hilgenfeld, Apost, Viiter, pp, 85 to 91 ; Ritschl, Altkath, Kirche, pp, 274—284;
Lipsius, de dementis Eomani epistola, &c,, Leipz,, 1855; Reuss, Hist, de la th,, &c,,
IL pp, 318—327,
' Kostlin, •• zur (Jeschichte des Urohristenthums," in the Theol, Jahrb. 1860,
p. 247 f.
' Schwegler, nachapost, Zeit, II, p. 125 f.

EPISTLE I. OF CLEMENT TO THE CORINTHIANS. 137
ened to disturb the repose and even the external peace of the
Christians beyond their boundaries, and afforded sufficient grounds
therefore for the friendly Eoman community to address an earnest
brotherly exhortation to them.
It is this practical occasion which gives to the whole Epistle
its predominating hortatory character, while dogmatic teaching
is nowhere introduced for its own sake, but only as one of the
motives for practical exhortation. It is true that this fact would
in itself not be inconsistent with a genuine Pauline character,
for Paul also knew how to draw the deepest and most fruitful
practical motives from dogmatical ideas ; but his deep mystical
intertwining of the dogmatic and the ethical, of the specific
Christian principle and its moral development, is entirely differ
ent from the way in which Clement brings them into merely
external relation : he does not make morality the natural fruit
of the spirit of Christ, and thus the manifestation of the favour
of God accepted in the act of believing, but he places it by the
side of faith as one of the conditions of the reception of the
Divine mercy, and it has not its inward and essential ground
in the appearing of Christ, but only its outward occasion and
its pattern. Now, as certainly, on the one hand, as this is in
fact no other than the Jewish-Christian mode of regarding the
matter — ^that of James, for instance — so certainly, on the other
hand, does the repeated intentional use of specifically PauUne
ideas and turns of expression show that the writer wishes to
make a profession of PauUne Christianity,
Truly PauUne, for instance, are the expressions used in speak
ing of the death of Christ for our redemption. In the red thread
which Eahab used as a sign to the spies, Clement perceives a
prophecy that Sta rov aiparos TOV Kvpiov Idrpcocris ea-rai Trda-iv rots
Trurre-uovcTiv Kal iXTri^ova-iv els rov Oeov (chap, XU,), He adduces as
a proof of the love of God and Christ towards us, that Christ
"has given his blood for us, according to the will of God, and his
flesh for our flesh, and his soul for our souls " (chap, xlix,). In
entering on an exhortation to repentance, he caUs upon his

138 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
readers to look upon the blood of Christ and see ws eo-Ttv ripiov
Tij) Oec^, OTt Sta Tijv ¦yperepav crcorypiav iK^xyOev, TravTi T<j) Kocrp^
peravoias x'^P'-'^ vrr-yveyKev (chap. viL). But this last sentence is
enough to show that we have nothing to do here with Paul's
idea of expiation, with the -subjective reconciUation of the world
to God by the death of Christ, but that this death has for the
writer of this Epistle only the significance of a caU to repent
ance, of an inducement and summons to subjective sorrow for
sin, and that only through this does it become the means of
reconcUiation with God. And, in fact, this caU to repentance
differs only in degree, and not in kind, from the call of Noah
and that of Jonas, mentioned in chap. vU., the effect of which
was that ot /teTavo^o-avTes eTri tois dptapT-ypcuriv avTcov i^iXdcravro
TOV Oeov Kal eXafiov crcorypiav. These various expressions are
quoted from the Old Testament, in which forgiveness is pro
mised to the penitent, and it is said in conclusion, iravTas ovv
TOVS dyair'^TOvs avTov fiovXopevos peravoias peracrxetv, icrrypi^e Ttp
TravTOKparopiKC^ ^ovX-ypari avTOV. If this iarr'ypi^e refers, aS appears
probable, to the death of Christ, with which subject this section
of the Epistle commenced, then it shows clearly that the writer
considered the death of Christ to be simply a confirmation and
enforcement of the call to repentance contained in the words
and the types of the Old Testament. In any case, we have an
admonition to be obedient to the wiU of God, to lay aside aU
strife and contention, and to prostrate ourselves before God, im
ploring his mercy and goodness (chap. ix.). With this we may
compare his caUing those blessed who in the harmony of love
do the commandments of God, ets to dcfieOfjvai vptv St' dyamjs rds
dpaprias (chap. 1.) ; or the statements quoted in chaps. U. and Ui.,
that God requires nothing from us but that we should confess
our sins to Him; and especiaUy the remarkable passage in
chap. IvL, We would pray for sinners, that a teachable and
humble spirit may be given them, so that they may yield to the
wiU of God. OvTWS yap eo-Tat avTOts eyKaprros Kal reXeia ij Trpos TOV
6ebv Kal TOVS dytovs per' o'lKTippcov pveia, L e. " thus wUl the com-

EPISTLE L OF CLEMENT TO THE CORINTHIANS. 139
passionate thought be fruitful and perfectly efficacious with God
and the saints," which can have no other meaning than that the '
intercession of the community for sinners addressed to God and
the saints brings about forgiveness.^ It foUows from aU this
that, according to Clement, the forgiveness of sins is an effect of
earnest repentance, of confession of sins, of love which produces
harmony with God, and, finally, of the intercessory prayer of the
community ; there is no thought here of Paul's doctrine of the
objective reconciUation of the world by the death of Christ.
His death retains only the significance of a means of repentance,
which peravoias rorrov eScoKev, and of a pattern of humiUty (chap.
XVI., opare, tis o VTroypapipos b SeSopevos -yptv' el ydp 6 Kvptos ovTois
iraTreivocfipovycrev, Tt Troiycrop,ev rjpets ; as an inference drawu from
the quotation from Is. UU.).
But when the objectivity of the principle of redemption has
been thus impoverished, we naturaUy could not expect to find in
the doctrine of subjective salvation the fulness of the PauUne
ideas. It is true that faith is everywhere mentioned as the
necessary condition of the reception of salvation, and in one
passage is even opposed in the strongest PauUne sense to every
work or advantage of our own (" Not by our own means, by our
wisdom, or knowledge, or piety, or by the works which we have
performed in hoUness of heart, are we justified, but by faith, by
which the Almighty God has justified aU men from the begin
ning," chap. xxxiL). When he further proceeds (chap. xxxiU.),
" What ought we then to do ? Abstain from doing good, and
cease to love? God forbid that should happen!" — this is cer
tainly not unUke Paul, but, on the contrary, is quite in harmony
with Eom. vi. 1 ; only whereas in the latter passage moral life
is deduced from the essence of faith, which is a communion of
death and life with Christ, as the necessary fruit of it, Clement
^ Hilgenfeld, ut supra, p. 90, note, takes a somewhat different view, regarding the
community as the tribunal to which the intercessions are addressed. But it is the
community which makes the intercession, and the ayioi are surely the departed
saints.

140 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
knows nothing of this, but takes as his motive for the duty of
good works, first (chap, xxxiii.), the example of God, who as
Creator has done so many good works; and secondly, more
especially (chap, xxxiv. f ) the great reward of the glorious pro
mises of which we become partakers by doing good. But we
shall become partakers of them "when our mind is firmly
directed towards God through faith (eav ia-rypiypivy y ij Stdvota
ypcov Sta Tricrrecos Trpos tov Oeov), when we Strive after that which
is well-pleasing to Him, fulfil his will, and follow the way of
truth." The faith through which it is said that our mind
should be firmly directed- towards God, cannot, taken with the
context, well mean anything else than trust in the truth of the
Divine promises, a trust which spurs on and strengthens the wUl
to obey the Divine commands. But TrerroiOycns is also expressly
mentioned as a moment of Tricrns, and. a motive of SovAevetv ^e^,
in a passage which treats of the resurrection, in which therefore
the confident hope of the resurrection is meant (chap. xxvi.).
And immediately afterwards, this trust in God, who cannot Ue
in his promises, is plainly caUed Trians, which is periphrased by
voetv, OTt Trdvra iyyvs avT$ eo-Ttv (chap. XXvU.). We have here,
then, a notion of faith which approaches more nearly to that of
the Epistle to the Hebrews than to the true Pauline notion, but
which agrees most exactly with that contained in the first Epistle
of Peter, inasmuch as its main tendency is not in the direction
of the historical redemption, but towards the salvation to be
revealed hereafter. And as in the Epistle of Peter, so here also,
to the moment of trust is added that of obedience, in which the
trust manifests itself by deeds. Faith is simply trust in the
fulfilment of the Divine promises, which hold good for him alone
who fulfils the commandments which correspond to them, and
must therefore also prove its existence by obedience to these
commandments. In the writings of Paul also, faith appeared to
be a kind of obedience (see above. Part I. p. 1 67), but in the sense
of submission to the favourable wUl of God, who presents the
commandments to us — not to the will of God expressed in the law,

EPISTLE L OF CLEMENT TO THE CORINTHIANS. 141
which demands obedience from us. According to him, therefore,
the trust in God's wUl that we should be saved, was itself the
primary act of obedience which God demanded of us, from
which all moral obedience of works develops itself indeed as
a further consequence, but yet without being regarded as the
principle of our relation to God, or as the condition of the
attainment of God's saving favour. But according to Clement,
the obedience which belongs to faith is this, and nothing more —
active obedience in foUowing the commandments of God and
Christ, a spontaneous course of action, which had its source
indeed in trust in the Divine promises, but which does not itself
consist in trusting devotion to the favourable wiU of God. This
essential divergence from the genuine doctrine of Paul is very
strikingly shown by what is said by ParU and Clement respect
ively regarding the faith of Abraham. If Paul has said that
Abraham was not righteous on account of his works, but that
his faith was imputed to him for righteousness, Clement says,
Kjipadp Tricrrbs evpeOy iv rco avTov VTnjKOOV yevecrOai rots pi^paariv rov
Oeov, by which he understands the injunction to leave his own
country and go to Canaan, with the promises attached to it, and
the command to offer up Isaac (chap. x.). And again (in chap,
xxxi,) he asks, Ttvos X"/'"' yuXoyrjOy b Traryp 'ypcov A[3padp ; ovxt
SiKaiocrvvyv Kal dX-yOeiav Sid TriarTecos Tronfjcras ', according tO whlch,
the righteousness of Abraham was the fruit of his actions, though
these certainly were brought about by faith. This is unquestion
ably the very opposite of the train of thought which Paul de
velops in Eom, iv. 3 — 5, from the same subject-matter, and
approaches very nearly to the view of James U, 21 — 24, It is
not, indeed, quite identical with the latter ; for in James, works
are added externally to faith to supplement it, and thus faith
has only a partial efficacy; but Clement holds faith to be never
theless the means by which justifying action is brought about, so
that this action is not only subjectively impossible, but would
not be objectively pleasing to God, if it did not spring from faith,
frora trustful obedience to the commandments of God, which are

142- PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
rich in promise. The Une of thought which he here pursues is
precisely that of Heb. xL, and he foUows the writer of that
Epistle also in his choice of examples. It is just his inter
mediate position between Paul and James that makes Clement
to say with the one, ov St eavTuv SiKaiovp,eOa ovSe Sta .... epycov wv
Kareipyaa-dpieOa, dAAa Sta Tricrrecos (chap, XXxU,), and with the
other, e'pyots SaKaiovpevoi Kal py Adyots (chap, XXX.). According
to this, he has in his mind, like James, merely an unreal faith
which is only strong in speech (dogmatic or ecclesiastical dis
putes), but does not prove its existence by deeds. It is of
course quite right that he should .long for a piety which mani
fests itself in acts, in conjunction with such a faith as this ; but
by making Christian piety to consist essentiaUy in "doing right
eousness," he betrays how completely he has lost the Pauline
idea of justification by faith, — Besides the passages abeady
quoted, we may also adduce the conclusion of chap. xxL in
support of what has been said: "Christian children should learn
what power humUity has with God, what efficacy holy love has
with God, how grand and beautiful the fear of God is, and how
it preserves all who live holily in it with a pure mind" (instead
of the Old Testament idea of "walking in the fear of God," Paul
had substituted, "walking in the spirit of Christ, in the new
life"!). Chap, xxii, proceeds as foUows: "But aU this is con
firmed by faith in Christ, for he thus calls to us by the holy
spirit — Come here, my chUdren, and Usten to me ; I wUl teach
you the fear of the Lord"! Whether these words are a free
quotation from Scripture, or from an apocryphal writing, it is in
any case worthy of remark, that faith in Christ has here ascribed
to it only the significance of a confirmation of the Old Testament
religion of the fear of God, and Christ is simply represented as a
teacher of this. So, again, it is said (chap, U,) of the Corinthian
community, as the highest praise of their past life, that during
that time they " had done all things in the fear of the Lord,
having his Trpocrrdypara Kal SiKaicopara written OU the tablets of
their hearts," It is true that higher predicates are also ascribed

JIPISTLE I. OF CLEMENT TO THE CORINTHIANS. 143
to Christ; he is called in chap, xxxvi., rb a-cor-^piov ¦f/pcov, dpxiepevs
T(3v Trpocrcj>opcov ypcov, Kai poyObs tijs do-^evetas -ripcov, drra-vyacrpa ttJs
|ueyaAo)crvvijs Oeov. But these predicates, which are taken from
the Epistle to the Hebrews, have not the same sense as they
have there; the context shows that they are only appUed to
Christ, because through him " the eyes of our hearts are opened,
our darkened mind is enUghtened, and we are made partakers
of imperishable knowledge. Christ is thus only the envoy and
ambassador of God to men, as the Apostles again are his sub
ordinate ambassadors, and the bishops in turn are commissioned
by the Apostles (chap, xiii.) ; and just as the bishops present the
gifts of the community as sacrifices (chap, xliv.), so Christ is
caUed in almost exactly the same sense " the high-priest of our
sacrifices" (xxxvL), inasmuch as the community's prayers and
the gifts of love are offered in his name and by his authority,
and so in a certain measure by his intermediation. And when
in chap. xxxvUL the community is called " the body of Christ,"
this expression ha.s not the Pauline sense, according to which
Christ is the soul of the community, but denotes only the fact
that the individuals who compose it are closely connected one
with another, are members of the same system, and are bound to
perform mutual services ; it therefore expresses only the moral
hot the dogmatic, idea of the community.
The relation of the Christian community and their ordinances
to the people of God and the priesthood of the Old Testament is
a further point which it is of great importance to consider, in
order to obtain a knowledge of the Paulinism of that period.
When mention is made, in chaps, iv. and xxxL of " Abraham,
and our father Jacob," or when, in chaps, xxix. xxx, and Iviii.
Christians are caUed " the chosen heritage, the peculiar people
of God," this is anything but a concession to Jewish Christian
ity; it is rather the expression of that consciousness which is
retained here as an imperishable inheritance given to Gentile
Christianity by the teaching of Paul— the consciousness that
they are the real people of God, the true chUdren of Abraham,

144 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
whom God has put in the place of Israel according to the fiesh
(cf Eom. iv. 11 — 16; GaL iU.). When, further, among the
commandments and ordinances of God which the Christian is
to observe and follow, commandments are quoted from the Old
Testament (cbap. xiU.-#§^f), and when passages from the Psalms
and Prophets are quoted as the actual words of Christ himself
(chap. xvi. 2^, nothing is further from the mind of the writer
than a recognition of the lasting obUgation of the Mosaic law
upon Christians, but he is proceeding upon two assumptions —
first, that Christ (as pre-existent or through his spirit) had spoken
by the prophets (cf 1 Pet. i. 11), and secondly, that the Old
Testament ordinances had a typical significance for the people
of the new covenant. Notwithstanding this, however, .the bind
ing authority of tbe Old Testament is not imposed on Chris
tendom in the sense of the Judaizers, but the Old Testament is,
in the sense of the most advanced Paulinism, placed at the ser
vice of the new covenant, as Christiamty before Christ. The
practical result of this latter view may ultimately approach very
nearly to that of the former; but the point of departure, the
whole point of view, is essentiaUy different, nay, diametricaUy
opposite ; — we have in the former, the narrow spirit of Juda
ism which desired to make the national theocratic form of
the old covenant a permanent law for the new, and thus to
degrade Christianity to a merely new form of Judaism ; in the
latter, we have the independent Christian consciousness, which,
free from aU national theocratic connection with Judaism, regards
Christians, by virtue of the higher right of spiritual succession,
as the true heirs of the covenant promises of the Old Testament,
and consequently holds itself justified in taking the Old Tes
tament into the service of the new, non-Jewish people of the
covenant — which, iu a word, completely christianizes the Old
Testament. This is the light in which we must look at all the detaUs given
in the Epistle before us regardmg the relation of the offices of
the Christian community to the priesthood of the Old Testament.

EPISTLE L OF CLEMENT TO THE CORINTHIANS 145
It is true that the necessity of order in the Christian community,
and of the submission of individuals to it, is enforced by the
example of the Old Testament priesthood, in which every one
had to discharge the definite function to which he was appointed
by God (chap. xL). And it is also true that the office of the
president of the Christian community was designated by the
same name as the Old Testament priesthood, namely, Xeirovpyia
(chap. xliv.). But this very expression is also applied in other
passages in a very general sense to every function which is
bestowed by God, to the work of the patriarchs and prophets
(chap. vUL and ix.), nay, even to the operation of the mere forces
of nature, such as winds, in the service of the Divine will
(chap. XX.). And the ordering of the Christian community has
¦ its analogy and pattern, not only in the theocracy of the Old
Testament, but also in the order of Nature and the (mUitary)
order of the State (chaps, xx. and xL). Thus, according to Cle
ment, the service of the Christian community is simply analogous
to the Jewish hierarchy, and is by no means its continuation or
restitution. It has its own independent origin — according to
Clement's view, it was the Apostles who appointed the first con
verts to their mission stations, as bishops and deacons of the
future believers. They did this certainly in accordance with an
ancient prophecy (Is, Ix, 17), but their authority to do so was iu
no way derived from the Old Testament law, but from God's
command through Christ (chap, xliU,, ot ev Xpio-T^ Trto-TevSevTes Trapd
Oeov epyov tovto). And thus this new service of the community,
in spite of its analogy with that ofthe Old Testament, is different
in kind, possessing more of Christian freedom. It is worthy of
note that the idea of universal priesthood, which is the opposite
of the Catholic hierarchy, is to be found in this Epistle, It
requires (chap, xlL) every Christian brother to serve God in his
own degree, py TrapeKJ3aivo}v TOV oypiorpevov r-rjs XeiTOvpyias a-vrov
Kavova, and thus ascribes to every individual Christian a Xeirovpyia,
a priestly character; it requires (chap, xxxviii,) every one to
submit himself to his neighbour, in order to the welfare of the
VOL II, L

146 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
body of Christ,'Ka^a)S Kai ireOy iv rep x''-P^'rp-<'-ri avrov. This agrees
perfectly with the thought expressed by Paul in 1 Cor, xiL — xiv, :
all the members are in themselves equal (rrXyo-iov) ; the subordi
nation of some to others does not depend on any dogmatic cha
racter belonging to the office, but generally on the necessity of
associated membership, and particularly on the endowments
(xapio-para) of individual persons. And this is in accordance with
what is said in chap, xliv,, that the presidents were appointed
at that time with the consent of the whole community, by men
of high repute amongst them (KaracrraOevras inr iXXoyipMv dvSpw,
a-vvevSoKycrdcrys t^s iKKXycrias Trdcrys). FinaUy, the actual depo
sition of presbyters by quarrelsome members of the laity, which
occurred in Corinth, is not stigmatized, as we find it at a later
period in the Epistles of Ignatius, as rebeUion against God and
Christ, and high treason against the Church, but only blamed as
a personal wrong towards those who are thus treated, and as
unreasonableness and ingratitude to servants who had deserved
WeU of the community (AetTOvpyijo-avTes dpeprrTCOs . ... o-u StKaius
vopi^opev dTrofidXeorOai ttjs AetTOvpytas, ibid,).
From all this it is plain that there is no trace to be found here
of an office with a hierarchical character attached to it, neither
does that separation and establishment of distinct offices which
we find at a later period, as yet exist. The presidents of the
community are stiU promiscuously called Trpeo-ji-uTepoi (chaps.
xliv., Uv., Ivii.) and iTricTKOTroi (chap, xiii.), their office e7rto-Ko?r^
(xUv.) ; just as in Acts xx. 17 and 28 ; Tit. L 5 and 7. The
monarchical episcopacy can hardly at that time have formed
itself out of the college of presbyters, otherwise the o-Tdo-ts must'
have been directed mainly against the bishop, and not, as is
repeatedly said, against the Trpecrji-urepoi.
We have hitherto found in this Epistle of Clement a PauUn
ism which, without intentionally making concessions to a Jewish-
Christian party (to which no reference nor even the sUghtest
allusion is anywhere made), has nevertheless, in the course of
its own development within the Church, passed into an inter-

EPISTLE L OF CLEMENT TO THE CORINTHIANS. 147
mediate position between original Paulinism and Jewish Chris
tianity. We shaU now, in conclusion, have to estimate the
significance of the fact that the Apostle Peter is honourably men
tioned by the writer, by the side of, nay even before, Paul (chap.
v., cf. 47, drroa-ToXoi p-epaprvpypevoi). Even here the foUower of
Paid betrays himself, by the far more ardent praise which is
given to Paul, as compared with the brief mention of Peter.
Nevertheless, the fact that he is put first is evidence that towards
the end of the first century the views of the Apostle Peter were
firmly established even in Jewish Christian communities which
had followed the teaching of Paul, and that the relation between
these two prmcipal authorities could only be regarded as that of
friendly coadjutors. But to draw from it the inference^ that this
was an accurate representation of their relation in the apostolic
times, and that consequently the actual relation between Paul
and Peter had been throughout a peaceful one, is more than we
are justified in doing, for the simple reason that, on precisely
the same grounds, the further assumption might be made that
the doctrine of Clement regarding faith and works and the
forgiveness of sins, with its Catholic tendencies, was an accurate
representation of the original gospel of Paul, and consequently
that Paul had never opposed the righteousness of works, as we
find neverthelesss that he has done in aU his Epistles. The truth
of the matter wUl rather turn out to be that, as the dogmatic
opposition between the gospel of Paul and the "other gospel"
reflected itself in the time of the Apostles in the rivalry of Paul
and Peter, the leaders of the contending parties, so the weakening
of this dogmatic opposition in the consciousness of the GentUe
Christians caused the remembrance of the personal rivalry of
Paul and Peter, as the representatives of the two parties, to die
away; the necessity that ensued of comprehending the moderated
elements of both these diverging lines of thought, in a common
avoidance of extreme heretical views, conduced to make the
recollection of coUisions of principle, and disputes which had
* As Ritschl does, ut supra, p. 279.
l2

148 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
occurred in apostoUc times, appear odious and disquieting.
Thus the growing conviction of the Churoh regarding the har
monious relation of the original lines of thought of the Apostles
was in part the natural result of the change in its dogmatic
views, and in part also the natural postulate of the new felt need
of union in the Church.

The Fiest Epistle of Petek.
This Epistle has undergone the same treatment as that of
Clement on which we have just commented ; it has been'assigned
by some writers to the party of Paul, by others to that of the
Judaizers, and with as much reason in the one case as in the
other. That its author belonged to the school of Pauline theor
logy is proved beyond doubt by the extent to which he is influ
enced by the Epistle to the Eomans, by his foUowing closely in
many instances the Epistles to the Hebrews and to the Ephe
sians, and by his adopting on essential points the terminology
of Paul, But he avails himself no less frequently of the Epistle
of James ; aud the fact that he is famUiaf with the Old Testa
ment, though only in the Septuagint version (for it is this that
he usually quotes), indicates that he is a Jewish Christian of
HeUenistic origin. Like the writers of the Epistle to the
Hebrews and the Epistle of Clement, he applies Old Testament
ideas and titles of honour to the Christian community. He calls
it the people of God, the peculiar people, the holy people, the
chosen race, a royal priesthood, the heritage (KAijpot) of God
— using the words in the theocratic spirit of the Old Testament
(ii, 9 f , V, 3), But so far is aU this from leading us to the con
clusion that our author has a Judaistic bias, that the tendency
of his writings must, on the contrary, be caUed distinctly anti-
Judaistic; for he neither sympathizes with Israel as a nation,
nor with the Mosaic law. The Jews are in his eyes the dis
obedient people, for whom the precious corner-stone laid in
Zion has become " a stone of stumbling aiid offence," against

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 149
which "they have fallen, to which they were also ordained"
(iL 7 f ). This is exactly the standpoint of the later and more
advanced PauUnism (cf. Acts of the Apostles), which is far
removed from the sympathy of the Apostle Paul with Israel
his nation (cf Eom. ix, — xL), And though our author so freely
appUes the titles of the covenant people to the Christian com
munity, he attributes no lasting validity to the law ; indeed, he
never even mentions it, or refers his moral exhortations to it,
substituting sometimes the wUl of God in general, and some
times the special Christian motives and rules for the imitation
of Christ, and gratitude for the redemption, and the hope of
being glorified in Christ (iv, 2, U, 21—25, i, 18 f, 13 f). This
evidently indicates an author, who is very far removed from
anti-PauUne Judaism, from the " gospel of the circumcision ;"
but, on the other hand, we miss the specific Pauline watchwords
of which the dogmatic contest of the two parties had made a
shibboleth; there is no allusion, for instance, to "justification
by faith,"
This impartial omission of the watchwords of either party,
this use of the Epistles of Paul and of James indifferently, and,
finaUy, the commendatory mention of Paul's helper, SUvanus
(tov TTto-Tov dSeA^ov (OS Xoyi^opai, V, 12), alongside of Mark, the
traditional helper of Peter (ver, 13) — aU these circumstances
together certainly favour the conjecture that the author pur
posely took up an intermediate conciliatory position between
the two great parties. But although the possibility of this must
be admitted, it is certainly too much to say^ that the main
object of the composer was to bring about a reconciUation, If
that were the case, he surely could not have pursued his object
in so cursory and indirect a manner, and that only at the close
of the Epistle, merely ignoring the contested points in the other
' As Schwegler does, nachapost, Zeitalter, II, p, 22 : "Oar Epistle is the attempt
of a foUower of Paul to reconcile the divided parties of Paul and Peter, by putting
into the mouth of Peter a testimony to the orthodoxy of his brother Apostle Paul,
together with a statement of Paul's doctrinal system somewhat coloured by the views
of Peter,"

150 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
parts. We should rather have expected him to make the union
of the two sections of the Church the express object of a dog
matic discourse, somewhat after the manner of the Epistle to the
Ephesians, Nothing of the kind, however, is to be found in the
Epistle before us,^ the main purpose of which is unmistakably
an exhortation to patience and endurance under a severe perse
cution from without, and to a blameless life, by which the
Christian community would avoid giving any occasion for a
justifiable persecution. In this case, therefore, as in that of the
Epistle of Clement, it is simply a practical hortatory object, and
no dogmatic tendency of any kind, that impels the author to
write. This fact, however, only gives the greater weight to the
Epistle, as a testimony to the actual existence of a practical
common consciousness of the Church, in which the teaching of
Paul had lost so much of its decidedly antithetical character
and its distinct pecuUarity (and this had occurred quite unin
tentionally and unconsciously), that his foUowers already felt
themselves to be essentiaUy at one with their original oppo
nents,^ This change had already been completed (cf the remarks
made above on the Epistle of Clement), under the pressure of
circumstances, at the beginning of the second century; for it
is, without doubt, the persecution of Trajan which marks the
situation of the readers of the first Epistle of Peter.^
^ The words iTripap-rvpwv rav-rrjv elvai dXriOi} xaptv roi; 6eov' eiQ tjv Iffr^Kare
(v. 12), cannot be regarded as a testimony of orthodoxy given by Peter to Paul, but
they are intended to warn those to whom they are addressed against allowing them
selves to be perplexed as to the truth of their Christian belief by the persecutions they
had suffered.
^ Cf, Reuss, Gesch, der heiligen Soriften, p. 139: "This Epistle does not engage
in any of the doctrinal disputes of that time ; and if it may be said that it occupies
the position of mediator between the opposite Christian parties, it does so, not of set
purpose, nor in so many words, but by its general tone and temper," Similarly
Kostlin, johan, Lehrb,, p, 480 : " This Epistle, more than any other, maybe regarded
as an original account of the shape in which Paulinism first began to find itself in
harmony with the collective consciousness of the Christian community of that time,"
' Compare Schieegler' s admirable arguments on this subject, ut supra, II. p, 14 f.
Also Hilgenfeld, in his "Protestantenbibel," p, 873 f, Weiss^s attempt to claira for
the Epistle of Peter an earlier date than those of Paul, in order to use it as evidence
for the views of the primitive Christians, must be regarded as altogether futile.

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 151
There is but little that is peculiar in the dogmatic standpoint
of this Epistle ; and indeed it is this very absence of peculiarity
that characterizes it. In the person of Christ, the o-dp^ as the
element of deadness is distinguished (Ui. 18) from the Trvevpa or
life-giving element in a way that reminds us of Eom. i. 3, 4.
That this Trvevpa, however, is not that of ordinary humanity,
but is, on the contrary, a pre-existent subject, like the rrvevpa
dyuocj-uvys of Paul, which constituted the pre-existent personality
of Christ (cf chap. UL), may be inferred from i. 11, where the
Trvevpa Xpicrrov is represented as the principle of revelation in
the prophets of the Old Testament; and this is a confirmation of
the view that the higher Christology of Paulinism was a means
of Christianizing the Old Testament, of proving that Christianity
was the truth of that which was old, was itself the old. But
special importance is given to the resurrection and exaltation
of Christ, his going to heaven, his being on the right hand of
God, his elevation above the angels, his reception of the glory,
the dTroKdXv\f/is of which is to come — an object of hope, which is
supported by faith in the exaltation of Christ ; and this is what
gives to the latter its great importance (i. 3, 7, 13, iii. 22, iv.
13, 11). The doxology in the last of these passages, according
to which not only the Sd^a, but also to Kpdros els rovs alcovas TCOV
alcovcov, is attributed to Christ, goes indeed beyond the older
PauUue Christology, inasmuch as the latter, supporting the
monotheistic view, closes with the restoration to God of Christ's
sovereignty (1 Cor. xv. 28). There is, therefore, so much the
less ground for interpreting the words in L 20, rrpoeyvcocrpevov pev
Trpo Kara/SoXys Kocrpiov, as if they implied a mere ideal predestina
tion of Christ without a real pre-existence, and seeking in them
a proof that our author's Christology was the older one which
preceded that of Paul. It is true that the actual meaning of
TrpoyiyvcocTKeiv is only to "foreordain," and that the object of this
ideal act may as well be one which is to come into existence in
the future, as one which already exists (at the time of Trpoytyvcuo--
Ketv), since the wpoytyvcoo-Ketv does not refer to the existence, but

152 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
to the destined action or suffering of its object, as something that
is to occur in the future. But in the passage before us, the pre-
existence of that which is Trpoeyvioa-pivos is distinctly suggested
by the antitJiesis, (ftavepotOevros Se iir ifrxdrov riov xpdvojv : for it is
most natural to use the expression ^avepoOo-dat of a subject which
was already existing, but stUl concealed, and which has mani
fested itself by coming out of its concealment This passage
also therefore confirms the inference that has been drawn from
those before quoted, namely, that the writer of this Epistle held
the higher Pauline Christology.
The importance which he attaches to the death of Clrrist as
the means of our redemption is also truly Pauline. But he has
hardly connected its genidne Pauline sense with the idea of the
redeeming death of Christ. We find no aUusion to a vicarious
expiatory sacrifice for the reconciUation of our goUt, and for our
Uberation from the punishment of sin, from the anger of God,
from the sentence of death, and from the curse of the law.
There is indeed a sort of faint echo of these Pauline thoughts in
the language whieh the writer borrows from Paul in speaking on
three occasions of the death of Christ — ^in iii 18, Xpurros ajro^
Trepl dp,apTiiov tirade, SIkojios vsep dSiKtov : iL 24, os Tas dpaprias ypav
aVTOs dvyveyKev iv tQ criopaTi avrov esrl to ^vXov : and L 18, lit,
iX-vrplodyTe Tip.ii^ aipLari <os dpivov dpuopov Kal darriXov Xpurrov '. but
if we exanUne these passages more closely, we find that every
one of them refers, not to the reconcUiation of the guUt of sin,
but to the doing away with the life of sin, to the moral amend
ment of the sinner. According to L 18, we are ransomed by the
blood of Chnst, he Tys paraias dvaa-rpo(}>ys ira-posvipa^Tov, from
the enslaving power of a vain life, devoted to that which is tran
sitory and worthless, according to the custom of our fathers;
which reminds us of Tit. ii 14, fva AvrpuoT/Toi yfuis ds™ a-doTjs
dvopxas Kal KaOapitrQ lavT^ Aaov jreptoiVtov, ^yXioryv koXHv epyiov.
Liberation from lawlessness and moral purification is here the
object of AiTpoCv ; whUe with Paul, on the contrary, it is Ubera
tion from the law and justification through faith. According to

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 153
iii 18, the leading^ us to God, u-a yfms 7rpo<rayiyij -^ Oc'k is made
the object of Christ "s suffering for sui (ct Bom. v, 2: Eph. ii 18,
Tpoffoywyij; and Heh. X. 19 £, euniSos nSv ayuav . . r'pocr^x<^/'^<*)>
tiie removal of our previous separation fix>m liim^ which is cer
tainly a more gen^^ notion, in which the removal of the guUt
as well as the power of sin may be included. But that the latter
is chiefly, if not exclusively, meant, is shown by the third of the
passages we have quoted. U. 24 £ When it is here said of Chiist,
fliat he "carried up our sins in his body on to the tree" (di-.JrrvKe
.... Is-i TO f I'Aov cannot be otherwise translated the sense is
evidently that by his death upon the cross he toot a^ay our
sins, lemovei them, so that they no longer defiled our life ; and
dus is afterwards still more plainly expressed by the sentence
which declares the purpose of his act, Zva Tats a/iaprtais asnyevo-
fieroi Tg Sucauxrvrj/ i>/^TB/««v. The lemoval of sin by his death on
tiie cross means therefore that we bee our moral life and actions
fiom sin, and set it in the service of righteousness. But how is
this sobjecitive moral renovation to be the direct consequence of
the objective death of Christ ? Paul's conception of the mysrical
oonmnmion of Chrisuans with the death of Christ might surest
itself as the intermediate liTilr^ according to which conception his
death is so fer the doing away of sin in the desh (Bom. viu. 3^^,
as it becomes the ethical dying of the old man in all who enter
by fidth into mystical union with the crucified one ^om. vi;
GaL T. 24 ; 2 Cor. v. 14 f.). And, in fect^ there is something that
sounds very like this idea in the Epistle before us: iv. 13 speaks
of a Kotvuveu Tots TOV Xpurrov saByfiatri, the effect of which Con
sists not only in the fatuie partakiiig of Christ's glorv, but also,
aGOOldillg to ver. 1, in the fiact that o s-aBav ev u-apid s-es-ai-rot
ifaprias — a sentence which cannot but remind us of a similar
expression which occurs in Bom. vi 7, o asodavav S^ixauarai as-o
T^s dpaprias ("he who has entered by baptism into communion
with the death of Christ, has thereby become l^ally free from
sin"). But dose as is the analogy between these sentences, and
highly probable as it is that the author of the Epistle of Peter

154 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
had Pauline formulas before his eyes or in his memory when he
wrote thus, yet it is also certain that the real meaning ofthe two
is widely different. There is no trace in this Epistle of Peter of
the mystical communion of the faithful with the death of Christ,
or with the ethical dying with him in faith and in baptism. The
communion with the sufferings of Christ is rather meant in the
sense of Eom. viii, 17, as a suffering in a Uteral sense undergone
in imitation of the crucified one, and for his sake. Similarly also
the words of iv, 1 have only the simple moral signification, that
suffering in our bodily life makes us cease to sin, i, e, makes sin
ning distasteful ; which is of course a very different thing from
that mystic communion with the death of Christ in which sin is
overcome in principle. Hence we are forced to conceive the re
deeming effect of the death pf Christ likewise as brought about
morally by its producing as a powerful example a resolution to
imitate his obedience (Xpto-Tov ovv TraOovros vrrep ypSiv o-apKt, Kat
avTot Tijv a-vryv evvoiav oTrXicracrOe, IV. 1; and XptcrTos erraOev -uirep
vp,cov, vp,tv vrroXiprrdvcov v7roypap,p,bv, iva irraKoXovO-ya-yre rots ixvecriv
a-vTov, ii, 21). This imitation of Christ, therefore, in doing aud
suffering, is the real release from sin ; and the death of Christ is
accordingly only the intermediate cause, which as an awakening
example makes us turn from the error of sin and return to the
shepherd and bishop of our souls, and by this means takes away
our sins. The passages, ii, 21 — 25, i, 18 f , iv, 1 f , agree in lead
ing us to the same conclusion.
One peculiarity of the Epistle of Peter is the extension of the
redeeming work of Christ to the dead who died before bis
coming. " For to this end was the gospel preached also to the
dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh,
but might Uve according to God in the spirit" (iv. 6); their
judgment is to be limited to the death of the body, and not to
affect the spirit ; this, on the contrary, is to be made partaker of
the life of God (in imperishable glory) by means of the preach
ing of the gospel, which they were aUowed to hear (in the lower
world, we must suppose). This passage again strongly reminds

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 155
US of Eom. viU. 10, to p,ev a-iopa veKpbv Si dpapriav, to Se Trvevpa
(coy Sid SiKaiocr-vvyv. But here again there is the same difference
that was pointed out above between 1 Pet. iv. 1 and Eom. vi. 7 ;
what Paul meant, at least primarily, in an ethical and spiritual
sense, takes here the external significanc"e of being dead as regards
the body, and of being aUve as a spiritual being in the other
world. Moreover, it appears from the latter passage that the
eschatological hope of the writer was directed, more in the Alex
andrine fashion, to the continued life of the incorporeal spirit,
than, in the Hebrew way of thinking, to the resurrection of the
body ; and so he also uses the expression Trve-upara (iii, 19) for
the dead, Uke the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb.
xiL 23). But he also intimates, in a most remarkable passage,
how he conceived the preaching of the gospel to the dead to
have been effected ; it was Christ himself who after his resur
rection, in the life of the spirit (^cooTroiyOels Trvevpan, iv (^ — ), went
and preached to the spirits in prison (the lower world), who had
once been disobedient, at the time when the long-suffering of
God waited in the days of Noah. It appears to me that this
interpretation of the passage (iii. 18 f.) is unquestionably the
only one of which its language is susceptible, though attempts to
explain it otherwise have been made by commentators. The
only real difficulty here is, that this preaching of Christ to the
lower world is not referred to the dead in general, but only to
the sinners in Noah's time who perished in the flood. It is pos
sible that these, as the most striking example of the KpiOyvai Kar
dvO pcoTrovs crapKi (iv. 6), are taken as representatives of the whole
world of sinners who had perished. The thought is otherwise
simple, and is only another application of what was said in stiU
simpler language in iv, 6 ; and rropevOeis in ver. 19 is evidently
paraUel to rropevOeis ets TOV ovpavov in ver, 22, and therefore, as the
counterpart to the ascent into heaven, can surely mean nothing
else than the "descent into heU," These two then, the ascent into
heaven and the descent into hell, taken together, comprise the
whole circuit of the redeeming and saving efficacy of Christ,

156 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
which is thus shown to be truly universal, as absolutely compre-'
bending all things. Thus we may see in the passage before us
an expansive paraphrase and exuberant variation of the original
Pauline theme of the universaUsm of the evangelic embassage
of Christ, and of his sovereignty over the world, and especially
ofthe passage in Phil, ii, 9, 11, where the eirovpdvioi Kal hriyeioi
Kal KaraxOovioi are enumerated as the several classes of subjects
of the exalted Eedeemer,
The notion oi faith also plays a prominent part in this Epistle,
It is faith, by which we are preserved unto blessedness, which
will be obtained as the ultimate end of faith. The one impor
tant thing for the Christian therefore is, that he be found stead
fast in his faith in spite of aU attacks, that he stand firm in the
faith and resist the adversary, the devil, who seeks to devour
him (i, 5, 9, vii, 21, v. 9), But the notion of faith contained in
the Epistle of Peter is not the genuine PauUne notion, but that
of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistle of Clement, Its
object is not Christ as the historical redeemer from sin, but
Christ as the glorified one, who is at present invisible, but who
will soon reveal himself, in order to bring us our deliverance.
Since this object of faith is one that is at first concealed from us,
therefore, in this Epistle as well as in that to the Hebrews, faith
is a confidence with regard to that which we do not now see
(i. 8, ets ov dpTi py bpcovres Tricrre-uovres Se dyaXXidcrOe, &C,) ; but this
confidence relates to the fact, that he who is now invisible wUl
shortly reveal himself in glory; and faith is, so far, in both these
Epistles essentially hope; the abiding sense of perfect confidence
in future salvation is in no wise merely the consequence, but it
is the substance of faith. Consequently our author is able to
describe the new life, to which the Christian is born again, as
neither more nor less than JAttos fwo-a, i. 3, as -y iv vptv iXTris,
iU, 15 ; and to sum up his exhortation to Christian fidelity in
the admonition, TeAeiws eATrto-aTe e^t ryv <f>epopevyv vptv X'^P"' '''
dn-oKaAvfet 'lycrov Xpurrov (i, 13). Faith ouly trausconds hope in
this respect, that it gives to the expectation of the future, which

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 157
is the function of the latter, the support of the resurrection of
Christ and his exaltation to heavenly glory, as events that have
actually taken place. On the ground of this act of God as a
material guarantee of future salvation, the believer acquires con-
fdence towards God, and this confidence then immediately becomes
hope in relation to God, namely, the hope that God, at the revela
tion of the glory of Christ, wiU bring the Christian also to glory
with Christ, and to triumphant joy (vpds tovs rrto-TevovTas ets Oebv
TOV eyeipovra avTov eK veKpcov Kat SdvTa avT^ Sd^av, ucrTe ryv Tria-riv
vpiov Kal eXTriSa etvai ets Oeov, L 21). Paul also certainly speaks of
a TTto-Teveiv eiri tov eyetpavTa lycrow tov Kijpiov ¦rjpcov eK veKpiov (Eom.
iv. 24), to which passage the one before us probably refers ; but
he makes the resurrection of Christ the support of faith in the
redeeming favour of God, evidenced by Christ's death (ibid.
ver. 25), which is with him the true object of faith; whereas
here the resurrection is the support of hope in the favour of
God which we are to receive hereafter at the dTroKdXv\pis 'lycrov
(eTrl T'^v (l>epopevyv vptv X^P'" ^^ drrOKaX-vxpei 'lycrov Xpurrov, L 13).
In the Epistle to the Eomans, therefore, the main point of faith
lies in the redemption historically accomplished in Christ, from
which the- hope of the future crcorypia only developes itself as a
further consequence ; here, on the contrary, the main point lies
in the crcorypia hereafter to be accomplished by God, to which
the resurrection of the historical Christ is only related as a
pledge that precedes it, his sufferings only as an indirect means,
as a previous condition, and something to be gone through as
weU for Christ's own sake as for ours. In brief, therefore, Christ,
the historical Eedeemer, is here not the object of faith, but only
the author and the pattern of it (tovs St' avTov TrtcrTevovTas ets
^eov), just as he is caUed in the Epistle to the Hebrews the
dpxyybs Kal reXeioirys rys Trio-recos (xiL 2); and faith is not con
fidence in the salvation that has appeared, reposing on Christ,
i e. the real possession of salvation, but the confident hope,
caused by Christ, of a salvation to come. For this very reason,
obedience has here a different meaning from that which Paul

158 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
attaches to it ; for with him faith is obedience with respect to
the dispensation of God's favour, submission to the will' of God
to save us which is presented for our acceptance in the gospel,
which submission afterwards issues in the moral obedience of
our life, in fulfUment of the wiU of God regarding the law; here,
on the other hand, and also in the Epistle to the Hebrews and
that of Clement, obedience of life. Christian moraUty, is a
moment of faith itself; for faith which has not its reality in
itself, in the appropriated objective blessing of salvation, but is
directed to the stUl ideal future blessing of salvation, and is so
far only subjective feeUng — this faith can only assure itself of
its reality by its moral effects, and can only become objective by
obedience in doing and suffering. Accordingly, beside eXrris, we
have vrraKoy as the characteristic of the Christian state ; Chris
tians are called TeKva vttuko^s (i 14) ; they purify their souls in
obedience to the truth unto sincere brotherly love (i. 22 ); and
obedience precedes the sprinkUng of the blood of Christ, i. e, the
forgiveness of sins, as a presupposition which is the condition of
it. At aU events, this interpretation, which is suggested by the
order of the words, entirely accords with the result of our
previous discussion regarding the sigiUficance of the death of
Christ, according to which it has not an immediately expiatory
effect, but only does away with our sins by being the motive of
our moral amendment, and does not redeem us primarUy from
the guUt of sin, but from the life of sin. From these considera
tions we shaU be the more ready to conclude that the pavrurpos
aiparos (L 2), an expression which is taken from the Epistle to
the Hebrews, implies a moral cause which brings it about, and
is therefore conditioned by vrraKo-y.
The writer describes the act of becoming a beUever as dvayev-
vda-Oai, as the beginning of a new life ; but he understands this,
like James in a paraUel passage (cf L 23 with James L 18), of
the moraUy renovating effect of the wo'id, which as moral truth
demands obedience, and as the word of promise awakes Uving
hope (ver, 23, Sta Adyov ^wvtos Oeov Kal p,evovTos, cf. ver. 22, mroKoy

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 159
Tijs dXyOeias, and Ver, 3, dvayewijo-as ets eAjrtSa ^cocrav). This is
not the same, however, as that Katv^ KTtVts of Paul, in which
fai ovKCTt eyoi, ^-y Se iv ipol Xpurros. The author has likewise
adopted from Paul the notion of the Christian Trvevp,a ; it is the
principle of sanctification (ev dyida-poy Trve-vparos, i, 2), of the
purification of the soul to sincere brotherly love (toIs \p-vxas vpiov
yyviKores Sta rrvevp.aros els cj}iXaSeX<f>iav dwrroKpirov, i, 22), the ele
ment of Ufe, of the hidden man of the heart, which is opposed
as imperishable substance to all perishable adornment (iii, 4) ;
it rests, as the spirit of the glory of God, upon the slandered
Christians, making them inwardly blessed by its power to com
fort, amid all their external sufferings (iv, 1 4) ; and especially
the preaching of the. gospel is effected by the holy spirit sent
from heaven (i, 12) as the spirit of enlightenment and Of the
higher knowledge. According to this, our author makes out
that the holy spirit is the principle of Christian life in every one
of its aspects, with regard to knowledge, feeling, and will ; and
here, while widely differing from James, he is thoroughly Pauline,
Moreover, he connects neither the new birth nor the communi
cation of the spirit with baptism, which is the more striking as
this especially was a point on which Paulinism had always been
at one with Jewish Christianity, so that it could hardly have
been passed over if dogmatic reconcUiation had been his real
aim. What is said of baptism in iU, 21, namely, that it is the
O'VvetS'^o-ews dya^ijs iTrepcoTyp,a ets Oebv St dvao-Tao-eois I?jo-ov Xpurrov,
is not quite clear, as the words may be taken in many senses.
The most probable interpretation, because it is consistent with
the construction of the words and simple in its sense, appears
to me to be that of Luther, who takes irrepcorypa to mean a vow,
contract (stipulatio), conclusion of a covenant, according to which
the meaning is, that in baptism there is not merely a cleansing
of the body, but a good (upright) conscience binds itself to God
by a solemn vow, no longer to be wUling to Uve to sin, but to
live to righteousness, to live no longer according to human
desires, but according to the wiU of God (iv, 2, U, 24) ; the con-

160 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
elusion of a covenant between God and man, which is so far
founded on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and brought about
by it, as this foundation of Christian hope is also' the motive of
Christian duty. It appears that this relation of baptism to the
resurrection of Christ rests on Eom, vi, 4 f , where the necessity
of the new moral life of Christians is Ukewise founded upon the
resurrection. This practical consequence of baptism, however,
is brought about, according to Paul, by the idea of the mystical
communion of the baptized wath the spirit life of the risen
Christ; but according to our author, by the moral obUgation
whieh enters into baptism, with reference to the divine pro
mises guaranteed by the resurrection of Christ, Thus we have
here also a repetition of the fact, that PauUne thoughts and
modes of speech are indeed adopted, but a moral meaning is
substituted for the mystical one which they originaUy bore.
The moral life of the Christian is the opposite of his former
life, which was one of vanity, in ignorance and fleshly lusts
(i, 14, 18, iv, 2, 3), TMs reference of heathenism " to igno
rance" is a milder way of looking at it, which is common to
our author and to the later Paulinism (cf, Ephes, iv, 14, 18;
Acts xvii, 23, 30), In opposition, then, to this his past life, the
Christian is to take the will of God, the ideal of the Divine holi
ness, and the pattern of Christ, the shepherd and bishop of our
souls, as the rule of his actions for the rest of his Ufe (iv, 2, L 15 f ,
ii, 21 — 25), Not one word is said of the positive Mosaic law,
either as the rule or the motive of Christian morality. This is,
on the contrary, found partly in the redemption by Christ
(cf above), partly in looking forward to the future judgment of
God, partly in consideration for the irreproachableness of the
Christian name in the sight of the GentUes (i, 17, 18, iU, 13 —
17, iv, 15 — 19), The prospect of the judgment, in which the
righteous man is hardly saved (iv, 18), requires that we should
walk in fear (L 17, UL 2, 15), in trembling, and watchfulness
against our adversary the devU, who is ever threatening to
destroy us (iv, 7, v, 8), Yet, on the other hand, God also bestows

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 161
his favour on the humble, and strengthens unto blessed perfec
tion those who have endured sufferings for a short time (v, 10, 5),
Here also, then, the two modes of regarding Christian moraUty
which we found side by side in Phil, ii, 12 f , are connected
together. Christian morality is manifested especially in sincere
love for one another, in the endurance of sufferings, and in
blameless well-doing towards " those who are without ;" dya^o-
Troietv, dyaO-f) dvacrrpocpy, plays a great part in the Epistle before
us, yet in no wise as a meritorious means to blessedness, but as
a proof of Christian worthiness, whereby the ignorance of the
heathen is put to shame, and God is glorified before them (ii, 12,
So^da-cocri tov Oeov). Moreover, to suffer for that which is good,
and to requite slander with blessing, are designated as the
very aim of the moral perfection to which Christians are called
(iL 20 f , iii, 9), because God is most of all glorified by such moral
conduct; — a mode of vie'wing the subject which we find stUl
more decidedly expressed in the Epistle to the Ephesians (L 4,
U, 10), and which, although it does not come out so decidedly in
the writings of Paul, is stUl by no means un-Pauline. It is,
however, incorrect to say that our author actuaUy teaches justi
fication by works, or that righteousness can be acquired by good
actions,^ and that he is consequently at variance with Paul on a
cardinal point,' His insisting on a good Ufe and right doing (not
good works) proceeds simply from the practical purpose which
he has in view throughout ; it has no dogmatic aim, and in no
respect contradicts the ethical teaching of Paul,
Thus then we find a form of doctrine which in all respects is
intended to be Pauline, but in fact is so only in the Umited sense
in which the author has understood Paul, He nowhere con
tradicts Paul, — he even accepts his forms of expression (with
the exception of the formula of justification by faith, which had
become a party watchword) ; he shows, however, by the way in
' As Reuss does, ut supra, II, p, 298, and Ritschl, ut supra, p, 118, The appeal
to ii, 24, ry SiKaioavvy Hrjaiopev, and iii, 14, Sid Sixaiocrvvriv, is evidently inad>
missihle, VOL, II. M

162 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
which he applies them, that he has penetrated only in a slight
degree into the vein of thought peculiar to the Apostle, to whose
words he attaches a more general meaning, and a moral rather
than a dogmatic sense. It is a popularized, and for that very
reason a diluted and faded PauUnism, which certainly ceased to
retain any party colouring as such, and might also very well
pass under the name of that Apostle whom the Eoman Church
even at that time was pleased to name before Paul, but in inti
mate connection with him (cf 1 Clem. v.).
The Epistle to the Ephesla.ns,
Of all the forms which PauUnism went through in the course
of its transition to CathoUcism, that of the Epistle to the Ephe
sians is the most developed and the richest in dogma. The
author, a Jew by birth, but occupying as a Christian the most
advanced PauUne standpoint, addresses himself in the name of
Paul to the Gentile Christians, who were not only in danger
of falling back into heathen immorality, but also, from over
valuing their supposed higher wisdom, were promoting division
in the community, and perhaps even aiming at a separation from.
the Jewish-Christian part of it (iv. 17 f , v. 3 t, especially ver, 6,
Kevots Adyots vtovs t^s diret^etas, and iv, 14, iravTt dvep,co rys SiSaa-Ka-
Xias, Kv/Seic} Ttov dvOpcorrcov, iravovpyt^ Trpos ryv peOoSeiav rys TrXdvys).
In opposition to this practical Ubertinism and dogmatic hyper-
Paulinism, whose speculation undermined the foundations of
sound morality as weU as those of historical Christianity, the
writer reminds them, first of all in general terms, that they had
not learned Christ so — that is, as they were now practicaUy and
theoreticaUy adapting him to themselves — inasmuch as they
had heard of him, and had been instructed in him, as he is the
truth in (the historical) Jesus (iv, 20, 21). This presupposes
that heretical views, similar to those that are controverted in
the Epistles of John, had been presented to his readers, involv
ing an abstract separation between the transcendent Christ and

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 163
the historical Jesus, by which Christiamty was dissipated into
a metaphysical abstraction, and thus deprived at the same time
of its ethical content. Although the abstract Christ of those
Gnostic dualistic theories might perhaps be reconcUed with
heathen Ubertinism, this was impossible — says the author to
his GentUe Christian readers — for that Christ, of whom they
had learnt from Paul how he had become concrete truth in
Jesus, and therefore requires also from Christians a new life
in the truth, — a connection of practical truth (morality) with
dogmatic Christological truth, such as we find also in the Epis
tles of John, But, in the next place, the writer of the Epistle to
the Ephesians exhorts them especially to preserve peace within
the Church (iv, 3 — 16). In order to exhibit most impressively
the importance of the union of the community, which was en
dangered by his readers, he represents it as the essential content
of the divine plan of salvation, and as the ultimate end of
Christ's work of redemption (i. 9 f, ii, 13 f , iii, 3 f). He thus
derives his universaUsm, very much in the manner of John,
directly from the absolute idea of Christianity, whereas Paul
was forced to wrest it laboriously from the standpoint of the
Jewish Christians, by means of dialectic disquisitions on the
law and the promises.
But the question of the relation of Jews and Gentiles to Christ
has entered here upon an entirely different stage. Paul had to
contend, against Jewish particularism, for the equal justification
of GentUe Christians ; the whole point of his argument was there
fore directed against the Jewish Christians ; but here it is the
exaltation of themselves in opposition to the Church, and the
want of love on the part of the Gentjle Christians, against which
the author turns, wlUle he recals to their memory the greatness
of the Divine goodness and favour, to which they owed their
acceptance into the kingdom of the Messiah. It is evident that
the whole treatment of the matter undergoes a change with this
new point of view. If the national particularism of the Jews,
supported by the law, had previously to be opposed, now, on
m2

164 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
the other hand, in order to resist the self-exaltation and the
desire of separation on the part of the Gentile Christians, the
prerogative of the Jews, as the people of promise, is insisted
upon, and brought before the mind of the Gentile Christians, in
order that they, who were once far off, may the more highly
appreciate their admission to share the promises and the inhe
ritance of Israel as an undeserved act of beneficence and favour,
and may now the more gratefully stand fast in this unity. It
cannot be said that there is here any un-Pauline concession
to the Jewish Christians. All that was specifically Jewish and
opposed to Christianity in Judaism, — the law, circumcision, the
descent from the seed of Abraham, — is here as completely put
aside as of no worth or value, as it was by Paul himself
(Eph, ii, 3, xi, 15) ; only the promises of Israel, that is the
Christian privileges of the people of the covenant in the time
before Christ, are here insisted on as giving them the precedence
over the Gentiles, But Paul himself has repeatedly done this
very thing in the most decided manner; he also insists upon
the advantage that the Jews had over the GentUes, from the
point of view that the promises, the truth of which is for ever
unalterable, belong to them (Eom, UL 1 — 3, ix, 4 — 6, xi, 28 f).
To overlook this would be the very hyper-Paulinism which the
writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians has to rebuke in Gentile
Christian readers. It is not, then, his dogmatic view of the
relations of Christianity to Judaism which is different from that
of Paul, but it is the actual situation of the Gentile Christian in
the community, and consequently the point of view from which
the question has practically to be handled, which has changed.
The question is no longer, ^ in the time of Paul, the possibility
of Gentile Christianity, but the bringing about of its complete
union with Jewish Christianity ; that is to say, the realization
of the universal Church, The idea of catholicity is raised for
the first time in the Epistle before us to dogmatic definiteness
and to predominant significance. The dogmatic views of the
Epistle to the Ephesians rest wholly on Pauline foundations, but

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 165
they have advanced beyond the older Paulinism, in the direction
of the theology of John, This is shown by the external depend
ence of this Epistle on that to the Colossians,^ and probably also
on the first Epistle of Peter f as weU as the close connection of
many of its ideas and turns of thought with the writings of
John,' In true Pauline fashion, the universality of the natural corrup
tion by sin of the whole human race, Jews as weU as Gentiles,
forms the presupposition for the universality of salvation. The
GentUe Christians before their conversion were " dead through
the transgressions and sins in which they walked," and for that
reason they were at the same time under the dominion of the
powers of evil, whose abode is in the air, and who stiU work in
the children of disobedience by spiritual influence, and are a
constant source of trouble to Christians (U, 1, 2, vi, 12), The
' Honig, following the initiative of De Wette, has recently proved this dependence
in his striking article in the Z, f, w, Th, 1872, pp. 63 — 87. And in fact his com
parison of parallel passages (pp. 77 — 87) shows the existence of a dependence of
such a kind as absolutely ' to exclude the identity of the author of this Epistle
(whether it be Paul or any one else) with the author of the other ; for the author
of the Ephesians has in many instances made such a use of his model as can only
be regarded as a literary error or misunderstanding. In other passages he has
given a turn to the ideas of the Epistle to the Colo.ssian3 which is certainly very
ingenious, but very different from that which was intended, which makes the suppo
sition that the two Epistles had the same author — nay, tbat they were written at the
same period — improbable in a degree that reaches impossibility. Consequently the
hypothesis that Paul was the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians in any case falls
through. Moreover Holtzmann's view, that the author of the Ephesians was the
interpolator of the Epistle to the Colossians, is refuted by a closer comparison of those
very parallel passages which are taken from the interpolated part of the Colossians
(the controversy against the false teachers), as is partially shown by Honig' s researches,
and will be still further proved by ray observations which follow.
' On this point I raay appeal to Weiss, Petrinisch. Lehrbegr., p. 434, who indeed
infers from this relation of the two Epistles, on the hypothesis of the genuineness of
the Epistle to the Ephesians, that the first Epistle of Peter was composed before the
Patiline Epistles, while I, on the contrary, am convinced that this Epistle proceeded
from the Pauline school, but was written after the time of Paul ; and on this sup
position its relation to the Epistle to the Ephesians is a further proof of the later
composition and the spuriousness of the latter.
' Kostlin, in his "Johanneischer' Lehrbegriff," pp. 365—378, has proved this con
nection in detail. His statement of the doctrine contained in the Epistle to the
Ephesians may be classed among the best writings on the subject.

166 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
condition of the GentUes is more particularly described, some
times as moral depravity and sinfulness, sometimes as religious
blindness, aUenation from God, ignorance, and hardness of heart,
all of which are comprehended in the notion of "walking in
vanity (emptiness, worthlessness) of mind" (iv. 17 — 19). This
judgment holds a middle place between that of Eom. i. and that
of the later Paulinism, inasmuch as its moral condemnation is
tempered by the ascription of their misdeeds to " ignorance," as
it is also in 1 Pet. i. 14 and Acts xvU. 30. Peculiar to this
Epistle, again, is the description of the Gentiles as being " far off"
(paKpdv ovres, u. 13)^far off, that is to say, from the theocracy,
and the covenant promises of Israel contained in it, and — ^inas
much as the pre-existent Christ had already a definite place
aUotted for his manifestation, in this people of promise, from
which Christ was to come (cf 1 Pet. L 11, and John L 11, ets to
i'Sta) — consequently far from Christ, without relation and con
nection with him in his pre-existent working (x^pts Xpia-rov);
in short, the GentUes are in the world without hope and without
God (ver. 12). And here, low as is the position assigned to the
Gentiles, yet much more weight is given to the consideration that
they are without the blessings of reUgioh, than that they deserve
moral condemnation : the GentUes, as compared with the Jews,
are regarded as further off indeed, but at the same time as being
in their unblessed state in so much the greater need of redemp-
rion — a truly Pauline view, and one which we meet with every
where in the writings of Luke. ¦ If the Jews then, as the people
of the covenant of promise, certainly had an incontestable
advantage over the GentUes, this does not hinder the author of
our Epistle from virtually giving them the same position as the
Gentiles in his moral judgment. They also are reKva ^uo-ei
dpy^s, (OS Kat ot XoiTroi (U. 3) : in consequence of their natural
moral condition, if it were not for the promises of God which
depend on his favour, they stand in the same relation to God
as the Gentiles, they are objects of his anger, and caunot make
the slightest claim to any preference, — a way of looking at the

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 167
matter which precisely agrees with Eom. iu. 9, and which in
form of expression contradicts all the Jewish arrogation of legal
righteousness even more decidedly than Paul himself has done,
for after all he said, -ypets cfivcrei 'lovSatoi, Kal ovk i^ iOvZv dpaprioXoi
(Gal. U. 15). And whereas Paul always attributes to Jewish
circumcision, as the legal token of the covenant, a certain advan
tage over the uncircumcision of the Gentiles (though only up to
the time of the fulfilment of the law in Christ), (Eom. iL 25,
UL 1, 2), and it is stUl regarded in the Epistle to the Colossians
as possessing enough significance to be considered as a type of
Christian baptism (Col. iL 11 f ), it has become so entirely void
of significance in the eyes of our author, that he only mentions,
historicaUy as it were (U. 11), the "so-called" circumcision and
uncircumcision, in a way which impUes clearly enough that he
regarded them as marks of distinction of a former date, which
had become valueless and matters of perfect indifference in his
time. Moreover, he cannot have regarded the Old Testament
prophecies as an immediate revelation of Christ before his ap
pearing in the fiesh, for he says of the secret of Christ, that in
former ages it had not been revealed to men in the same way as
it is now to the Christian Apostles and Prophets (iii. 5). Per
haps he supposed, like the author of the first Epistle of Peter,
that the spirit of Christ bore witness beforehand indeed to Christ
in the Prophets, but that they were not fully conscious of the
meaning of their prophecies (i. 11 f)-
The gradual superseding of both Judaism and Heathenism by
Christianity is pregnantly expressed by the thought that the
Christian community had already been pre-ordained in the divine
counsel, before the beginning of the wwld, as the higher unity of
these two opposites. This predestination has its final cause only
in the riches of God's love, in his infinite mercy, and his un
conditioned good pleasure — in short, in his favour (ev dydrr'tj
Trpoopioras . . . Kara ryv evSoKtav tov OeX-qparos avTov, 1. 5 ; ttAovtov
T^s X'^P'-ro'S avTOv, ver. 7 ; KaTol T^v evSoKt'av avTov, ver. 9 ; Kara
TrpoQecnv rov Tci Trdvra evepyovvTos KaTci ryv /3ovXyv rov OeXyparos

168 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
avrov, ver. 11 ; ffAovo-tos cov iv iXeei, Sta T'^v TroXXyv dydrryv avrov
yv -riydrrycrev -f/pas, U, 4; Ty x"/"'''' earre crecrcocrpevoi . . . . o-UK'i^
-iipiov, Oeov TO Supov, ver. 8), This counsel of favour is mediated
from the beginning by Christ, in whom the Christians have been
chosen before the foundation of the world, and by whom they
have been predestinated to the sonship of God (i^eXe^aro -qpas iv
a-vrco Trpb Kara/ioXys Kocrpov, i. 4; rrpoopicras -ypas ets vto^eo-tav Sia
Itjo-ov Xpicrrov, ver, 5 ; yv (evSoKtav) rrpoeOero iv a-urcf, ver, 9 ; ev
^ Kal eKXypwOypev irpooplcrOevTes, Ver, 11), This is surely not to
be understood merely in the sense that it has been the intention
of God from the beginning to make use of the historical Jesus
Christ for the carrying out of his counsel in the fulness of time ;
this might certainly be expressed by the words Sta 'lya-ov
Xpurrov in ver, 5, but hardly by i^eXe^aro ypds iv avT$ Trpo
Kara^oXys Kocrpov in vors. 4, 9, 11, "We are rather led to see
plainly in these words the thought that the pre-existent Christ
was before the beginning of the world the object of the love of
God (d -rjyaTrypevos, ver. 6), in such wise, that aU who were to
belong to him as members of his future body were taken up in
and with him into the loving wUl of God, The idea which per
vades this Epistle is already visible here, namely, that Christ is
\. from the beginning, and without end, the apprehensible embodi
ment of the whole of the chosen, the ideal representative of the
community, who comprehends all the members in himself in the
' unity of one spiritual body, and as animating soul fiUs them all
with his own being, at once the foundation of the community
aud its head (dvaKe<^aAat(ijo-ao-5at Tot irdvTa ev avT$, 1, 10 ; tov Ta
Trdvra iv Trdcri TrXypovpevov, ver, 23 ; ev (j) Trdcra -y oiKoSopy a-vvappo-
Xoyovpevy aS^ei, ii, 21 ; Ke<j>aXy rys iKKXycrias, crcoryp rov crioparos,
V, 23), In this eternal election of the community in Christ, the
PauUne j)re-existence of Christ is extended to the community
which is comprehended in him, and this conception of his_ person
attains to its most definite expression. Already in Paul the
pre-existence ofthe person of the Eedeemer was the involuntary
expression of the higher view of the religion of redemption, of

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 169
the absoluteness of the principle of redemption ; but here this
comes out still more clearly, since the pre-existent Christ
appears as the apprehensible embodiment, as the "summing
up," so to speak, of the Christian community ; which, translated
into the language of our ideas, evidently means nothing else
than that he is the personified idea of Christianity. Paul had
grounded the supersession of the preceding lower forms of re
ligion by Christianity on a phUosophy of the history of religion,
by apprehending Christ as the fulfilment of God's covenant of
promise with Abraham, and going further back, as the antitype
of Adam, as the second Adam, as the progenitor and representa
tive of the entire human race ; but our author goes stiU further
back, to the premundane ground of history, and finds in the
Creator's plan of the universe the moments already indicated
beforehand, which were afterwards manifested in the historical
" economy of the fiUing up of the times," i, e, in the ordering of
the course of the revelation of God through the ages (i, 9 f ),
Thus especiaUy is the election of Israel as the KXypos Oeov, as the
peculiar people of God (cf Trepirroi-qcr is, ver. 14), an act that was
done ev Xpio-Ttp (iv ^ Kal iKXypcoOypev — that is to say, we Jewish
Christians TrpoopurOevres, &c., ver. 11, to which ver. 13 forms the
antithesis, ev <^ Kal vp,ets — Gentile Christians). This goes, at
least in form, beyond the thought of Paul, that the promise to
Abraham had Christ in view as to cnreppa a-vrov : for according
to the passage before us the election of Abraham's people as the
covenant nation was already effected through Christ ; he is not '
only the ultimate end, but also the Mediator of the old covenant,
which is thereby stripped of all independence and opposition to
Christianity, and reduced to a mere typical preparation for it.
Of course, then, the Jews are, in relation to Christ, on whom
their hope rested from the beginning (rrpoyXTriKoras iv r^ Xpio-r^,
ver. 12), the eyyvs ovtcs in comparison with the Gentiles tois
/taKpav ouo-iv: but they are so only in the sense in which John
(i. 11) caUs Israel tci t'Sta of the Adyos when he appeared, and in
which it is said in John iv. 22, ^ crcorypia iK riov 'lovSaicov e'o-Tt.

170 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
And this has continued from that time forth to be the precise
position of the Christian church w^ith regard to Judaism; so that
in fact it is only from a Marcionite point of view that the utter
ances of our Epistle on this poiut can be rejected as Judaistic in
tendency. It foUows from what has already been said, that the Christo
logy of the Epistle to the Ephesians is no other than that of the
Pauline school, and indeed of the advanced section of it. The
pre-existence is not only impUed in i. 4, ev avT$ rrpb Kara^oX^p
Kocrpov, in ii. 12, x<«p's Xpio-Tov, and v. 31 f, on which more wiU
be said hereafter ; but is also expUcitly stated in iv. 9 f , where
the appearing of Christ is described in the very words of John's
Christology as a " descent " (from the upper world of heaven) to
the earth, or the lower region of the world ;^ and the identity of
him who descended with him who has ascended on high above
aU the heavens, is emphasized in a way that is strikingly analo
gous to John Ui. 13. In both these passages the argument by
which it is sought to estabUsh the reference of the word dva^ds,
&c., in the Psalms to Christ (ver. 8), is founded on the presup
position, that only one who already reaUy belongs to heaven, and
who has only left it temporarUy to descend to the lower region
of the world, is capable of ascending into heaven ; and this pre
supposition, from the standpoint of that Alexandrine duaUsm of
the two worlds which is already apparent in the later Paulinism
(the Epistles to the Hebrews and Colossians), and stiU more
' definitely forms the foundation of John's theology, is simply
self-evident, — but the purpose of the descent from and ascent
to heaven is tVa rr-Xypcocry rd Trdvra (cf. L 23, to TrXi^pcopa tov to
TrdvTa ev Trao-t TXypovp,evov). These words evidently presuppose
^ To explain this passage as referring to the descent into hell, appears to me to be
consistent neither with the words (especially as pipi) must be regarded as a spurious
reading) nor with the context, which is evidently concerned only with the identity of
him who went to heaven, with him who came from heaven, that is to say, with the
application of the term " dvafidQ," quoted from the Psalms, to the Logos-Christ who
appeared in the flesh. It is true, however, that the later addition of the word pspi)
may point to the fact that this passage was already at au early date understood to
refer to the descent into heU.

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 171
the advanced Christology ofthe Epistle to the Colossians, for
they make Christ appear as the cosmical principle which per
vades and rules the universe, in which therefore it subsists (Col.
i, 17, TOi irdvTtt ev avr^ crvvea-ryKe). And, in fact, the Christology
of the Epistle before us is not only in no respect on a lower
level than that of the Epistle to the Colossians, but it goes
beyond it in tbe direction of John's schooL For whereas in that
Epistle the interest centres in establishing the exalted position
of Christ in the universe, above au un-Christian angel-worship,
the Epistle to the Ephesians, on the other hand, is occupied in
bringing again into the closest possible connection ivith the com
munity that Christ who has been thus transported above aU that
is earthly, and exalted to a cosmical principle (the presupposi
tion of this exaltation being of course retained). Our Epistle,
then, haa not a different Christology, but a different Christo
logical interest, which is essentiaUy the same as that which con
fronts us stiU more decidedly in the Epistles of John. As these
no longer contend for the absoluteness of Christ, against the
Ebionites, but for the identity of the supramundane Christ with
the earthly Jesus, against the Docetists, so also is the Christo
logy of the Epistle to the Ephesians directed less to the exalta
tion of Christ in heaven, than to the fact that the earthly com
munity of Christ belongs to the heavenly Christ as his body
and his spouse. "We have abeady concluded, from a comparison
of iv. 20 with 21, that in doing so its author is contending at
the same time against a dualistic separation such as the Doce
tists made between Christ and Jesus, after the manner of the
false teachers in John. The insisting on the identity of the
Kara/Bas with the dva/3ds (iv. 10), may also be referred to this
object. And v. 31 i. is especiaUy connected with, the same
point. The saying of the Old Testament, that a man shaU leave
father and mother and cleave to his wife, and that these two
shaU become one flesh, is, in the allegorizing manner of the
mysteries (to p.vcrr-fipiov tovto), interpreted of the relation of
Christ to the community, evidently in the sense that the (pre-

172 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
existent) Christ had left his (heavenly) Father, to unite liimself
to the community by entering into the flesh ; he has thus not
remained in the other world, nor has he entered into the flesh
merely in appearance, but he has actually become one and the
same flesh with the commtlnity (cf Heb. U. 14 and 1 John iv. 2).
This also explains the new meaning which is given to the notion
of irX-rjpcopa in the Epistle to the Ephesians ; for there appears to
be no doubt that it is used in quite a different sense from that
which it bears in the Epistle to the Colossians.i There, it is a
dogmatic notion, and refers to the fulness of the Godhead, of the
divine power to save, the dwelling of which in Christ gave him
his position as head over all things in the universe and in the
coramunity ; but in our Epistle it is an ethical notion, the sense
of which varies indeed in particular points, but is nowhere that
of Col. i. 19 and ii. 9. For according to Eph. L 22 f , which pas
sage evidently refers to Col. i. 18 f , the community, as the criopa
of Christ, is at the same time to rrXypcopa toC toL Trdvra ev Trao-t
TrXypovpevov, L e. the filling up, completing of him who fiUs aU
in aU. There is therefore a certain reciprocity between the two
— it is Christ himself indeed who fills the universe, but he actu
ally does this only by first receiving his own filling up and com
pletion by means of the community. Christ is thus the absolute
principle, but yet he is not tliis by himself alone, but only in
conjunction with the community, in which alone his true nature
reaUzes itself The community, however, is not a multitude
collected once for all, but is a thing that is ever coming into
existence and growing, and therefore the reality of that which
Christ according to his idea or in his true nature eternally is, is
not a reality that exists absolutely, but one that is always
coming into existence in time. The beginning of this realization
was effected by his exaltation, whereby he was placed in a con
dition to bestow on the community the gifts and offices neces-
' The remarks that follow are entirely opposed to the view of Holtzmann, who
(ut supra, pp. 222 — 227) endeavours to establish the identity of this notion in the two
Epistles.

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 173
sary to its existence and growth ; for that reason his exaltation
above the heavens is especially referred to the purpose of his
fiUing all things (iv. 10). But the full realization ofthe TrXypcopa
tou Xpto-Tov depends further on the advancing growth of the
community towards the unity of faith and knowledge. Only in
proportion as it develops itself into a perfect (full-grown and
matured) man, i. e. cultivates all its faculties and powers up to
the full strength and harmony of an organism corresponding to
its idea, does it attain to the degree of mature development at
which it actuaUy becomes that which it ought to be for Christ^-
TrX-fjpcopa Xpto-Tov, SO as actually to serve as the full and adequate
completion of its head, or to exhibit the idea of Christ as the
ideal principle of the universe in complete reality visible on
earth (iv. 12 f, ets oiKoSopyv tov a-cLparos roS XpicrToS, pexpi,
KaravT-fjcrcopev ot TrdvTes ets t!^v evoryra rys Tricrrecos Kal Tijs eTrtyvto-
o-ews TOV vioS TOV Oeov, ets dvSpa TeAetov, ets perpov ijAtKtas tov
TrXypcoparos tov Xpto-Tov). Somewhat different is the sense of
TrX-fipcopa TOV ^eov in UL 19, which seems to allude to Col. ii. 9'f
in the same way as i. 23 does to Col. i. 19, inasmuch as TrX-qpcopa
TOV Oeov sounds like TrX-qpcopa rys deoTyros, and rrXypcodyre like ecrTe
. . . TrerrXypcopevoi. But here again the parallelism is only ex
ternal; the thought in the two instances is entirely different.
In the passage from the Colossians, the religious perfection of
Christianity is dogmatically deduced from the indwelling of the
fulness of God in Christ, in virtue of which Christians have
no further need of adventitious aids to religious perfection by
means of extraneous observances of asceticism and angel- wor
ship. In the passage from the Ephesians, on the contrary,
TrXypovo-Oai is not a dogmatic declaration, but an ethical task to
be accomplished (tva TrXypoiOyre), and the rrX-qpcopa TOV Oeov is not
a Christological reality, but an ethical ideal (ets rrdv to TrX-qpcopa
TOV Oeov), namely, that condition in which the fulness of the
powers of the divine life, or the gifts of favour, shall have passed
over into the community's own life, through the practical know
ledge of the love of Christ. Although, then, the grammatical

174 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
sense of rrX-qpcopia ( = fulness or being filled, passive) is different
from its sense in the two passages previously quoted, in which
as appUed to Christ it denotes his completing or filUng up (in
an active sense), yet the theological idea' is essentiaUy the same,
namely, that the Christian TrX-qpcopia is not something abeady
complete, a Christological reaUty, but a thing that reaUzes itself
only in the formation and growth of the community to and in
Christ. Now if we consider that the notion of rrX-jpcopa is used
in the Epistle to the Colossians in an. unvarying sense, clearly
indicated by the Ebionite Christology which it opposes, but in
the Epistle to the Ephesians in a different sense, by no means
so weU defined as the other, and constantly fluctuating, we may
conclude with great probabUity that the author of the Ephe
sians took the word from the Epistle to the Colossians, but, as
its original sense was no longer familiar to him or no longer
sufficiently significant, altered its meaning quite indepen
dently, now in one way and now in another, to suit his own
purpose. But not only does the use of these expressions show the
Epistle to the Ephesians to be later and dependent ; the. differ
ence of the thought also points to a more mature development
of the theological consciousness in it than in the Epistle to the
Colossians. It is no longer occupied in gaining and making
good its dogmatic Christological basis, but has already begun to
turn it to account in the practical consequences that flow from
it for the life of the Church. That Christ as he is in his abstract
relation to God and the world possesses the rrXypcopa, and is o
Tct TrdvTtt ev jroo-t TrAijpov/*cvos, is as firmly held in this Epistle as
in the Epistle to the Colossians ; but this Christological idea is
still an imperfect abstraction so long as it does not receive its
concrete fUling in the rrXypoSa-Oai of the community as the
¦irXypcopa of Christ. Precisely in the same way the Christ of
John regards his glorification as not completed until, as he
already knows himself to be one with his Father, so also his
community shaU become one in him and the Father; the Sd^a,

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 175
dyd-rry, x«/"s and dX-yOeia which were manifested in Christ — in a
word, the TrXiqpcopa (John i. 16), attained to its fuU reaUty only in
the united universal Church (John xvii. 21 f : tVa Trdvres ev Jo-tv,
KaOcos o-v, Trdrep, iv ip,ol Kdyco iv croi, iva Kal avrol iv ¦qptv ev wo-tv"
Kat eyto t^v So^av, -qv SeScoKds poi, SeScoKa a-urois, iva coa-iv ev, KaOci)S
¦qpets ev ecrpev, eyw ev avTOts Kat o-v ev epol, iva loa-i rereXeicopevoi ets
ev' tva ij dydrry, -qv -qydTrycrds pe, ev avrots y Kdyco ev avTOts : ver. 13,
i'va e'xMo-i ryv x^P"" ryv ip,yv rreTrXypcopevyv ev eavrots). And with
this finaUy is connected the further pecuUarity, that the Christ
of the Epistle to the Ephesians, more than the Christ of the
older Pauline teaching, but Uke the Christ of John, is repre- ,
sented as acting independently in the work of redemption and
the guidance of the community. "Whereas throughout the writ
ings of Paul, and also in the paraUel passages of the Colossians,
which the writer of the Ephesians had before him (L 20 and
ii. 14), it is God who institutes reconcUiation by means of Christ;
according to the Ephesians (iL 14 — 17), it is Christ who effects
in his own person the reconcUiation of these parties who are
estranged from each other, and who himself announces the peace
that has been made; he is no longer the expiatory sacrifice
ordained by God, but appears — ^just as in the Epistle to the
Hebrews — as the sacrificing priest who offers himself as a well-
pleasing sacrifice (v. 2). And whUe, according to Paul, it is God
himself who distributes the gifts and offices in the community
(1 Cor. xiL 28), according to Eph. iv. 7 — 21, this is a function of
the exalted Christ. If we reflect that, even according to the
Epistle before us, Christ is as essentiaUy connected with the
community as the head with the body that completes it, we
shaU perceive, in the more independent position of Christ, only
the natural expression of the self-consciousness of the commu
nity when it had gained sufficient strength for internal autonomy
and external independence. But since Christian autonomy only
exists in dependence on God, and is not conceivable apart from
this, this more independent position of Christ towards God is
necessarUy supplemented by his more decided subordination to

176 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
Him; for this reason God is called, Eph. i. 17, "the God of our
Lord Jesus Christ," which implies subordination neither more
nor less than the words of Christ in John, "the Father is greater
than I." In any case, however, no inference can be drawn in
favour of a less exalted Christology in the Epistle to the Ephe
sians as compared with that to the Colossians, for in the latter
o Oebs TOV Xpicrrov is spoken of in precisely the same way (ii 2).
The frequent mention of the rrvevpa, which occurs thirteen
times in the Epistle to the Ephesians, against one (and that a
doubtful) instance in the Colossians, has essentiaUy the same
dogmatic ground as the more independent position of Christ
towards God. The reason why the Trvevp,a falls into the back
ground in the Epistle to the Colossians is evidently the pre
dominance of the person of Christ, as such, against an Ebionite
doctrine of angels, to which the rrvevpa could not be sharply
opposed, since it was itself represented by the Ebionites as of
an angelic nature. But the reason of its being more prominent
in the Epistle to the Ephesians is the greater significance and
more independent position of the community, which serves to
complete the reaUty on earth of Christ, its heavenly head, just
as the Christ of John has his representative, who is to carry on
his work on earth, in the Paraclete sent to the community. As
in that Gospel the exalted Christ sends the Paraclete to the com
munity, so here Christ, who has ascended to heaven, distributes
his gifts to the community, giving them apostles, prophets, &c.
(iv. 7, 11). And if the Paraclete is certainly more distinctly dif
ferent from Christ in John's Gospel than the Trvevp,a is here, yet
there also we may perceive an intermingling of the coming of
the Paraclete with the return of Christ to his community ; and
in the same way the preaching of the gospel is partly referred
here to the operation of the spirit of revelation, and partly de
clared to be the function of Christ at his (second) coming ; for
the words of ii. 17, Kat iXOlov evayyeXia-aro eip-qvyv, Cauuot SUrcly
refer to anything but the invisible return of the exalted Christ
in the spirit of evangelic truth, since they denote a consequence

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 177
of the work of reconcUiation before spoken of, and since the
elp-qvy that was announced was the result of his death which
procured peace, and therefore could not be proclaimed before it ;
the announcement of peace to the GentUes (tois paKpdv) especiaUy
could not have been made by the earthly Christ, because in fact
it only began with the preaching of Paul to the GentUes. The
PauUne author of this Epistle has also a very distinct conscious
ness of this ; otherwise he would not have made his Paul say,
Kara drroKaXvipiv iyvcopicrOy poi to pvcrrypiov, nor SO studiously
have exhibited Paul's o-vveo-tv ev tw pvcrrypicf tov Xpio-Tov, as
well as the favour speciaUy granted to him of preaching to the
GentUes (UL 3, 4, 8), It is true that, as if to extenuate this
advantage of Paul, it is immediately added that the mystery of
the ordinance of salvation for the Gentiles also had been im
parted by the spirit of revelation to "the holy Apostles and
Prophets " in generaL If the prominence given to Paul shows
a historical recollection of what had actually taken place, this
placing together of " the holy Apostles " as colleagues who were
perfectly unanimous on the question of the Gentiles, is an un
doubted indication of the later compromising Paulinism, But
that " the (Christian) ^ Prophets " are placed beside the Apostles,
is a remarkably suggestive peculiarity of this Epistle, The
Prophets are the specific recipients and organs of the spbit of
revelation. Now, as they do not merely occupy a transitory
position among other officers of the community, dependent on
the contingent endowment of x"-p^<^p-"-ra, but form together with
the Apostles the firm foundation-stone of the commuiUty, this
involves the presupposition that the spirit of revelation which
worked in the Prophets is as much an independent principle of
truth for the community ,2 as the earthlj--. Christ was for the
Apostles who were his immediate disciples. But this is essen-
'- That the Christian, and not the Old Testament Prophets are meant, ought, in
the face of iii, 5. (we vHv dTreKaX-vip9r] ro'iQ dy. ajr, Kal Trpo^nraiQ), never to have
been doubted ; but iv, 11 (roiiQ pev aTroaroKovQ, roiiQ Si TrpofriraQ iScoKev) precludes
the identification of them with the Apostles (Hofmann),
'-" Cf, Kostlin, ut supra, p, 373,
VOL, IL N

178 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
tially the idea of John xvi, 12 f. That it is not, on the other
hand, quite Pauline, we may see by simply comparing Eph,
ii, 20 with 1 Cor, UL 11 : in the latter, Jesus Christ is the one
and only foundation of the community ; in the former, the
Apostles and Prophets, with Christ as the corner-stone that
holds them together; and still later, the piUar and ground of
the truth is simply the Church (1 Tim. UL 15). Thus, then,
this point alone suffices to show that the Epistle to the Ephe
sians marks the stage of transition from PauUnism to Catholi
cism, And it is this very strengthening of the self-consciousness
of the Church which attains to completely harmonious expression
in the co-ordination of the Prophets of the Church with the
Apostles in the prominence given to the independent Trvevpa
drroKaXv^ecos, and in the idea of the completion of Christ by the
community as his rrX-qpcopa.
The Epistle to the Ephesians foUows that to the Colossians in
describing the work of Christ as the reconciUation of those who
are sundered, yet in such a way as to give (as in its Christology)
an essentiaUy new, that is to say a practical, appUcation to the
dogmatic idea. This wiU be most clearly seen by comparing
Eph, iL 14 — 16 with the two parallel passages that we have
brought together, CoL i, 20 — 22 and iL 14. Both writers speak
in nearly the same words of dTroKaTaAAd^at, elp-qvyv Trotijo-at be
tween ixOpovs, and that Sta tov arp.aTOS TOV 0-Tavpov iv T$ crcopari
TTJS crapKos (ev ry (rapKi, ev evi crcop-ari, Eph,), and of removing OUt
of the way a waU of separation between t-wo parties who were to
be reconciled (/.teo-oTOtxov tov <j)payp,ov Xvcras, TOV v6p,ov TCOV evToAwv
ev S6yp,aa-i Karapy-qcras, in Eph,, and i^aXeixpas to KaO ypcov
Xeip6ya<l>ov tois Soypacriv, o yv vrrevavriov 'yp.tv, Kal a-urb ypKev eK rov
p'earov, in CoL), But if we examine this more closely, we find
that, as in the case of TrX-qpcopa and rrXypovcrOai, the author of the
Epistle to the Ephesians puts a different meaning into the words
taken from the Colossians, For whereas in the latter the enmity
to be reconciled by the death of Christ consists in the estrange
ment of the world in general from God, and more especially of

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 179
the Gentile Christians to whom it was addressed, and the wall
of partition taken out of the way is the guUt before God which
oppresses the world of sinners, or, in other words, the bond of
the condemning law which gives this world over to the hostUe
spiritual powers, and the instrument of union or reconciUation
is the fieshly body of Christ, which was put to death — in the
Epistle to the Ephesians, on the contrary, the enemies to be
reconcUed to each other are the GentUes and the Jews ; the waU
of division which is to be removed is the law, as a social separa
tion between these two classes of men ; and lastly, the body that
unites them is the mystical body of Christ, or the universal
Church, The exOpa which is to be changed into elp-qvy by Christ,
is, at aU events, in ver, 15 no other than the aUenation between
TOl dpcjiorepa, tovs Svo, tovs dp4>oTepovs, who are described in ver, 15,
and afterwards in vers, 17 and 18 (ot dpcfiorepoi), as the eyyvs and
the paKpdv ovres, L e, as Jew^s and GentUes, It is true that in
ver, 16 ,an dTroKaTaAAdgat TOVS dp4>OTepovs rip Oec^ is also Spoken of,
so that the 'exOpav that follows is certainly ambiguous, and may
refer either to the enmity between the dp,<l>6Tepoi and God, or to
that between the two parties included in the dpcftorepoi, L e.
between the Jews and Gentiles. The latter interpretation is
favoured by the whole train of thought in the context, by the
analogy of "ex^pav" in ver. 15, and by the expression "ev ivi
crcopari" in ver, 16, which must in any case refer to the union of
Jews and GentUes in the one body of Christ's community. If
the dbect reference of the clause to d7roKaTaAAd£at ti^T OeS, ap
pears to require with equal force the other interpretation of
exOpav, even here the difficulty consists simply in the confusion
of two different ideas, and this is very easily accounted for by the
fact that the passage. in question is not original, but came from
the Epistle to the Colossians, with the words of which a new
idea was combined ;^ the words, diroKaT. toS Oeio, and the corre-
1 Compare with the above, Bonig, nt supra, p. 81 : "It is in the highest degree
probable that a passage which borrows its expressions from a terminology that ordina
rily belongs to another circle of ideas, is dependent on the paraUel passage which pre-
n2

180 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
spending meaning of 'exOpa, are introduced from the earUer
Epistle into ver. 16, and as they stand here of course do not fit
in with the other ideas of the passage, which does not, like the
original, refer to the reconciUation of the sinful world with God,
but to that of the Jews with the GentUes. Moreover, the train
of thought in the passage from the Ephesians suffers in other
respects from a certain incongruity, which, as we may plainly
see, results only from the connection of its expressions with the
terminology of the Epistle to the Colossians, which the author
had before him. "When it is said that Christ has made Jew and
Gentile a new man in himself, making peace between them, and
that he has, for this purpose, done away with the law of the
commandments which separated these two sections, this is per
fectly inteUigible : but it is less clear how we are to conceive the
doing away of the separating boundary-Une as effected " in the
flesh of Christ," which is thus the pf^ce of union for the two
parties separated by the law, who are to be reconcUed ; an idea
which is, for this reason, shortly afterwards abandoned, and
replaced by the entirely different one, that the reconcUiation of
those who were at variance has taken place in " the one (mysti
cal) body" of Christ. Here we have again a mixture of two
different ideas; the words of CoL i. 22, dTroKaT^AAa^'ev iv t$
o-copiari rys crapKbs avrov (Sid rov Oavdrov), are in the first instance
separated by our author, into their two component parts — e'v
o-apKt and Iv cTcop-ari — and the former of these is retained in its
original meaning, as the flesh of Christ which suffered death.
The word in this sense was appropriate enough in the original
context, where this fleshly -body, which was put to death, is the
expiatory means of doing away with the enmity between God
and the sinful world ; but it is not so appropriate in its new
connection, for the slain body of Christ cannot weU be regarded
as a means of reconciliation for doing away with the enmity
sents these expressions in their ordinary connection.'' The further arguments also
which he uses, regarding the relation of iv Soy/iaaiv (Eph.) and toiq Soypaaiv (Col),
appear to me to be unanswerable.

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 181
between Jew and GentUe. Our author feeling this, now takes
the other word from the original passage, but gives it a figurative
sense, by which it is made to fit in with the new connection of
ideas— he turns the real " ev t$ criop,aTi" (ttjs a-apKos, &c,) of the
Colossians into the figurative " Iv evt o-copan," which now has
absolutely nothing in common with the preceding " Iv r-y crapKi,"
with which it originally formed one notion.
The two other passages in which our author treats of Christ's
sacrifice of himself also lead us to the conclusion that he Was
not famiUar with the idea of an expiatory death. According to
V. 2, Christ has "given himself up for us, as an offering and
sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smeUing savour;" and according to
V. 25, he has offered himself up for the community, that he
might sanctify it by cleansing, &c. According to this, the death
of Christ appears, not as vicarious expiatory suffering, but as a
sacerdotal act of voluntary self-devotion to the community,
prompted by love, which is the verj^ thing that makes this act
weU-pleasing to God, and in which also love and pity are
emphasized as the qualities which lie at the root of it (L 4 f ,
U. 4, 8).
The effect of this moral act of sacrifice, is the sanctification of
the community, L e. its purifying consecration to Christ, as
belonging to him, to union with him as his bride (tva a-vryv
dyidcry KaOapicras .... i'va Trapaa-r-qcry avTos eavrcp evSo^ov t^v
iKKXycriav . ... iva -y dyia Kal dp.wpos). But this purifying deVO-
tion is produced by the forgiveness of the sins whose polluting
guUt has separated man from God ; by this they are redeemed
from their former condition of being dead in sins, and are made
alive in Christ ; they are taken out of their alienation from God,
and brought near to Him, so that they now have access to God
through Christ (ev <^ exopev ttjv dTroAvTpcoa-tv Sta tov aiparos avrov,
ryv d(f>ecriv riov rrapaTrrcopdrcov, L 7 ; veKpovs ovras rots rrapaTrrcopacn
a-vve^cooTroiya-e rep Xpurrco, U. 5 ; ot' TroTe dvTCS paKpdv, Iyyvs lyevTj^TjTe
iv T(f aipari ro-C Xpurrov, H. 13; St' ov e'xopev ryv Trpoa-o.ycoyyv Trpos
TOV Trarepa, ver. 18). In all these turns of thought this Epistle

182 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
closely follows the direction of the later Paulinism which had
been taken by the Epistles to the Hebrews and Colossians ; aU
these ideas — KaOapi^eiv, cheats T(3v Trapa7rTa)/idT0)v, veKpbs rots
TrapaTrrcopacri, crwe^coorroiycre rc^ Xpicrrc^, eyyvs yevar^at — have their
exact parallel only in the Epistles just named, and not in the
genuine Epistles of Paul. (Ka^aptfetv occurs often in the Epistle
to the Hebrews, and indeed in a paraUel sense with dyidfeiv, and
connected with d<j>ecris, Heb. ix. 22, 13 f , x. 2 ; dytdfetv is found
in connection with the sacrifice of Christ, x. 10, xUi. 12 ; d^eo-is
does not occur in Paul's writings, but in Col. i. 14, Heb. ix. 22,
X. 18, and very frequently in Luke and the Acts of the Apostles;
veKpos, applied to the state of the natural man under the dominion
of sin, is not found in Paul, but in Col. ii 13, Heb. vi. 1, and in
ix. 14 in the connection yeKpa epya ; in Eev. iii. 1, fijs Kal veKphs
et, and in the Epistle to the Ephesians three times — U. 1—5,
V. 14 ; (Twe^cooTroiycre Only in Col. U. 13 ; for eyyvs yeveo-^at, and
Trpoo-aytoy^v exetv, cf iyyi^opev rep Oecp, Heb. vU. 19, and rrpoa-ep-
xearOai tc;) Oe^, which occurs SO often in Hebrews.) It is a pecu
liarity of the Epistle before us that to crwe^coorroiycre and o-w^yetpe
is added o-weKd^to-ev Iv TOts lirovpavtots Iv Xpto-T<p' 'Itjo-ov, U. 6, by
wbich is meant the placing of Christians in personal communion
with God by the mediation of Christ, and therefore the same
notion as is expressed in U. 18, St' avTov exopev ttjv irpooraywy^v
. . . Trpos TOV Trarepa. The idea of Phil. iii. 20, -qpZv TO TroXirevpa
iv o-vpavots vrrdpxei, is indeed akin to this, but it is not identical
with it, since this TroXirevpa does not refer to the " sojourn," the
actual condition of the Christian, but to his " home," where he
has indeed his right of citizenship, but not as yet his actual per
manent abode ; oh the contrary, he is waiting for the coming of
his Eedeemer thence (ibid.), which presupposes that tUl then
he does not ivSypet Trpos TOV Kvptov, but iKSypet drrb rov Kvpiov
(2 Cor. V. 6 — 8). This very " dwelling with the Lord," which
Paul only hoped for in the future life, is connected in this pas
sage of the Ephesians by the words, "set in heavenly places with
Christ," with the present inward state of Christians ; and this

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 183
goes beyond the Epistle to the Hebrews, inasmuch as according
to that Epistle we have on the one hand indeed already arrived
at the heavenly Jerusalem (xii. 22. f ), but on the other hand
are only connected by the anchor of hope with the sanctuary
above, whither Christ as our forerunner has first entered alone
(vL 19 f). It also goes beyond the Epistle to the Colossians,
according to which the life of Christians does not yet entirely
belong to them, but is hidden with Christ in God, untU the
manifestation of Christ, and therefore awaits them in the future
Ufe in heaven. In contradistinction then to the earlier Paul
inism, the Epistle to the Ephesians, in the passage we have
quoted, lays less stress on the transcendence of the final con
summation, and more on the immanence of the present Christian
consciousness of salvation, a tendency which we find again most
distinctly in John (cf John L 51, dirdpn Sij/ea-Oe tov ovpavov
dveoiydTa, and V. 24, 6 Tricrrevcov e'xet fwTjv atoivtov, Kat ets Kpicriv ovk
epxerai, dAAa pera^ejSyKev iK tov ^avaTov ets Tijv ^(o^v, and other
similar passages). Further, among the various descriptions of
Christian salvation, we miss here, as in the Epistle to the Colos
sians, the specifically Pauline notion of StKatovv, StKatoo-vvij ^eov ;
but — as in the Epistle to the Hebrews — it is rather the word
that is wanting than the idea itself, for this underlies all the
expressions that have been brought together above as their
foundation, inasmuch as aU these (and also o-we^oioTrotrjo-e, a-w-q-
yetpe, o-vveKa^to-ev Iv o-vpavots and dytdfetv) denote the estabUshment
of a new objective relation to God, translation into the state of
favour, belonging to God, and peaceful intercourse with Him,
but not a subjective renovation of Ufe, or moral sanctification.
"With regard to the objects to which the work of Christ is
directed, it is worthy of remark, and entbely agrees with the
inferences drawn above from the Christology, that the work of
Christ is, on the one hand, Umited to the community, to those
who have been elected from all eternity; and, on the other hand,
extended to the universe, coniprising aU things in heaven and
earth (the former in v. 25, yydTrycn ryv iKKXycriav Kal eavTov

184 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
TrapeSoiKev vrrep avT'/js, tva avT^v dyidcry, evSo^ov ryv eKKXycriav Trapacr-
T-qa-y, &C. ; the latter in i. 10, dvaKecf>aXaicocracrOai rd rrdvra ev tiJ)
XpicTTi^, Tot Iv TOts ovpavots, Kat TO, Itti TTJS yTjs). As Christ IS desig
nated as in very deed the principle which fills the universe (6 Ta
Trdvra ev Trao-t rrXypovpevos), but at the same time as from all
eternity the head of the community (Iv <^ i^eXe^aro ypds rrpb
Kara^oXys Kocrpov), SO that he ueeds it for his own completion,
for the fulfilment of his whole being, because in it alone he is
actually the principle of Ufe that determines all things — so in
corresponding fashion the historical working_of Christ, in which
alone his eternal being develops itself, extends directly over
the community, indirectly over the universe. And as Christ
first of all by his devotion gains the community for himself, and
as its living head inspires and animates it, as it grows in him,
with his spbit, so he becomes, the more this narrow cbele
extends itself, more and more a " head over all," comprehending
the universe in himself (Ke4>aXyv -iwep Trdvra, i. 22). This cosmical
position, as the head of the universe comprehending aU things
within himself, is ascribed to Christ indeed by this Epistle in
common with the Epistle to the Colossians, in which the words
of i. 20 especially (St' avTov dTroKaTaAAd^at Tct TrdvTa ets avTov, eiVe
Ta Itti t'^s yijs, ctTe Ta ev Tots ovpavots) form an exact parallel to
the passage before us ; but yet a pecuUar modification of the idea
appears to be indicated by the choice of the expression dvoKe^a-
Xaicoa-ao-Oai, inasmuch as this word proceeds from the notion
which usually indicates the position of Christ towards the com
munity, as Ke<j>aXy rys cKKXycrias. Accordingly, Christ is ordained
to. this, and the divine " dispensation of the fulness of times "
(the government of the world going on through the ages) has for
its object that the same position which he assumes at first
towards the community — as its all-comprising head — should
finally, and through these means, be assumed by him towards
the universe ; and that in this also he should comprehend iii
al)solute unity and harmony aU things both in heaven and on
earth, which were before separated and held apart by exclusive

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 185
baniers, as he had at first in the community comprehended in
one body the two classes of men who were before divided,
namely, Jews and Gentiles. The importance of that, to which
the whole purpose of this Epistle is directed, namely, the com
prehension of the Gentile and Jewish Christians in the perfect
unity of the universal Church, could not, in fact, be more grandly
expressed than by pointing out, that this process of uniting the
community on earth, was not only an analogue and type of the
absolute process of the universe, but in truth an essential
moment of it. For this reason the community serves also to
display to the powers and principalities of the heavenly world
the manifold wisdom of God, because they perceive in its his
torical development the beginning of the realization of the abso
lute plan of the universe itself (iii. 10). Thus we have in this
profound doctrine of the Epistle to the Ephesians only another
instance of the same distinguishing peculiarity of it which we
have so often noticed, viz., that to the theological statements
which appear in the Epistle to the Colossians, in the form
simply of dogmatic declarations regarding the person and the
^ historical reconcUing work of Christ, and which there serve
only to bring to light the absolute oneness and comprehensive
importance of this, it gives a practical application in the interest
of the Church, and turns it to account as the foundation of its
endeavours to bring about a union. In this respect the Epistle
is thoroughly original.
The 'subjective appropriation of salvation is brought about by
baptism and faith. Baptism is in v. 26 designated as the means
of purification, by which the consecration of the community as
the pure bride of Christ, rendered possible by his death, is com
pleted (KaOapicras, Aor. Part., shows the way in which dytdo-ij is
effected). But the purifying effect of baptism depends on two
things — on the AovTpov tov vSaTos and the pypa ; this is the same
union of the sensible medium with the spiritual agent as we find
in John Ui. 5, where " water and spirit " are placed together, the
latter being manifested and becoming operative in the " word."

186 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
The presupposition in both cases is, that the efficacy of the
spirit or of the word is mystically united with the act of wash
ing with water, one being inherent in the other, as essence and
manifestation. The further notion that the effect of baptism is
connected with purification (from defiling sin and guilt), and not
directly with the reception of the spirit, and the new birth by
the spirit, is a deviation from the views of Paul and John, the
nearest approach to which is found in 1 Peter UL 21 (compare
what has been said above).
Besides baptism, faith is in true PauUne fashion caUed a
means of the appropriation of the saving favour of God (t-q ydp
xdpiri icrre crecrcocrp,evoi Sta ttjs Trto-Tecos, U. 8). In consequence of
their having believed in the word of truth, the gospel of salva
tion. Christians have received the promised Holy Spirit as a
seal and pledge of, the certainty of their - inheritance (L 13).
Through faith in Christ, we have in him peace (of conscience)
and free access in trustfulness (to God), iU. 12. These expres
sions for the subjective certainty of salvation, for the conscious
ness of being in a state of favour, are common to this Epistle and
the Eomans (-Trpoa-aycoy-q, Eom. V. 2), to the Hebrews and the first
Epistle of John (rrappya-ia = a peaceful conscience. Christian cer
tainty of salvation, is not found in Paul, but in Heb. in. 6,
iv, 16, X, 19, X. 35; 1 John iL 28, UL 21, iv, 17, v. 14; the
notion of " sealing " the faithful by the Holy Spirit given as a
" pledge," is taken by our author from 2 Cor, i, 22). Finally,
faith is also the subjective instrument by means of which Christ
dweUs in the hearts of Christians (KaTotK^o-at tov Xpto-Tov Sta t^s
TTtcTTeois ev Tats KapSiais vpcov, UL 17). Certain as it is that the
Epistle to the Ephesians in the passages that have been quoted
shares the mystical view of faith held by Paul and John, it is
remarkable that we find in it also sayings that recall the objec
tive notion of faith which became at a later period the view of
the Church. For instance, iv, 13, Karavr-qcrcopev ol rrdvres ets Tijv
evoTTjTtt T^s TTio-Teus, aud ver, 5, where pia rricms is placed between
els K-vpios and ev /Sdrrrurpa, two purely objective moments, and

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 187
where consequently the p,ia Tria-ns which is placed between them
can mean nothing but the objective content of faith — faith as
held by the Church ; which doctrine we shaU find still more de
cidedly and more frequently in the later pastoral letters,
A decisive mark of the lateness of this writer is the great
stress laid on knowledge, though this is not peculiar to this
Epistle, but common to all the later literature of the Pauline
school (cf especiaUy the Epistle to the Colossians), and of the
school of John (compare the accumulation of such expressions
as yvwo-ts, Ui, 18 f; eTrtyvoio-ts, L 17, iv, 13; o-vvecrts, UL 4; 0pd VTjo-ts,
i, 8 ; croijiia, ibid. ; cro<j>ia Kal drroKdXvxpis, L 17 ; dTTOKoAv^ts, ^X. 3 ;
yvupto-^^vat and drroKaXvcpOyvai, iii, 5, 10 ; ' cfycori^eiv, Tre^uiricrpevoi
oc^OaXpoi, UL 9, L 18). Various objects of this Christian know
ledge are specified — the Son of God, iv, 13, i, 17 (as the Christo
logical foundation of the growth and union of the community) ;
the love of Christ which is beyond all knowledge, iU, 19 (as the
central point of evangelical truth, from which all its dimensions
are to be measured, cf ver, 18); the hope of the divine caUing;
the riches of the glory of his inheritance among the saints, L 18
(as the ultimate object of the Christian Ufe of faith); finally, tbat
which comprehends all these, the secret of the eternal plan of
God, the object of which is to comprehend all that is separated
in heaven and earth, and here especiaUy the Jews and GentUes
in unity in Christ, i, 10, UL 8 — 6 (Le. the idea of Christianity in
its absolute truth and necessity absorbing not only aU former
religious differences, but everything that is finite).
The life of salvation is represented as a continuous process of
sanctification, which has its negative and its positive side. As
to the former, it consists in laying aside the old man (iv, 22) — a
notion which our author has taken from Col, UL 9, but which
(and this indicates a train of thought already far removed from
the early Paulinism) he considers it necessary tq explain by a
preliminary paraphrase (which by no means corresponds with
the original fulness of meaning of that Pauline expression),
namely, KaToi ttjv Trporepav dvaa-rpocji'qv, which, taken with the

188 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
context, can only be considered as an explanatory amplification
of the notion, tov TraAatov dvOponrov. On its positive side, sancti
fication consists in dvaveovcrOai Tcp rrvevpan tov voos, Kat evSvo-ao-0at
TOV Katvov dvOpioTrov tov KaTot Oebv KricrOevra iv SiKaiocrvvy Kal
ba-ioryri t^s dXyOeias (iv. 23 f ). Here we are at once struck by
the resemblance to the corresponding passage in Colossians;
dvaveovo-5at has been suggested by vlov in the latter, Katvdv by
dvaKaivo-vpevov, and Kard Oebv KrurOevra by KaT etKova tov KTio-aVTOs
a-vrov, the inaptness of the last expression showing clearly that
the Epistle to the Ephesians is the dependent one ; for to renew
ourselves after the image of him who has created the new man
in us, L e, Christ, is an incomparably simpler and more natural
idea, than that the new man is created after God, by which it is
not clear whether the first creation of Adam is meant, or the new
creation by the second birth of the Christian, Moreover, it is to
be observed that dvaveovcrOai r^ rrvevpan tov vods, i, 0, " with
respect to the spirit of the mind," is a very un-Pauline turn of
thought ; the expression rrvevpa tov vods is not to be found any
where else, and is harsh, inasmuch as Trvev/.ta is in no other
instance used to qualify or determine vovs, or to denote any
aspect, property, or predicate of it in any way. PauL it is tiue,
also speaks of an dvaKatvwo-ts tov vods, but he never refers to
Trvevpa as the object of renovation ; even if it be not un-PauUne
to speak of the renewal of the rrvevpa of man by the rrvevpa rov
Oeov, it is certain that the expression does not once occur in the
older Epistles.
The Christian moral life is called a walk worthy of the calling
by which we are caUed (iv, 1), an imitation of God and Christ,
especially in love (v. 1, 2), a walk such as becomes children of
light, the fruit of which consists in aU kindness and righteous
ness and truth (v, 8 f ), an idea that is still more akin to 1 John
i, 5 — 10, than it is to Thess, v, 5 f That, together with faith,
love is especially empliasized, is certainly quite Pauline, but the
way in which they are connected, dydTrTj perd Tricrreios, is never
theless peculiar, and different from Trto-Tts St' dydrrqs ivepyovpevy

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 189
Again, that turn is very decidedly given to the idea of love
which became common at a later date, namely, that it is the
cementing bond of thei feUowship of the Church, therefore the
mind which characterizes the Church, the tendency to Church
union (iv, 2, 3, 15, 16); in this sense, truth and love, as the oppo
site of heresy and schism, are the means of buUding up the com
munity (iV, 15, dATj^evovTes Iv dyaTrrj av^-qcrmp,ev ets avTov toi Trdvra,
cf 2 John 3, Iv dXyOeicf, Kal dydrry). To say that good works are
more strongly emphasized than in the older Epistles of PauL is
as correct as it would be mistaken to see in this fact a departure
from the standpoint of Paul ; the unserviceableuess of works,
and the unconditional nature of God's favour as the only cause
of salvation, are declared with the utmost possible distinctness
(U, 5, 8, 9, OVK 1^ 'epycov tva /t^ Tts KavxTj'oTjTat), But because the
Pauline opposition to the epya v6p.ov was less necessary for the
Pauline, nay hyper-Pauline, readers of this Epistle, than the
enforcement of practical morality in a good Ufe of active work,
this view of Christian ethics is with good reason made more
prominent than the older dogmatical teaching of Paul, "We have
already seen that this was the case in the first Epistle of Clement
and the first of Peter, ouly with this difference, that in the
Epistle to the Ephesians the harmonizing of the ethical point of
view with the Pauline doctrine of God's favour is carried out
more distinctly, and also more successfuUy,' than in those
Epistles, For instance, the moral necessity of good works is
connected with ths unconditional nature of favour in a tho
roughly original manner, by showing that the former are in
cluded in the predetermined purpose of the latter, so that they
do not indeed form a condition of salvation which precedes or
goes with anything else (with faith, according to James ii, 22,
o-vv^pyet), but are a task which is set and made practicable by
means of the favour which is received freely and without price
(U, lO, avTov ydp icrp,ev rroiypa, KrurOevres iv XptoT^ Irjo-ov Itti
e'pyots dya^ots ots TrpoyToipacrev 6 Oebs, iva iv avrots Trepnrar-qcrcopev).
Finally, it is to be remarked that Christian morality is espe-

190 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
ciaUy regarded in this Epistle as being also a warfare with tlie
powers of darkness, with the spirits of evU, who have their abode
in the heavenly region, or rather in the sphere which is between
heaven and earth, in the air (vi, 11, 12, ii. 2). Paul indeed had
also spoken of 6 ^eos atSvos rovrov, who darkens the minds of the
unbelieving (2 Cor, iv. 4), but he regarded the moral warfare of
the Christian as directed only against the fiesh, which was ever
striving against the spirit, not against the spiritual powers of
evU; even the Epistle to the Colossians recognizes no warfare of
this kind, but according to it, on the contrary, the hostUe powers
of the invisible world were conquered by the death of Christ
upon the cross, stripped of their armour, and led away in
triumph. On the other hand, in the writings of John, together
with the higher significance given to Christ, his "adversary also,
the devU, is exalted into the most distinct concretion of a per
sonal principle of evil, of godlessness, and of opposition to
Christ; and not only the immediate work of Christ himself,
but this work as carried on by the community, is represented as
a warfare between the devil and his children (TCKva toS Sia/3dAov)
on the one side, and Christ and his chUdren on the other (1 John
iU. 8 — 10, ii. 13 ; John xvii, 15), Between this more developed
conception and that of Paul, the view of the Epistle to the
Ephesians occupies an intermediate place,^ another proof of the
consistency of its position in the course of the development of
dogma. Let us now, in conclusion, bring together the different expres
sions applied in this Epistle to the community, which is of such
central importance in it, some of which have abeady been
noticed. It is, according to U, 20 — 22, the house, the temple of
God, which has for its foundation the Apostles and (Christian)
Prophets, wdth Christ as the corner-stone which holds it together,
and it is built up by the harmonious putting together of the dif
ferent stones of the buUding, namely, the Jewish and Gentile
Christians, It is, further, the body, which is filled and penetrated
^ Cf. Kostlin, ut supra, p. 75.

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 191
by Christ as its soul (or by the spirit), which depends on Christ
as its. head, and which, lastly, completes and fills up in its turn
him who is its head. "We find all these three appUcations of the
figure in the two passages which refer to it.
In i, 22 f the community, as the crcopa Xpurrov, is entirely
fiUed with him, inasmuch as he is Td TrdvTa Iv Trdo-t rrXypovpevos ;
it is dependent on him, since he is the Kecj^aX-q vrrep Trdvra r-g
iKKXya-iq,; and it ministers again to the complete fiUing up of
its head, is his TrX-qpcopa. Similarly, according to iv, 12 — 16, it
not only grows out of him as its head (1^ a-vro-v, ver, 16), so that
it owes its life and growth to him, but also grows again into him
(ei's avTov, ver, 15); as its building itself up is grounded in Christ,
so it ministers again by its development to the full maturity of
manhood, to the filUng up of Christ (ver, 13), to the fuU reaUza
tion and setting forth of the higher life which has appeared in
principle in Christ, More especiaUy its growth out of him is
brought about by the instruments which the exalted one has
given to it — apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and
teachers (vers, 11 and 12), "Whether these objective instru
ments of the community are also meant by the words of ver, 1 6,
Std Trdo-Tjs dcj)ys rys irnxopyyias, is doubtful ; a comparison of Col.
U. 19, which passage is evidently present here to the author's
mind, would favour that view, for there, at aU events, the subject
under discussion is the connection of the body with the head,
upon which the Christian life of every member is absolutely
dependent ; but in this passage from the Ephesians (in spite of
the words 1^ ov which precede it), the main subject of discussion
appears to be the relation of the individual members of the com
munity to each other, and the mutual association and assistance
of aU the individuals in proportion to the strength of each.^ We
have here again the dogmatic relation of Christians to Christ,
which lay ready to the author's hand in the Colossians, inter
woven with the ethical and social relation of Christians to one
another, as was done in the peculiar turn which was given in
1 Cf, Honig, ut supra, p, 85,

192 PAULINISM IN ITS TRANSITION TO CATHOLICISM.
this Epistle to the doctrine of reconcUiation, as we have already
seen. The community in its relation to Christ is further com
pared to a bride and a wife ; according to this, it is not, as in
the former figure, in organic dependence upon him, which is not
a voluntary relation, but in that free relation of dependence
which results from personal love, and which reposes on mutual
bouds of union, and on the mutual supplementing of independent
existences. This figure of marriage, therefore, impUes a higher
and more independent significance given to the community,
which was already involved in the idea of the rrXypQipa Xpia-rov.
It is true that this figure of husband and wife is fused again into
that of the head and the body (vers, 23, 28 — 30); but the latter
was also, in the former passage, fused again into the figure of the
building of a house (iv, 12, olKoSop,y tov crcoparos), which is quite
intelligible when the fleeting character of such comparisons is
considered. As the leading characteristics of the community, its
purity and its unity are mentioned. The former is referred to
the purification by the washing of water in the word (see above),
L e, to baptism and the sacrificial death of Christ, and is there
fore conceived altogether as an objective characteristic, grounded
in the very nature of the Church, not in any sense a subjective
ideal for individuals. Its unity also rests on purely objective
grounds — it has one Lord, one faith (the universal conviction of
faith, grounded on the apostles and Christian prophets, cf
ii. 20), and one baptism, and it foEows from the unity of God
that there can only be one united Church (iv. 4 — 6). But this
objective unity which exists in principle, demands also a corre
sponding subjective behaviour on the part of its individual
members — they only walk in a manner worthy of their calling,
when they strive by humble and gentle tractabUity in theb
behaviour to each other to preserve the unity of the" spirit in the
bond of peace. This is to be done by dATjSevetv ev dyaTry, the
opposite of every kind of unloving, proud exclusiveness (ver. 15).
The ideal object, for the attainment of which aU should strive,
is, that the unity which exists in principle should also be pro-

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 193
duced in actuality,- namely, in the "unity of the faith, and of the
knowledge of the Son of God " (ver, 13) — i, e, the harmonizing
of all the opposing views of parties into the universal Church.
And the consciousness that the world belonged to this Church
is expressed in the saying, that now, in the historical process of
the formation of the community out of Jews and Gentiles, the
counsel of eternity is unveiled, and the manifold wisdom of
God is displayed to the powers and principalities in heaven
(UL 10, 11). To this Church is directed the gaze of the spiritual
world; in it is realized the counsel of God before the world
began ; by means of it, and out of it, all things attain to their
final destination, namely, to be comprehended in Christ, theb
head. The idea of the universal Church, the end and aim of
that age of nascent Catholicism, could not be more vigorously
expressed.

VOL, IL

CHAPTEE XI,
THE PAULINISM OF THE CHUECH IN ITS
STKUGGLE WITH HERETICAL GNOSTICISM.
(the pastoral epistles and the epistles of IGNATIUS)

As, half a century earUer, the rights of Paul's Gentile converts
had been established, more by the power of actual cbcumstances
than by any dogmatic arguments, so now again the union of
parties, to form the universal Church which was so earnestly
longed for by the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians, came
about quite spontaneously, under pressure of the circumstances
of the time. As a one-sided fantastic speculation, exchanging
the firm ground of history for the imaginary world of mytho
logical seons, began more and more to endanger the foundations
of historical Christianity, all the more prudent elements of the
latter were naturally compelled, in the interest of self-preserva
tion, to unite against the common foe. Consequently, from the
time when the Gnostics came forward more decidedly, we find
the old opposition between Paulinism and Jewish Christianity
retiring more and more into the background, behind a new
opposition between heresy and the Church ; and this took place
without any particula,r concession or compact being required,
simply according to the old rule, that old party divisions dis
appear when a new and more dangerous common foe appears
upon the field. It is quite possible that the new adversary may

PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGCLE WITH GNOSTICISM. 195
have some kindred views and points of contact with the oppo
nents who have been contending with each other ; in that case,
there wUl also be traces of the old opposition in the new one ;
but nevertheless it has become a new opposition, for that which
was before the main object of contest, is now reduced to a matter
of secondary importance, tp a moment. And so it happened here.
Gnosticism, which really grew out of Jewish Christianity, had at
the beginning a very decidedly Jewish colouring, which did not
until a later period (and even then not in all the schools of
Gnosticism) give place to a decided anti-Judaism. "We therefore
find that in the Pauline Epistles written against the false teach
ing of the Gnostics (in the Epistle to the Colossians, the Pastoral
Epistles, and those of Ignatius), Judaism is constantly attacked
together with Gnosticism ; not as if these had been at any time
two distinct classes of opponents, or as if these Judaizers had
been like those of the older Pauline controversy ; but they were
in every instance Gnostic Judaizers and Judaizing Gnostics, and
the controversy usuaUy brings these two sides into immediate
connection.^ The less, however, the Judaism of this date resembled that of
PatU's time, and the more decidedly it separated itself as Gnostic
heresy from the Jewish Christianity of the Church, the more
easy was it for a Paulinism which followed the Church and was
directed against this Gnostic Judaism, to feel itself essentially at
one, in dogma and system, with the Jewish Christianity of the
Church.^ This indicates the general standpoint of the latest
' H'llgenf eld's ingenious attempt to distinguish between the Gruostics and the Juda
izers, as two different sets of opponents, in these three phases of the Pauline contro
versy against Gnosticism, has not been successful in any one of the three positions.
^ The second Epistle of Peter presents an exact parallel to this, regarded from the
other side : the Jewish-Christian author of it (about the time when the pseudo-
Ignatian Epistles were written) is opposing a Gnostic sect which indeed had sprung
out of Paulinism (iii. 16), but which must be carefully distinguished from the true
Paulinism, namely, that of the Church; this Jewish Christian, who is devoted to the
Church considers himself as distinctly in harmony with this Church Paulinism (as he
expressly testifies, iii. 15), but he combats Gnostic Paulinism as a fundamental error.
This very apposite parallel may be considered as a further proof of the correctness of
the above view.
0 2

196 PAULINISM IN -ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
Pauline literature ; in it also we stiU find the contest against
Judaism, but no longer as the contest of a Pauline party against
the Jewish-Christian one, but as a contest of the universal
Church against a heresy.

The Pastoral Epistles.
The standpoint of these Epistles has been described by saying
that they are the abjuration of the Gnostic heresy by PauUnism,
by which it desired to make its peace with the Church ; but this
is wrong in two respects. In the first place, the Gnosticism
against which these Epistles are directed, is in no sense Pauline,
not even as to its origin, but, on the contrary, both in origin and
character decidedly Judaistic ; consequently there could be no
occasion for Paulinism to renounce views which were throughout .
so entirely alien to it. Secondly, however, there was no need
for PauUnism to make its peace with the rest of the Church by
any renunciation of the kind ; but, by the very fact of its oppos
ing extreme heretical views, it felt itself essentiaUy at one with
that Jewish Christianity which separated itself from the heretical
party and became the party of the Church. Catholicity was in
fact involved in the coalition of the efforts of both sides: it
formed itself out of both these sides, in consequence of the
change of front of those w^ho had hitherto opposed each other.
The false teachers combated in these Epistles are Judaistic
Gnostics, and therefore essentially belong to the same class as
those of the Epistle to the Colossians ; but they go beyond these
by the further development of their .heretical speculations. If
the former concerned themselves with the world of angels and
spirits, among whom they believed the fulness of the divine life
to be distributed, the world of spirits was now discussed mytho-
logically and genealogically (Tit. iii. 9 ; 1 Tim. i, 4), L e, they
were represented as acting and suffering subjects of a super
natural history, and their relation to one another was imagined
to be that of descent by sexual generation. But when pebple

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. . 197
had once started on this free handUng of the supersensuous
world, they no longer restricted themselves to the traditional
angeUc and spbitual powers, but added personified ideas to
these imaginary products of their own speculation, by which an
endless extension of genealogies (yeveaAoyt'at dTrepavTot, 1 Tim,
i, 4) was rendered possible, as these abstractions could be
multiplied at pleasure. In this way the wm-ld of ceons peculiar
to the Gnostics was produced from the earlier world of angels
and spirits. It is quite possible that the Gnostics had already
given this name to the fabulous creations of their mythologies
and genealogies, for in 1 Tim, xvii,, ^aa-iXevs riov alcovcov may very
weU be understood in the sense that the true idea of the nature
of seons (the ages of the world, subjected to the divine rule)
is intended to be opposed to the heterodox notion, StiU, this
cannot be affirmed with any certainty, nor is the fact material ;
for in any case these false teachers must be sought among those
Gnostics who were the forerunners of the more developed Valen
tinian Gu'osticism, concerning whom recent inquiries have shown
that they arose from Jewish Christianity (whether that of Pales
tine or of Babylon is uncertain), with a strong infusion of Syro-
Chaldaic elements ; that their speculations were carried on at
first mainly in the realm of Old Testament history and Eabbi-
nical tradition (cf 'lovSdtKot pvOoi, Tit, i, 14); and that the more
ample fUling up of the supersensuous world with ssons took
place graduaUy by the addition of a world of personified pheno
mena to the original cosmological forms (angels, star-spirits, and
the like), which latter were then gradually supplanted by the
former.^ "We cannot, on the other hand, suppose that their doc
trines were those of the more developed system of Valentine or
Marcion, because these either set aside entirely the Mosaic law,
' Compare on this point Lipsiibs, "Der Gnosticismus,'' extracted from Ersch and
Gruber's Allg, Encykl, pp, 115—135 (the example of the pseudo-Simonian system,
p, 123, is especially interesting). See also in the same work, p, 141, the note on the
false teachei-s of the Pastoral Epistles, "a development of the same Essene Jewish
Christianity as that of the false teachers of the Colossians, which had already advanced
to decided Gnosticism,"

198 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
or treated it only polemically, as Marcion the Antinomian did ;
and in neither case could they possibly wish to pass as teachers
of the law, which is said in 1 Tim. i, 7 of the false teachers ;
besides, it is said that they were Jewish Christians (Tit. i. 10,
cf xiv, and iii. 9, pdxai vopiKoi). Moreover, a prominent feature
of that later Gnosticism was the Docetist Christology, which
would therefore undoubtedly have been combated in the Pastoral
Epistles, if they had already had that latest system before them,
as decidedly as in the pseudo-Ignatian Epistles. Instead of this,
we find the earlier Pastoral Epistles quite innocent of any con
troversy of the kind (compare what is said below on Tit, U. 13),
and it is only in the last of them, the first Epistle of Timothy,
that we have what is certainly a possible trace of controversy
against Docetism — in 1 Tim, U, 5. AU these considerations
together lead us to the conclusion that we must seek the false
teachers of these Epistles in the forerunners of Valentinian
Gnosticism (perhaps in the sect of the Ophites, with its exten
sive branches and many forms), at any rate in the first three
or four decades of the second century.^ The practical character
istic of the false teachers is an asceticism like that which, as we
have seen, was adopted by the Colossian false teachers, but with
a more decided duaUstic background. With the Colossians,
asceticism was a means of redeeming themselves from the
^ This enables us to fix the date of the composition of these Epistles, The other
references contained in them to Church matters, as, for instance, the constitution, the
discipline of the Church, divine worship, the condition of the "widows" of the
Church, agree with the date assigned; also the citation of Luke's Gospel as ypaipi] I.,
V, 18, All this may be assumed here as well known ; I have collected it in a brief
form in the introduction to the Pastoral Letters in the "Protestantenbibel," What is
less well known than these general observations is, that these three Epistles were com
posed in the following order, viz,, 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 Timothy, I have given in the
same work^jihe grounds of this conclusion, which are the relations to the false teachers,
the development of circumstances which have a bearing on their composition, certain
shades of dogmatic opinion, and lastly, two dates connected with Church history — the
persecution of Trajan, under the influence of which 2 Tim, was written, and the reign
of Hadrian, who befriended and protected the Christians (cf, Eusebii Hist, Eo, IV,
8, 9), to which 1 Tim, ii, 2 refers. Lastly, I have there shown that it is very probable
that 2 Tim. iv. 9 — 21 may be a genuine Pauline fragment, dating from the commence
ment of his imprisonment at Caiaarea.

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 199
spiritual powers of evU, to whose dominion men were supposed
to be subject by reason of their material body, especially as un
circumcised. But that matter in itself is evil, because not the
creation of the good God, but of a power opposed to God (the
STj/ttovpyos, for instance), was not necessarily involved in that
opinion, and was probably far from the mind of those false
teachers ; but it certainly seems to have been the basis of the
asceticism of the false teachers of this Epistle, as we may con
clude with the highest probabUity from the antithesis of 1 Tim.
iv. 4, TTctv Kricrpa OeoS KaXov, Compared with Tit. i. 15. "With
their duaUstic view of material Ufe was also connected their
prohibition of marriage (ib. ver. 3), for they considered that the
intercourse of the sexes extended material Ufe, and therefore
the realm of opposition to God. In this respect also they went
beyond the Colossian false teachers; it may be that they desired
to apply the prohibition in Col. ii. 21, pySe Oiyys, to sexual con
tact ; at least this is not impossible. Their denial of the resur
rection, and their changing its meaning into an already present
and therefore spiritual renovation of lUe, may likewise have been
connected with a dualistic view of material life (2 Tim. U. 18).
If these ascetics are accused, among other vices, of incontinence,
love of pleasure, and love of greed, we must remember that the
picture of morals in 2 Tim. iU. 1 — 7 is but a rough sketch ; and
according to ver. 2, 'io-ovrai ol dvOpcorroi, seems to refer rather to
the spbit of the age in general, than to a particular sect. The
love of gain is certainly attributed to them in Tit. i. 11 also, and
in 1 Tim. vi. 6.
The way in which the contest is carried on with the false
teachers is very different here from what it was in the Epistle
to the Colossians. They are not refuted by reasons drawn from
their own deepened Christian consciousness, from the nature of
redemption, and of the Eedeemer ; the true knowledge is not
opposed to their false knowledge. The Epistles before us no
longer concern themselves with anything of this kind. But to
the heretical doctrines they simply oppose the doctrines of the

200 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
Church, as being alone " sound," alone " consistent with piety,"
as the tradition handed down by the organized Church " as the
basis and the fortress of the truth," and as having abeady
become a " law of faith," a " doctrine of faith," on which alone
a sound morality could be established, whUe the false teachers
must necessarily have a bad conscience. This indicates the
fundamental character of these Epistles — it is precisely that of
nascent Catholicism, which revolved about the two poles of the
tradition of the Church and practical piety. It is self-evident
that the material doctrines, which indeed rest entirely on a
PauUne foundation, are thus, nevertheless, modified in some not
unimportant respects.
Christianity is described in 1 Tim. vL 1, i. 10, as " the doc
trine ;" and the Christianity of the Church, in contradistinction
to heresy, is " sound doctrine," " the sound words of Christ,"
" the doctrine consistent with piety " (L e. in harmony with the
common consciousness of the Church), ibid, and vL 3, 2. L 13,
and many other passages. The common consciousness of the
Church has already become so strong, that it has become a rule
binding on the faith of individuals, a law of faith. Thus in
1. i. 5, we must not understand TrapayyeAta to mean a moral com
mand, for this would not have love as its end (tIAos), but as its
content, and besides it could not be directly opposed to the
theoretic ravings of the false teachers ; it must therefore, like
IvToA^ (vi. 14), mean the rule of faith, — they are to be kept pure,
undefiled by false doctrine, and maintain themselves in love,
which is the end of this rrapayyeXia, in opposition to heresy,
which tends to anger and strife (L 4, vi, 4). Thus faith itself
has acquired the objective significance that it is essentially the
true faith of the Church — nay, precisely the true content of faith,
the Church's doctrine of faith. Thus in 1. i. 4 we have o'lKovopia
Oeov TJ Iv TTto-Tet = God's institution of salvation which is con
tained in faith, where faith is evidently not subjective faith, but
the objective truth of faith (fides quse creditur). Similarly in
iL 7, StSdo-KaAos eOvbiv iv rricrrei Kal dXyOeicj,, where Trto-TiS Kat dXyOeia

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 201
are to be taken simply as Iv Sid Svotv = the truth of faith; further,
in iU. 9, pvcrr-qpiov TTJS TrtWews = the Christian doctrine of faith,
which as regards those without, the world, is hidden, a secret ;
iv. 6, Adyots T'^S TTto-Teus Kat ttjs KaA'^s SiSacrKaXias, COmp. with ii. 7 ;
thus TTto-Tts is equivalent to the right faith ; iv. 1, dTroo-TTjo-ovTat
Ttves T^s Tricrrecos : and vL 10, drrerrXavyOycrav drrb ttjs Trio-recos :
21, Trepi ttjv Tr icrnv ia-roxycrav : also L 19, e'xuv rricrnv .... Trept T'^v
Trio-riv iva-vrr-qyya-av. But UOW in proportion as the objectivity of
the doctrine of faith, as opposed to heresy, is emphasized, the
organization of the society which holds and represents it comes
naturally into the foreground.
The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth (1. Ui. 15);
the sure foundation of God (2. ii. 19). It is also the place where
alone the truth is to be found, the base on which alone the truth
is maintained in its integrity, on which therefore every Christian
who wishes to partake of Christian truth must take his stand.
Paul had, in 1 Cor. iii. 11, declared that Jesus Christ was the
one and only immovable foundation ; the Epistle to the Ephe
sians, with its Church tendencies, had (ii. 20) enlarged this, say
ing that the Apostles and Christian prophets, with Christ as the
corner-stone, together form the foundation ; but now the Church
alone is boldly instaUed in this position of supremacy. Is it
possible to avoid seeing here the course of development from
PauUnism to Catholicism ? And in addition to firmness in
guarding the faith, purity is also a note and a requirement of
the Church ; it bears the inscription — " The Lord knoweth his
own !" and "Let him depart from unrighteousness, who nameth
the name of Christ L" Because it is a community of those whom
God recognizes as his own, therefore must every one who belongs
to it, who acknowledges the name of Christ, abstain from un
righteousness ; only in this way can he be " a vessel unto
honour," of precious material and destined to an honourable
use ; yet even the unworthy members are not to be summarUy
excluded, but are to be borne with, as in our houses also we have,
beside the gold and silver vessels, vessels of wood and earthen-

202 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
ware — beside those for honourable use, those for uses that are
not honourable ; and as the latter are indispensable in the house,
so are the unworthy unavoidable in the community, which fact
does not of course prevent each individual from taking pains to
be a vessel to honour, by separating himself from things and
persons that are impure. Thus we see that the question of the
discipline of the Church has already become an object of con
sideration. Inasmuch as the Church is the bearer of the unchangeable
truth and the representative of moral purity, she requires in
both respects instruments, which, by virtue of theb office, have
to watch over order in the Church ; we therefore see the practi
cal constitution of the Church developing itself more definitely,
hand in hand with the dogmatic idea of the Church. A certain
progress may be observed in this respect even within the com
pass of the Epistles before us. In the earUest of these, the
second Epistle to Timothy, we find no trace as yet of a real
notion of offices, Timothy — -and in htm every president of a
community — is exhorted to approve himself to God as an
efficient and blameless workman (ii, 15), loyaUy to perform his
service to the community, to do the work of an EvangeUst, with
temperance and patience under suffering, to preach the word
without intermission, to punish, to exhort, and to teach (iv. 5, 2) ;
above all, to oppose with earnestness, but also with patience and
mUdness, the unruly who by false doctrine introduce strife into
the community (ii, 14, 25), At the same time he is reminded
to stir up anew the gift of God which i,g in him by laying on of
hands (i. 6), because God has given us not the spirit of fear, but
of power, and love, and of self-control (ver, 7); he is tobe strong
in the favour of God, that is in Christ (ii, 1), to hold Jesus
Christ in remembrance (ver, 8) ; the Lord wiU give him insight
in aU things (ver. 7), He is also repeatedly reminded in his
own person to hold fast by the pattern of sound words which he
had heard from the Apostle (L 13), to keep to that which he had
learnt and with which he was entrusted, mindful of him from

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 203
whom he had learnt it (iii, 14), to avoid youthful lusts, and to
seek after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with all who call upon
the Lord with pure hearts (iL 22), In aU this we find nothing
of the later notion of offices in the Church ; his whole work is
made to depend, not on his position, but on his personal worthi
ness ; and although mention is made (i, 6) of a certain gift of
favour imparted by the laying on of hands, by which the
bestowal of a particular office is very probably meant, yet this
gift itself requbes first of aU to be " stirred up " moraUy by the
spirit of power, and love, and self-control, and its recipient ever
needs to become stronger in this favour and richer in insight
(U, 1, 7), which is very far removed from the later conceptions
of the exalted condition of a bishop. In the Epistle to Titus
there is as yet no difference to be observed between the presby
ters and the bishop, for in L 5 there is mention of appointing
elders in every city (not one elder in each city, but several,
cf TrpeoT/Svrepot, Acts XX, 17 ; and iTTto-KOTTot, Phil, L 1 ; and Trpoi'o-
rdpevoi, 1 Thess. V, 12) ; afterwards, however, in ver, 7, the
enumeration of the qualities necessary for the spiritual office is
connected with the notion of the irria-KOTros, which the close con
nection of this with the preceding verse (ydp) only allows us to
understand as a synonym for the Trpecrji-vrepoi in ver, 5 (to whom
the qualifications enumerated in ver. 7 evidently refer). We
find the same use of the two terms as synonymous in Acts
XX, 17, Trpeo-/8vTepovs t^s iKKXycrias, and 28, vpds to Trvev^ua to dytov
'eOero ejricrK&irovs. In the first Epistle to TUnothy also, the differ
ence between bishops and presbyters does not appear to be any
fixed dUference of offices, for of offices in the Church only two
are mentioned, that of the irricTKOTros and that of the StdKovos,
chap, Ui. ; the Trpecr/S-vrepoi who are mentioned later (v. 17) are
evidently to be included in the same category with the eTia-Korros.
Nevertheless, an actual precedence of the bishop over the other
members of the college of presbyters, though at first only as
prim-US inter pares, appears to .have begun ; and it was probably
a main object ofthe Epistle before us to confirm the higher posi-

204 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM. ;
tion of the bishop by assigning to him in the person of Timothy
various pre-eminent official duties, in distinction even from the
presbyters. The latter have already gathered themselves into a
regular CoUege, the " Presbytery " (iv. 14). From this CoUege
the bishop (for Timothy can be no other) receives his ordination
by means of laying on of hands and prayer, and with it the
peculiar endowment of his office- (xdpia-pa, o iSoOy croi Std
rrpot^yreias perd eTriOearecos rcov xetpwv tov Trpecr/Svrypiov, ibid.). That
which in the time of Paul was left to the free disposal of the
spirit, who gave to one the gift of Kvj3epvya-is, to another that
of StttKovta, distributing to each one his own, as he (the spirit)
would (1 Cor. xU. 11), is now conditioned by the Church's act
of consecration. To the bishop belongs the supervision of the
doctrine, the management of funds, and the discipUne of the
Church. The first is especially important, because it preserves
the integrity of the Church against heresy ; therefore among aU
the exhortations of this Pastoral Epistle, tVa TrapayyetAgs Tto-t py
erepoSiSacTKaXetv (L 3) comes first. He is himself, however, to be
apt to teach (iii. 2), a pattern of the faithful in the word (iv. 12),
to apply himself to reading (the Scriptures, L e. in the assembUes
of the community), to exhortation and teaching (iv. 13), to take
heed to himself and to his doctrine (whether his own or that of
others, for the presbyters also shared the ministry of the word
and the doctrine, v. 17) — iv. 16. The bishop has also to super
vise the management of funds, for he has to take care that capable
presbyters, especially those who are at the same time teachers
in the community, shaU have a double gift of honour out of the
common property. The women who aspire to the honourable
position of the " widows " provided for by the community, are
likewise the charge of the bishop (v. 3, 9, 11) ; he has to take
into consideration both the needs (ver. 4) and the moral worthi
ness (ver. 5) of the candidates, and to take care that only the
aged and approved women, who have deserved well of the com
munity, are admitted to this honourable position; younger per
sons, on the other hand, in whose case there is no guarantee

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 205
that they will keep the vow of celibacy connected with it, he is
to reject, and recommend to the family life that is more suitable
for them (vers. 9 — 14). The discipline of the Church also
belongs especiaUy to the bishop; he is to take care not too
hastily or readily to restore to peace with the community by the
laying on of his hands those who have fallen, lest he become
a partaker of the sins of others (by making Ught of repentance)
(v. 22). The bishop is to exercise the discipline of the Church
even over the presbyters, to hear complaints against them which
are publicly made, openly to rebuke before the community those
who have erred (doubtless in their official work as presbyters),
as a warning to others (ver. 19 f ). Thus our author evidently
endeavours to estabUsh the primacy of the bishops as against
the presbyters.
It was necessary to enter as we have done into these Church
matters, because they mainly give the Epistles before us (espe
ciaUy the first to Timothy) their pecuUar impress, inasmuch as
they show how, when in danger of heresy, the consciousness of
the Church and Church organization grew strong on the lines
indicated by PauL As far as the main dogmas are concerned,
we find but few traces of the contest with Gnosticism, and those
chiefly in reference to the doctrines regarding God. Eor the
rest, they are the main traditional doctrines of Paulinism, modi
fied by the tendency of the age towards practical piety.
In the doctrine regarding God, his unity is repeatedly empha
sized (|ttdvos ^eds, 1. L 17; ets Oeos, iL 5 ; d ytidvos Svvdo-TTjs, vL 15);
his absoluteness, and that in the sense of unlimited possession of
life (^eos fwv, 1. tu. 15, iv. 10; 6 p,dvos cxo)v dOavaa-iav, vL 16;
d fuoyovwv Td TrdvTa, vL 13), of eternity and imperishabiUty
(dcj>OapTos, ^aa-iXevs rZv atcovcoi/, L 17), iuvisibUity and inaccessi-
bUity (ddpaTOS, ibid, ; ^ws otKcov dTrpdo-tTOV, ov e?Sev ovSets dvOpcoTrcov,
ovSe t'Setv SvvaTat, vi, 16) ; as the only power and dominion over
aU (d povos Swda-rys, vi, 15 ; ^aatAevs rcov (BacriXevovrcov, Kal Kvptos
riov KvpievovTCov, i§ Tip,y Kal Kpdros alioviov, ibid,), and as blessed-
ness QjuxKdpios, i. 11, vi. 15), Among moral qualities, his truth-

206 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH 'GNOSTICISM.
fulness is prominently mentioned (diZ-evS^s, Tit, L 2; 2 Tim, ii, 13),
and especiaUy his favour, his love of men, his goodness and
mercy (xdpis, cjuXavOpcoTria, -xpycTTorys, e'Aeos, Tit. u, 11, iU. 4 f, — in
the superscription of the Epistles, x«/"S) e'Aeos, etpTjvTj oTro Oeov) ;
God is also repeatedly described as o-wT^p (1, i, 1, ii. 3, 2, i, 9 ;
Tit, U, 10, iii, 4); and the universality of his wUlingness to show
favour is expressly asserted (1, ii, 4), In aU these expressions
we may see a more or less dbect opposition to the doctrine of
the Gnostics regarding God, which by its mythology represented
the Godhead as finite and sensuous, and notably Umited the
Divine favour in a duaUstic sense, by its distinction between
Gnostic (spiritual) and non-Gnostic (fieshly) Christians.
This favour of God was given to us in Christ Jesus before the
beginning of the world, but was revealed by the historical
" appearing of Jesus Christ," which is therefore described as the
" manifestation of the favour, the goodness and the love of God
towards men " (2 Tim. L 9, 10 ; Tit, U, 11, Ui, 4). If this favour
of the eternal counsel was SoOeta-a iv Xpurr^ 'Itjo-ov Trpo xpovwv
alcovicov, then Christ Jesus is the original and therefore the pre-
existent channel of it, just as in Eph. i. 4 he is represented as
the channel of the election of the community anc^ its appre
hensible embodiment, SimUarly in 1, UL 16, os i^avepcoOy iv
crapKi, the pre-existence of Christ is presupposed; for "to be
manifested in the flesh " can only apply to a subject who has
previously had his existence as something that is as yet con
cealed, not in the flesh, but in the realm of supersensuous
heavenly life. But when, in Tit, U, 13, Jesus Christ is expressly
called " our great God and Saviour," this goes beyond aU the
previous Christology of Paul, The words in this passage,
irric^dveia ttjs Sd^Tjs tov p,eydXov Oeov Kal criorypos -qpfov lya-ov
Xpurrov, are almost certainly to be understood as predicates of
Christ ; this is grammatically the most obvious construction,
because the article tov, not being repeated, connects the two
genitives Oeov and o-uT^pos into a single attributive definition of
the one subject Jesus Christ ; and besides, it is almost necessary

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES 207
so to interpret it, because erricjidveia is never applied to God, but
constantly to Christ : again, the addition of the word j^eydAov is
not only no obstacle to this interpretation, but rather supports
it; for this would be evidently an. unmeaning and superfluous
epithet if applied to God, whereas connected with the other
predicates for the glorification of Christ it is very appropriate.
The absence of any instance elsewhere of such a designation of
Christ (Oebs as an adjectival predicate joined with Jesus Christ)
must be allowed with regard to the literature of the New Testa
ment, but not with regard to the other Christian literature of the
same period. This passage of the Epistle to Titus certainly
forms a striking contrast to 1 Tim, ii, 5, where Christ is
expressly and plainly called dvOpcoTros. It is probable that this
latter passage was directed against Gnostic Docetism (as the
foregoing verse was against Gnostic particularism). We have in
this case the same change of Christological interest in these two
Epistles as we find in the Epistles of Ignatius, and for the same
reason. The e7ricf>dveia of Christ is sometimes his StiU future Trapovcria
(Tit, ii, 13 and 1, vi, 14, 2, iv, 1, 8), sometimes the historical
coming of Jesus, in whom the eternal favour of God, and . its
-eternal channel, the pre-existent Christ Jesus, was made mani
fest (2 Tim, i, 10), The word was also current among the Gnos
tics, and that in the second sense, while it appears to have been
prbicipally used by the Church (cf 2 Thess, ii, 8) in the first
sense. In the Epistle to Titus, irre<f>dvy is twice (ii, 11, irrecpdvy
y X'^P'S '''"^ Oeov TJ crcoTT]pios rrdcriv dvOpcorrois : and 111, 4, OTe tj
Xpycrrorys Kal tj (j>iXavOpcoTria irreifydvy rov croyrypos ypcov Oeov)
appUed to the historical appearing of Christianity, The notion
certainly belongs more to John's sphere of thought than to that
of Paul ; as do the expressions by which the work of Christ is
described in 2 Tim, i, 10, KaTapyTjo-avTos pev rbv Odvarov, c^cori-
0-avTOS Se ^loyv Kal d4>0ap(riav Std tov evayyeAtov, i, e, he destroyed
death and brought Ufe and immortality to light, by imparting to
the world through his preaching, by means of his word of self-

208 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
revelation, the higher life which was concealed in himself — a
connection of ^co-q and (^ios which strongly reminds us of John
L 4. The following passages, on the other hand, sound quite
Pauline, — 1 Tim, ii, 6, d Sovs ¦ lavTO v dvTt AvTpo v vrrep TrdvToiv : and
Tit, U, 14, OS eStoKev eavTov vrrep -qpcov, iva XvTpcoa-yrai ypds : but the
addition dTrd rrdo-ys dvopias betrays an un-Pauline sense which is
given to the idea of redemption, inasmuch as according to Paul
the redeeming death of Christ released us from the law itself,
its curse and its bondage, but here, on the contrary, its object is
said to be redemption from lawlessness, from the lawless, sinful
life of the Gentiles, The second clause, which expresses the
purpose, points to the same thing — Kat (tva) KaOapio-y eavrcp Aaov
TreptovQ-tov, ^tjAwttjv KaAajv epycov. This KaOapi^eiv is UOt to be
understood to refer, as it does in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to
the cancelling of guilt, but in this connection it refers to moral
renovation, by which the capacity and wUl to be active in good
works is produced, these being the chief characteristics of a
people who are the peculiar possession of God, By Paul, this
morally renovating effect was only connected with the redeem
ing death of Christ in a secondary and derivative way, whUe the
religious point of view, of reconcUiation with God, took the first
place, •
The same relation of these two points of view occurs again
in the appropriation of salvation, which moreover is far more
decidedly than with Paul connected with baptism. This is,
according to Tit, iii, 5, the means by which God has rescued us,
and it is described as AovTpov TraAtyyeveo-tas Kat dvaKtv(i)O-e(0S TTvev-
jitaTos dytov. This is a combination of two metaphors, and two
modes of viewing the matter — the "bath" would suggest the
cleansing effect of baptism for the forgiveness of sins, instead of
which the effect of the "new birth" is connected with the "bath,"
with which it does not exactly correspond; and this is more fuUy
explained (Kai epexegetical) as " renewing ofthe holy spirit," i, e.
by the holy spirit, which indeed accords with the train of ideas
both of Paul and John, but has no direct paraUel in the expres-

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 209
sions of either (TraAtyyeveo-ta is only found in Matt, xix, 28,
where it is applied to the renovation of the world at the second
coming of Christ, and_ dvaKaivoycns in Eom, xii, 2, used passively
of the renewal of the vovs, whilst here it has really an active
sense = the renewing effect of the holy spirit). It is therefore
characteristic that, according to ver, 7, justification by the favour
of God, and the hoped-for inheritance of eternal life, are said to
be the purposed consequence of the abundant pouring out of the
spirit (and — according to ver, 5, we must add — renewal of the
spirit). According to Paul, on the contrary (cf Gal, iv, 6), the
imparting of the spirit is a consequence of the presupposed son-
ship, in which justification and the heritage of eternal life are
put together, so that these two latter are not conditioned by the
renewing work of the spirit, but, on the contrary, precede and
condition it,
Eaith appears comparatively seldom as the means of the sub
jective appropriation of salvation (it does so in 1 Tim, i, 16 and
2 Tim, iii, 15 ; on the other hand, it is remarkable that it does
not in Tit, Ui, 5, where the opposition of the epya t% StKatoo-vvTjs
seems absolutely to require it in order to make it a genuine
Pauline thought). IIio-Tts is found much more frequently, either
in the objective sense of the right beUef, or of the right doctrine
of faith, regarding which we have already gone into some detail,
or in the sense of one Christian duty among others, especially
that of love (cf. 1. i. 14, fteTd Tricrrecos Kal dydirys ttjs ev Xpto-Toi
Itjo-ov : U. 15, idv peivcocriv ev Tricrrei Kal dydrry Kal ayiacrpcf pera
crcocj>pocr-vvys : XV. 12, iv Xoycf, iv dvacrTpoc^-Q, iv dydrry, iv Tricrrei, ev
dyveic^: Vh 11, SicoKe SiKaiocrvvyv, evo-e/3etav, Tricrnv, dydrryv, vrropovyv,
Trpaoryra: 2. L 13, tt. Kat dy. : iL 22, SicoKe SiKaioa-vvyv, rrio-riv,
dydTTTjv, eipyvyv: iU. 10, TrapyKoXovOyKds pov T-y SiSacrKaXiy., tij
dywyjj, TTj" TrpoOecrei, ry Tricrrei, T-y paKpoOvpicf, T-y dydrry, t-q vtto/aovtj :
Tit, it 2, vyiatvovTas tij TTto-Tet, ttj dydrry, ttj vrropovy). In these
combinations, faith is evidently not so much the fundamental
reUgious attitude of man towards God and the root of the moral
virtues, as a particular Christian virtue, which, as such, naturaUy
VOL, II, P

210 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WTTH GNOSTICISM.
requires to be supplemented by others ; and this is something
essentially different from the Pauline formula, Trto-Tis St' aydTrijs
ivepyovpevy. Faith thus extcrnaUzed and deprived of its central
religious sigiUficance, can of course no longer serve, Uke Pauline
faith, as the fundamental idea of the Christian holy Ufe. Its
place is now taken in these Epistles by a pecuUar expression,
evo-eySeta, This is, on the one hand, more general and indefinite
than the Pauline Trto-Tts, as it is in no wise specificaUy Christian,
but "piety" in general; on the other hand, however, it comprises
in itself precisely the two moments with which our Epistles are
mainly concerned — devotion to the Church, piety and loyalty to
the awakened common consciousness of the Church, and the
practical proof of it which consists in moraUty and good works.
The first is clearly shown by Tit, i, 1, eTrtyvtoo-ts dXyOeias t'^s Kar
evcre/3eiav, and 1 Tim, vi. 3, TTJ KaT evcripeiav SiSacrKaXicj., in both of
which passages eva-ej3eia, as the rtUe for the real truth and right
doctrine, is evidently the common consciousness of the Church,
the form of godliness recognized by the Church, in opposition to
the false doctrine which creates anger and strife (1. vi, 4), Again,
in 1. Ui. 16, TO TTJS evo-e;8etas pvcrr-qpiov is the mystcrious content
of the faith of the Churoh, or of the truth, of which the Church
is the ground and pUlar (ver, 15), On the other hand, eva-e^eia
is the practical piety of the blameless and active Christian life ;
thus, 1, i. 2, iva ypipov Kal ijo-vx'ov fiiov Sidycopev iv rrdoy evo-e/ieiif
Kal crepvoryn : IV. 7, yvpva^e crea-urbv Trpos evcre^eiav : and 8, tj
evcrefieia Trpos TrdvTo b)^eXip6s ia-n, in which passages it denotes
the opposition of the simple piety of the Church to the refine
ment of heretical asceticism. In the same way in vi. 6 and 5,
the piety which brings contentment is contrasted, as the true
prize, with the piety of the false teachers, of which gain was the
object. In vL 11 it is placed before faith, love, patience, and
gentleness, evidently as the general idea of a rightly constituted
(wherefore StKatoo-vvTj is placed first of all) reUgious and moral
regulation of life, which includes all these several virtues in
itself Finally, in 1, iii. 5, p,6p^o)cris eva-e^eias is contrasted with

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 211
its Svva/its, namely, the power to prove its existence by corre
sponding fruits of morality.
The whole of the right Christian moral disposition, to which
the favour that was manifested in Christ would educate men, ia
summed up in Tit, ii, 12, negatively, as abandonment of ungod
liness and worldly lusts, and positively, as a sober, righteous,
and pious Ufe ; the latter being Christian virtue in its three-fold
relation — its religious relation to God and the Church, its social
relation to our fellow-creatures, and its ascetic relation to our
own personal life. With regard to the latter, the standpoint of
our Epistle is far removed from the extreme of monkish asceti
cism, which it rather controverts, both directly and indirectly, as
a heretical peculiarity (1. iv. 3 — 5, U, 15, and v, 14 and 23 ; Tit.
i. 14 f ). On the other hand, the same Church that rejected the
extreme views of a heretical asceticism, which desired to extend
itself at the cost of the Church, is not itself quite free from this
tendency of the times, as is proved by the prohibition of a second
marriage to the ofificers of the Church (1. iii, 2, 1 2, v, 9), and the
requirement of a vow of celibacy as a quaUfication for the honour
able position of the so-caUed " widows." Hence the meaning of
the prudent saying in 1. iv. 8 is made plain — y crcop,aTiKy yvpvaxria
Trpos oAiyov eo-Ttv ucjyeXipos, 'q Se evcrejieia Trpos TrdvTa : and upou the
whole, the value of bodily asceticism is not denied, but only re
legated to its proper subordinate position as compared with the
more important matter of the piety of the Church, An especially
high value is placed in these Epistles on godly activity. It is,
according to Tit. ii. 14, the very object of the work of redemption
that God's peculiar people should become ^yXcoryv KaXZv IpyoJv; it
is repeatedly (iU, 8 and 14) insisted on that Christians should
learn and apply themselves to the study of good works, in order
that they may not be unfruitful ; for such works are good and
useful to men. Thus the significance and the necessity of good
works are Umited to the social and ethical sphere, where they
are incontestable, and the serviceableness of such works in a
religious point of view is left out of consideration— indeed, it is
p2

212 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
expressly denied in Tit, iii, 5, o-vk i^ 'epycov riov iv SiKaioa-vvy, uv
irroi-qarapev -qpets, dAAd KaTa rbv eavrov eXeov eacocrev -qpds (b Oeos).
We have here, then, essentially the same compromise between
the PauUne dogmatical view and the ethical and social estimate
of good works, i, e, between the denial of their serviceableness
for salvation and the affirmation of their moral necessity, which
we have already found in the Epistle to the Ephesians (cf
ii. 8 — 10), The first Epistle to Timothy, however, goes far
beyond this, in repeatedly ascribing to active work a religious
significance, as a condition and cause of the salvation of men,
which does not agree with the Pauline^ doctrine of justification
by faith alone. According to 1, UL 13, good deacons who have
served well in the Church gain for themselves a good degree
(jpaOpov) and much confidence in the faith, which can hardly
mean anything else than a higher degree of blessedness, a step
in heaven (to interpret this as a higher official position would
presuppose a more compUcated hierarchy than is conceivable at
that period ; besides, this would require peXXova instead of KaAdv
to express a " better " office, for the deaconate was itself a good
position; and lastly, the addition of the words, Kat ttoAA^v Trappy-
a-iav iv TTto-Tet, is decidedly in favour of the interpretation that
has been given). It is said, further, in vi. 18 f of the rich, that
by well-doing, and being rich in good works, they lay up for
themselves a good foundation for the future (as a treasure), in
order to lay hold on eternal life ; and this is the foundation of
the salvation which they thus buUd up for themselves by their
serviceable works. And when in iL 15 it is said of the woman,
a-coO-qarerai Std TeKvoyovtas, the saying may be rightly understood
indeed from a practical point of view (" the woman fulfils her
destination, not by coming forward in public — ver. 12 — -but in
the family ") ; but the expression is nevertheless perplexing, for
crco^ecrOai is the recognized dogmatic expression for Christian
salvation or eternal blessedness. FinaUy, the statement in
iv. 8, that godliness is profitable for all things, since it has the
promise both of the present and of the future life, savours some-

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 213
what of utiUtarianism and reUgious endemonism, which is as far
removed from the original Pauline doctrine of salvation and
faith as it is akin to that of the serviceableness of good works.
If we cannot but see in all this a very decided attenuation of
the original doctrine of Paul by the prevaUing tendency of the
thne towards practical piety and the exaltation of the Church,
we can, on the other hand, no longer wonder that the relation
of this doctrine to the law and to Judaism had entirely lost its
former violent antagonism. It is most suggestive, in regard to
this point, that in 2 Tim, i, 3, 5, the piety of Paul and Timothy
is put on the same Unes, nay, declared to be identical, with that
of their respective ancestors ; consequently there is so Uttle
opposition in principle between the Christian and the Jewish
religion, that one may be considered a simple continuation of
the other. In complete accordance with this view, it is said of
the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament (iU, 15 £), that they
are able to make us wise unto salvation, by faith in Christ Jesus
(who accordingly must in some way be contained in them), for
all Scripture which is given by God's inspiration is profitable for
learning, for reproof, for improvement, and instruction in righ
teousness, i, e, they are able to teach the truths of salvation, and
to work repentance, faith, and sanctification in men. Surely this
goes far beyond what Paul ascribes to the law, as the jailer and
schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, which keeps us tn bondage
under the consciousness of sin, but cannot give us life. Finally,
the Church's view of the law is thus contrasted with that of the
Gnostics in 1, i, 8 f : "We know that the law is good, if a man
use it according to its nature (vop,ipcos), that is, if he understand
that no law is given to the righteous, but to the unrighteous and
disobedient," &c. These words contain neither dogmatic adher
ence to the law, as opposed to a hyper-Pauline Marcionite antino
mianism, which there is no reason to suppose the vo/ioStSdo-KaAot
held; nor dogmatic antinomianism in opposition to Judaistic
views of the law, for this antinomianism would certainly not
have -been so obscurely expressed — only (understood) then when

214 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
(idv), &c. They contain, then, no dogmatic declaration whatever
about the validity or invalidity of the Mosaic law, but confine
themselves simply to the ground of a general moral point of
view, from which they affirm that the only proper appUcation
of the law is as a means of training for the disorderly, and that
it has no significance for those who are already moral without
it. This is a proposition of incontestable moral truth, but which
has nothing to do with the Pauline doctrine of the law, having
no reference to it either positive or negative. The old contro
versy, then, about the lasting validity of the Mosaic law in
Christianity has evidently lost its significance for the PauUnism
of these Epistles ; this is no longer the question in the contro
versy with the Gnostic teachers of the law, who in no wise de
fended the law in its simple Jewish validity, but rather made it
the ground on which to build the very different structure of theb
speculative aUegorical inventions. The foUower of Paul who was
no longer concerned with the dogmatic controversy regarding the
validity of the Mosaic ceremonial law, was therefore able to
estimate aU the more impartially tbe general and abiding moral
worth of the positive moral law, whether found in the Old Testa
ment or elsewhere. At this standpoint (which we had abeady
found in the first Epistle of Clement) the foUower of Paul who
took the part of the Church naturaUy found himself perfectly at
one with the moderate Jewish Christian who took the same
side. The Epistles of Ignatius,
It is of some interest, for the purpose we have in hand, to
compare the pseudo-Pauline Pastoral Episties with the pseudo-
Ignatian Epistles, which exhibit the same PauUnism in the
Church combating the same heretical opponent.?, only with this
difference, that the two parties are seen in the latter in a higher
degree of development, and more distinctly characterized, than
in the former Epistles, In the presence of the danger threatened

THE EPISTLES OF IGNATIUS. 215
by heresy, the idea of the Catholic Church and of its hierarch
ical organization in the Episcopate, is much more distinctly
developed, and more energetically maintained, than in the
Pastoral Epistles ; that which in these only took the form of
pastoral addresses and exhortations, became in the Epistles of
Ignatius dogmatic declarations of doctrine and hierarchical com
mands. But the dogmatic controversy with the false teachers
has also assumed a new aspect. , In the first Epistle to Timothy,
a sUght trace only of controversy with the Docetist Christology
is to be observed, but this now comes under various forms into
the foreground, as one of the main objects in view. False
teachers appear to bave energeticaUy maintained their Judaistic
doctrines, upon the basis of theb advanced Gnosticism, and to
have carried on, not without success, a propagandism in this
dbection. This gives to the Paulinism of the Church a new
impulse to a more violent controversy with Judaism, which is
the more significant in proportion as it more strikingly rises
from the background of hierarchical and Catholic opinions. This
union of Church views with anti-Judaism is the exact counter
part of the union of Docetist Gnosticism with Judaism in its
heretical opponents; for that these two sets of opinions were
united in the same opponents is indubitably shown by the
Epistle to the Magnesians. In chap, viU, of this Epistle, the
Gnostic Christology is opposed in uninterrupted connection with
Judaism; and in chap, ix,, in the course of the refutation of
the Judaists, mention is made of the Docetist Christology of
those who deny that Christ reaUy died ; and after the continua
tion of the controversy with the Judaists in chap, x,, it is stated
in chap, xL that he says this in order to warn his readers not to
faU into the snares of the false teachers, but to hold fast their
faith in the bbth, and the suffering, and the resurrection, Trpax-
Oevra dXyOZs Kal l3e/3ai<os vrrb 'lycrov Xpiarrov. As the preceding
warnings against Judaism (with which three chapters are occu
pied) are here said to have for their object the confirmation of
the readers of the Epistle in their faith in the reality of the

216 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
human life of Christ, it is impossible but that the false doctrine
thus opposed had united Docetism with Judaism, aud these
must in fact have been so intimately connected with each other,
that the warnings against one of them had the force of a confu
tation of the other. We have, besides, the less ground for doubt
ing that the heresy controverted by the pseudo-Ignatius con
sisted in a Judaizing Gnosticism, because we have seen the very
same doctrine (although in an earlier stage of development) con
troverted in the Pastoral Epistles.
It cannot certainly be denied that we have less accurate know
ledge about this Judaizing Gnosticism than about the anti-Jewish
systems of Valentine and Marcion; but this has so much the less
force as an argument against the correctness of our supposition,
because the pseudo-Clementine Epistles contain evidence, that
as Judaizing Gnosticism was the original form of the doctrines
of this sect, so it also continued to maintain itself by the side of
the developed anti-Jewish systems. For this reason, the Juda
istic character of the Gnosticism here controverted can afford no
satisfactory grounds for referring the date of the composition of
the pseudo-Ignatian Epistles to an earlier period than the middle
of the second century, to the second haK of which aU the other
indications decidedly point.^
Paulinism now rises to attack the Judaism of the heretics
' The spuriousness of the Epistles which have come down to us under the name of
Ignatius may be assumed as proved. The attempt of Bunsen also to show that the
brief Syriac recension is the work of the real Ignatius, may be regarded as a failure ;
for a more accurate examination of the sources of information has proved this brief
recension to be not the basis of the larger work, but rather an abstract of it. This
has been shown by Bawr and Uhlhorn from diflFerent points of view, and more
recently by Merx in his "Meletemata ignatiana" (Halle, 1871) ; compare also Hilgen
feld, "Apostol, Vater," pp, 187 — 279. As we have before us, however, in the litera
ture connected with the celebrated name of Ignatius, a mass of writings that for a long
time kept changing its limits and its content, so, even on the hypothesis of its spurious
ness, we shall have to take account of various strata of extensions and interpolations,
which indicate different streams of dogma ; just as we had to distinguish similar strata
in the Pastoral Epistles, — the common spuriousness of which was presupposed. This
will prove to be the abiding truth ofthe researches of Lipsius, " iiber die Echtheit
der SyrJschen Recension der Ignatianischen Brief e," in the "Zeitschr, f, histor,
Theol," for 1856, Cf, also the same author's " Festprogramm, iiber den Ui-sprung
und alteslen Gfebrauch dos Christennamens," p. 7.

THE EPISTLES OF IGNATIUS. 217
with renewed decisioii. But it is no longer the warfare of one
party against another for its own justification and recognition,
but it is the warfare of the universal Church, which is fully con
scious of its independence ahd its superiority to Judaism, against
a heretical sect, whose obstinate adherence to a standpoint which
the universal Church had left behind, is boldly designated as
unchristian. In Magu, viU, it is said, Et p'expi vw Kara 'lovSai'o--
pbv ^copev, bpoXoyovpev X"P"' P-^ elXycpevai : and chap, X,, Std tovto
paOyrai avTov yevojttevot, pdOcopev Kara Xpicrriavicrpbv ^yv' os ydp
dXXco bvopan KaXetrai rrXeov tovtov, ovk eo-Ttv tov Oeov. Yn-epOea-Oe
ovv ttjv KaKTjv fvp.Tjv, TTJV TraAato)0eto-av Kat ivo^icricrav, Kal pera-
PdXeirOe ets veav ^vpyv, o ecrnv Itjctovs Xpto-Tds, ATOTrdv IcrTtv,
Xpto-TOV 'lycrow XaXetv (sc, KaAetv) Kat lovSatfetv. 'O ydp Xpicr-
Tiavicrpbs ovk ets lovSater/xdv eTricrTevcrev, dAAd 'lovSatcr/ios ets Xpicrri-
avicrpov, cos Trdcra yAolo-o-a mcrTevcrdcra els Oebv crwqxOy (" aS every
language, i, e, nation, which believed, was gathered to God ;"
with whieh compare chap, viii,, " It is one God who has revealed
himself through Jesus Christ,'' and chap, Vii,, Trdvres ovv us ets
eva a-vvrpexere vabv Oeov). In PhUad, vUi,, tO those who Say, OTt
edv p,y iv rots dpxaiois evpco, iv rep evayyeXicp ov Tricrrevco, it is
retorted, 'E/tot Sc dpxatd icrnv Itjo-ovs Xpiarbs, Ta dOiKra dpxata 6
crravpbs avrov, Kal 6 Odvaros Kal -q dvdcrracris avrov, Kal y Trto-Tts tj St
a-vTov' iv ots OeXco iv r-n rrpocrevxy vp,cov SiKaicoOyvai. KaAot Kat ot
tepets, Kpetcrcrov Se b dpxiepevs, b TreTricrTevp,evos rd dyia tmv dytwv, ds
povos TreTrisrrevTai rd Kp-vrrrd tov ^eov' avTos <ov Ovpa rov Trarpbs, St
^S eicrepxovrai 'KfSpadp, Kal 'IcraaK Kal laKbiji, Kal ot rrpo^-qrai, Kai ot
aTrdo-ToAot, Kat tj iKKXycria. Ot ydp dyaTTTjTOt Trpo<f>yTai Kar-qyyeiXav
ets avTov" TO Se evayyeAtov aTrdpncrpid icrnv dcj>9apa-ias. These pas
sages clearly express the self-confidence of the Christian con
sciousness, which so distinctly opposes itself to the Jewish
religion, so far as this professes to stand by itself as Mosaic law,
but at the same time knows that it is one with it, and is the
completion of it,, so far as it consists of prophecy and type (ol
tepets KaAot'), Nay more ; Christianity appears not only as the
end towards which Judaism tended, but in truth as the original,

218 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
substantial core of Judaism, — Christ is the door through which
patriarchs and prophets enter ; the prophets have already Uved
Kara Xpicrrov Itjo-ovv, ip.Trve6p,evoi -vrrb ttjs x"/"""*" avTov; aS pupUs
of Christ in the spirit, they have waited for him as their teacher,
wherefore also after his coming he raised them from the dead
(Magn, viU, 9). Whereas the Judaizer estimates the truth accord
ing to its age, and regards the dpxata of the tradition as the
decisive authority in matters of faith, that which to the Chris
tian is the truly ancient, the truly inviolable authority, is Christ
himself, his cross, and his death, &c. In a truly Pauline spirit,
the Jewish Christian's empirical standpoint of authority, which
stUl considers itself bound by the more ancient authority of the
old covenant, is contrasted with the freedom and self-confidence
of the Christian consciousness, which is sure of finding justifica
tion in Christ (PhUad, vtU,), and therefore does not require any
thing more by the side of him, nay, perceives that the keeping
of the old leaven, namely, Judaizing, is incompatible with the
Christian profession, and is folly (dTOTrov) and godlessness (ovk
eo-Tt TOV ^eov, Magu, X,). Certain as it is that the author, in
this view of the incompatibility of Judaizing with Christianity,
expresses the consciousness of the Church of his time, yet it can
at that time have been only held as a theory in Gentile Chris
tian circles, and cannot have become a prevaUing practical
maxim in opposition to the Judaizers, For there is a warning
in PhUad, vL not to Usten to those who wished to carry on a
propaganda in behalf of Judaism,^ for it is better to hear Chris
tianity from one who is circumcised, than Judaism from one who
is uncircumcised. It foUows from this, that Jewish Christians
were still tolerated in the community, and it was only their
propagandism among GentUe Christians that called forth the
opposition of the Church, by which means the zealous Judaizers
were forced more and more into the position of a sect. It is
^ The nature of this propaganda is indicated by 'lovSdiapbv ipprjvnieiv ; it was
not, as in the case of the earlier Judaizers, simply the Mosaic law which they desired
to force upon their converts, but they endeavoured, by allegorical interpretations and
Gnostic spiritualization, to make it attractive aud plausible.

THE EPISTLES OF IGNATIUS. 219
probable that the p,epio-poi, about which so many complaints are
made in the Epistle to the Pbiladelphians, refer to this. And
this was precisely the state of affairs in the time of Justin
Martyr, as is indicated by the weU-known passage in Dial c.
Tr, xlvU.
We have here seen PauUnism remaining true to itself in a
very decided manner, against Jewish legality, and in the con
sciousness of its Christian autonomy ; it is therefore aU the
more remarkable how this same Paulinism stripped itself of its
original peculiarity in all other respects, and assumed that uni
versal Church colouring which we have already often met with.
And this constitutes a decisive confirmation of our whole view
of the development of Paulinism, namely, that it did not depend
on concessions to external opponents, but upon involuntary
inward 'modification. One indication of the universal Church
colouring of Ignatian Paulinism, is the frequent juxtaposition of
Trto-Tts Kat dydTTTj, which we also found in the Pastoral Epistles ;
e, g,, Eph, ix,, TJ TTto-Tts vpiov dvaycoyevs, tj Se dydrry dSds tj dvacjiepovcra
ets Oeov (faith is the engine which raises Christians like building-
stones to the temple of God, love is the road that leads upward) :
it might be straining the metaphor to see in it a co-operation
between the drawing upward by faith and the going upward
spontaneously in love ; but at all events such an idea is to be
found in the foUowing passage in Eph. x, : Idv TeAetws ets 'Itjo-ovv
Xpurrbv e'xTjTe ttjv Trto-Ttv Kat t^v dyaTTTjv, tjtis lo-Ttv dpxTj ^coys Kal
TeAos' dpxy piev Trto-Tts, tIAos Se dyoTTTj" Td Se Svo, Iv evdTTjTt yev6p,eva,
Oeov icrnv, rd Se dXXa Trdvra ets KaAoKaya^tav oKoAou^d icrnv. One
is involuntarUy reminded here of the o-wepyt'a of James, tj Tria-ns
avvqpyei rots epyots, Kat iK twv epycov tj Trto-Tts ireXeuoOy, JameS
iL 22, In the same way they appear in Smym, vi. as two halves
of equal importance, which together make up the whole, — to
oAov lo-Tt Trto-Tts Kai dydiTTj, (ov ovSev TrpoKeKptrat, Again, the
Church colouring of Ignatian Paulinism shows itself especially
in the fact, that m these Epistles, Christianity, in spite of aU its
elevation above the Jewish law, has nevertheless begun, within

220 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
its own borders, to shape a system of Christian law of its own.
We find mention of Soypara of the Lord and of the Apostles,
in which the Magnesians are to be confirmed, in order that they
may prosper in aU things, in body and spirit, in faith and love,
in the Son and the Father and the Spirit, in the beginning
and the end, together with their most highly-esteemed bishop,
and the presbytery and the deacons (Magn, xiiL). The TraUians
(cap, vU,) are to be inseparable from Jesus Christ, the bishop, and
the ordinances (Siardypara) of the Apostles,^ The Ephesians are
applauded for their consistent preservation of unity with the
Apostles (Eph. xL). In Magnesia, a heretical party is said to
have no conscience, Std to p.Tj j3e/3aicos Kar ivroXyv a-vvaOpoi^ecrOai,
and the community itself is called upon to be subject to the
bishop, (OS TTJ x^-P'-ri- rov OeoS, and to the presbytery, ms t(J) v6pc^
'lycrov Xpia-rov (Magn, iv. 2), The idealism of Paul, which had
recognized only a vopos tov rrvevparos rys ftoTjs, is here " modified
in a realistic sense," ^ that is to say, it is changed into the law of
the Church,
Among other dogmatical contents of these Epistles, the
Christology deserves especial notice. The consciousness of the
Catholic Church unmistakably expresses itself here in the
endeavour to maintain the two aspects of the person of Christ
as aUke authoritatively established in aU their fulness. Thus
in Eph, vii,, Ets taTpds lo-Ttv, a-apKiKos re Kal TTvevjxaTtKos, yevTjTos
Kat dyevTjTOS, Iv crapKl yevopevos Oeos, iv Oavdrcp ^co^ dXyOivy, Kai eK
Maptas Kat iK^eov, rrpcorov rraOyrbs Ka,l Tore dTraOys Itjo-ovs XptoTos
d Kvptos -qpcov. Very simUar, only beginning with the ideal
predicates, is the passage in Polyc, iU,, tov vrrep Kaipbv rrpoa-SoKa,
TOV dxpovov, rbv doparov, rbv St 'qpds bparov' tov dij/yXacf>yTov, tov
drraOy, rbv St Tjp,as rraOyrov, rbv Kara rrdvra Tpdirov St ypas
^ It is well worthy of remark, how the Apostles appear in these Epistles as a com
pletely isolated body, as a College {avvStapoQ, Trail, iii, ; avveSpiov, Magn, vi, ; and
even Tcpeajivrkpiov iKKXrjaiaQ, Phil, v,) ; the opposition therefore between Paul and
the original Apostles has as entirely disappeared in the Epistles of the strongly Pauline
and somewhat anti-Jewish pseudo-Ignatius, as in those of Clement,
^ Hilgenfeld, Apost, Vater, p, 251.

THE EPISTLES OF IGNATIUS. 221
v!ro/*etVavTa, Moreover, there is a difference to be observed
between those Epistles (Eomans and Ephesians) in which the
controversy with the Docetists has not yet begun, and those
which deal with this heresy (those addressed to Tralles, Smyrna,
and Magnesia). In the former, Christ is with perfect simplicity
caUed God ; compare the superscription of the Epistle to the
Ephesians, 'Itjo-ov Xpto-TOv TOV Oeov ¦qpiov : ibid. L, iv aipan Oeov :
XVin., d ydp Oebs -qpcov lycrovs Xpto-Tds : xix., Oeov dvOpcoirivcos
^aivopevov : and vii., Iv o-apKt yevdp.evos ^eds : Eom. superscrip
tion, lycrov xpurrov rov Oeov -qpcov : ilL, d ydp ^eds ypcov 'lycrovs
Xpurros iv rrarpl o5v, j^aAAov <f>aiveTai (L e. is more effectually
revealed since his exaltation unto the Father) : vL, tov rrdOovs tov
Oeov -qpcov. These expressions cannot, any more than all the
simUar ones in Tit. ii. 13 (see Part II. p. 207), be understood to
refer to the suffering of the Father ; for Christ is in this Epistle
repeatedly distinguished as the Son from the Father (compare
especially the passages quoted from Eom. UL). There are some
signs of an attempt to guard, in a later editing of these letters,
against the danger of these passages being understood in a Doce
tist sense ; and this is quite the predominant tendency of the
anti-Docetist Epistles. In Trail, ix. 10, and Smym. i. 2, it is
most emphatically asserted that Christ really (dATj^ws) was born,
ate and drank, suffered, died and rose again, against those who
affirm rd SoKetv TreTTov^evat avrov. He is said to have been in the
flesh, even after his resurrection, and to have allowed himself to
be handled, to show. that he was no incorporeal spirit. Only
that Christ who has actually suffered as a " perfect man " can
also actually give his diciples strength to suffer; and in the
same way as he arose, wUl the Father also raise in him us who
believe, without wbich we have not the true life. Therefore he
who does not acknowledge the Lord as a a-apKoc^opov, slanders
him, nay, utterly denies him (Smym, v,; cf 1 John iv, 2, 3, Trdv
TTVeSpa 0 py bp.oXoyet rbv 'Itjo-ovv Xpto-Tov ev o-apK^ eATjAv6ldTa, iK tov
OeoS O-VK e'o-Ttv), To this is added, in the Epistie to the Magne
sians, chap. viU,, the idea of the Logos, as a new moment, which

222 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
has been of notable service to the Church since the middle of
the second century in settUng its Christology in opposition to
the two-fold error of Docetism and Ebionitism. As it is here
said of Christ that he is (Oeov) Adyos dtSios, o-uk drrb 0-tyTjs nrpoeXOtov,
OS Kara rrdvra euypecrrycrev T$ Trep.xf/avri a-urov, we have in these
words a complete view of the developed form of the Christology
which sought to estabUsh, in the idea of the Logos, both the
divinity of Christ, and at the same time the difference between
him and God the Father, and his subordination to God ; but this
stage of the growth of the Church's doctrine is undeniably some
what different from the earUer simple apotheosis of Christ, The
insertion of the words o-uk drrb a-iyys rrpoeXOcov moreover points to
a Gnostic theory, as wUl be admitted by every impartial critic ;
for the interpretation of them in the sense that the Logos did
not come forth after an antecedent sUence of God, but, on the
contrary, is his eternal instrument of revelation, is not admissible
according to the laws of the language, for dTrd o-ty^s rrpoeXOm sig
nifies coming forth from some origin, and not coming forward
after some event ; besides, the idea itself according to the views
held by the Church, would be false, for it was certainly held
that the revelation of God by means of the Logos had a begin
ning, namely, the creation of the world in time. This passage
must therefore refer to the Gnostic theory, which made the
Logos proceed from StyTj, one of the seons,-^
It remains to speak of the constitution of the Church, which is
so important a question in connection with the Epistles before
us. The distinction between bishops and presbyters, which was
not yet distinctly set forth in the Pastoral Epistles, although it
was aimed at in the first Epistle to Timothy, is now presupposed
in these Epistles as an accompUshed fact. The bishop is no
longer primus inter pares, but stands to the presbyters in the
^ The well-known Valentinian system suggests itself most obviously in connection
with the above. But this cannot be the system referred to, because the Judaistic
character of the Grnosticism of this Epistle is the feature most strongly opposed.
Theories of the same kind, however, seem' to have been started elsewhere, e, g, in the
pseudo-Simonian system.

THE EPISTLES OF IGNATIUS. 223
same relation as God or Christ, whose place he occupies, does to
the Apostles, whose order is perpetuated in the presbyters ;
cf. Magn, vi,, rrpoKaOypivov rov iTruTKoTrov ets Torrov OeoS, Kal twv
Trpea-^vrepcov ets Torrov crweSpiov rdv drroa-roXoyv : Trail. UL, rrdvres
iyrpeTrecrOcocrav .... tov irricrKOTrov cos 'Itjo-ovv Xpicrrbv, tovs Se' rrpecr-
ySvTepovs (OS o-vveSptov Oeov, Kal (Ls a-uvSecrpov dTroa-roXcov: Smyrn, vUi,,
TrdvTes rco iTricj-KOTTCp dKoXovOetre (os 'Irjcrovs Xpicrrbs rtp rrarpi, Kal tco
Trpea-^vrepicf (Ls Tots dTroo-TdAots, As in the first Epistle of Clement
the priesthood of the Old Testament was used as an analogy for
the offices of the Christian community, so the relation of Christ
to the Apostles is now employed as an analogy for the relation
of the bishop to the presbyters ; as the latter stood by the side
of the bishop as an advising body, and were therefore called
o-vveSptov eTTto-KdTTOV, so the Apostles formed the first Trpeo-fSvrepiov
of the Church ; comp, PhUad, viii, with v. This certainly is still
far removed from the view which the Church took at a later
period, according to which the bishops were the successors of
the Apostles— a view which promoted the tendency to gather
the individual communities into the organic system of one
united Church, by considering the individual bishops as co-ordi
nate with each other, but subordinate to a hierarchical unity.
These Epistles, however, do not treat of this subject ; it was
impossible that they should at that time consider the relation of
the individual bishops to each other, and to the coUective Church,"
which was throwing itself into a monarchical form, but the rela
tion of the bishop to the individual community and to its sub
ordinate officers had to be settled.^ It was not until the primacy
' In connection with this, the following passage in Smym. viii. is worthy of notice :
OTrou dl' ^avy 6 erricrKOTroQ, £k« to ttXtjOoq iario, licnrep ottov dv -y XpiaroQ 'It](tovq,
iKeZ t'l KoQoXiKri iKKXrjaia : the individual community, therefore, has the bishop as its
centre of unity and organization, the collective Church has its ideal unity in Christ.
ft is indeed intelligible that the same tendency to external unity, which took from
among the presbyters the bishop as the representative of the union of the community,
necessarily strove to go further and escape from the plurality of the bishops, in the
direction of a monarchical head in the Bishop of Home, in order that it might see the
collective Church represented in a real centre, in the same way as the individual com
munity was represented in the individual bishop. But this further eonsequeucQ is
still remote from the standpoint of these Epistles ; catholic as are the ideas contained

224 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
of the bishop over the presbytery was firmly established, as was
actually done in these Epistles, that the foundation was laid on
which the further organization of the Church could be reared,
by comprehending the individual communities in the universal
Church. Eegarded from this point of view, these Epistles occupy
an intermediate position between the first Epistle of Clement
and the age of Irenseus and Tertullian, i. e. between the begin
ning and the end of the second century.
The dignity of the service of the Church, and the duty of the
community to be obedient to its officers in all things, are now
most energetically enforced in every way by our Epistles. In
PhUad. Inscr. it is said of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, that
they are appointed (dTroSeSety/tevot) by the wUl of Jesus Christ,
ovs Kard to tStov OeXypa ecrr-qpi^ev ev ^e/Saicocrvvy, rep dyico a-irov
rrve-vpan : theb election to this office therefore rested upon direct
(ov St' dv^pdJTTfov, ibid, i.) appointment by an act of Christ's wiU,
and upon endowment with the holy spirit, which confirmed
them in the right faith ; in which the germ of the doctrine of
the continua successio spiritus sancti may abeady be perceived.
In accordance with this, the bishop is the shepherd, under
whose protection alone the sheep find safety from the wolves,
the false teachers (ibid. U.). And hence it follows, lastly, that
" all who belong to God and Christ also hold the faith with the
bishop, and also all those who penitently return to unity with
the Church, in order to live in conformity with Jesus Christ
(observe that to live a Christian life is made equivalent to Uving
in communion with the Church), wiU belong to God. But he
who follows a schismatic (o-xtfovTt), does not inherit the kingdom
of God ; if any one walks in strange doctrine, he has no part in
(Christ's) suffering" (ibid. Hi.). In Trail. UL, after an exhorta
tion to obedience to the deacons and the bishop as to Jesus
Christ himself, and to the presbyters as to the apostoUc body, it
in them with regard to the monarchical organization of the individual community, yet
the unity of the collective Church is still regarded, as in the apostolic age, as an ideal
one, namely, Christ.

THE EPISTLES OF IGNATIUS. 225
is said, X<^P'S to-utcov eKKXya-ia ov KaXetrai. And ibid. vU., only he
who is not separated from our God Jesus Christ (or the God of
Jesus Christ), and from the bishop, and from the ordinances of
the Apostles, will remain unaffected by the poison of heresy;
only he who is within the altar (i. e. the communion of worship
with the Church) is pure ; and this is immediately explained
further by saying that every one has an impure conscience- who
does anything without the bishop and the presbytery and the
deacon. Thus the position of the conscience towards God is,
ih true Catholic fashion, made to depend on behaviour to the
authorities of the Church. Aud indeed the infiuence of these
authorities was by no means limited to the immediate domain
of the Church, but purely human affairs, such as marriage, are to
be submitted to the yvdpy of the bishop ; comp. Polyc. v., TrpeTret
TOts yapovcri Kal rats yapovp,evais perd yvcopys rov emcrKOTrov ryv
'ivcocriv TroietcrOai, iva b ydpos y Kara Oebv, Kal p,y Kar erriOvpiav :
thus the marriage is according to the wiU of God, if it have the
consent of the bishop, — so far has the ideal ofthe hierarchical
guardianship of Christian life already advanced ! According to
Magn. vL, the bishop is to preside in the place of God, the pres
byters in the place of the o-weSptov of the Apostles, and the
deacons as those who are entrusted with the SiaKovia of Jesus
Christ. " Now," chap. vii. proceeds, " as the Lord does nothing,
either by himself or with the Apostles, without the Father, with
whom he is one, so also do ye nothing without the bishop and
the presbyters. Jesus Christ is one ; so now everything coalesces,
as it were, into one temple of God, one altar, one Christ !" As
the representative of the union of the community, the bishop
has the exclusive direction ofthe public worship ; in Smyrn. viii.
it is said, " No one shaU perform anything connected with the
Church without the bishop." 'EKetvTj ySe^ata evxapia-ria ¦qyeia-Oco,
TJ vrrd TOV iTTto-KOTTOv ovo-a, TJ (u dv avTos imrperpy. "Ottov dv ^avTj o
iTTto-KOTTOs, iKet rb rrXyOos ecrrco, c^cnrep, ottov av jj Xpto-TOS 'ITJ0-9VS,
eKet TJ KaOoXiKy iKKXycria. Ovk e^dv lo-Tt x<^P'« ^"^ iTrto-KoVov ovVe
/SaTTTtfetv ovVe dyaTTTjv Trotetv, dAA' d dv iKetvos SoKipday, tovto Kal tu
VOL. IL Q

226 PAULINISM IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH GNOSTICISM.
OeQ ivdpecrrov, iva dcr<^aXes tj Kat ^ejiaiov rrdv b Trpda-crerai. And
in chap. IX., 0 nplov irria-KOTrov vrrb Oeov reripyrai, b XdOpa eTTto-
Korrov Tl rrpdo-crcov Tcp StaySdAij) Xarpevei.
These passages are enough to show how completely the
Catholic hierarchical principle is developed in the pseudo-Ignatian
Epistles. Unity with the bishop is unity with God and Christ ;
separation from the bishop is departure from God and Christ,
leads to the loss of the kingdom of God, is denying the suffering
of Christ — nay, is in short the service of the devil ! The Church,
with its hierarchical organization, steps in between God and man,
determines man's relation to God, passes judgment regarding
blessedness and the contrary, and rtUes over the entire moral
Ufe. And now let us bear in mind that this is the language of the
same pseudo-Ignatius, in the same Epistles in which he declares'
Judaizing to be an old leaven incompatible with Christianity,
to be folly and godlessness, and holds up Jesus Christ, and his
cross and his death, and faith in these, to the beUever in the old
covenant, who sought for authority as the only true and invio
lable authority by means of which he could expect to obtain
justification (PhUad. viii.). For external purposes, as weapons
for the defence of Christian autonomy against Judaism, the
purest maxims of Paul are maintained ; but internally, for the
members of the community, Paul's vopos rod Trvev/^aTos ttjs fonjs Iv
Xpto-T$ 'Itjo-ov has become a new law, namely, the hierarchical
law of the Churoh. So far is this, however, from being a con
cession to Jewish Christianity, or even the consequence of a
regulating influence exercised by that party, that, on the con
trary, it is in the last decisive struggle with Jewish Christianity,
which had now become a sect, that the hierarchical organization
of the Church completely developed and established itself within
the Pauline communities, — that Church organization, of which,
half a century before, only the as yet innocent beginnings and
preliminaries were to be seen in the importance attached to the
ordering of the Christian community (cf 1 Clement). We may

THE EPISTLES OF IGNATIUS. 227
see here a final and entirely decisive confirmation of our whole
view of the course of the development of Paulinism into Catho
licism ; namely, that it proceeded by the organic method of
purely inward modification, and not by the mechanical method
of external transactions and acts of compromise.

Q 2

CONCLUSION.
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.

Having foUowed in these doctrinal writings the development
of Paulinism, its transition and transformation into the faith of
the universal (CathoUc) Church, let us in conclusion once more
turn our attention to the way in which this later PauUnism
reveals its character in the view it took of the original PauUnism,
and its position with regard to the primitive Christian commu
nity. The " Acts of the Apostles " bears testimony to the con
sciousness of the later Paulinism regarding its own historical
past. That this is no purely historical and original account of
the primitive apostolic times, and of the doings of the Apostles,
is proved — apart from all other evidence — by the purely external
circumstance, that it is far too incomplete and fragmentary for
such a purpose. It leaves almost wholly out of sight all the
other Apostles, and only sets before us the doings of Peter and
Paul, the former being the central figure of the first part of the
work, and the latter forming the entire subject-matter of the
second. But besides this, the history of these two chief Apostles
is not represented in the way in which it must necessarUy have
been, if it were a real historical book. The history of Peter is
allowed to drop from the moment when Paul appears upon the
stage, although it had up to this point been overloaded with
detaUs, part of which can only be regarded as variations and
repetitions of the same story. From the account of Paul, on the

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 229
other hand, a quantity of very important matter is omitted,^-
the founding of many communities, dangers and sufferings of
every kind, and especiaUy the violent . contests of parties within
the Church. A cursory glance at these external circumstances
is enough to show us, that the Acts of the Apostles is not an
original and historical account of the beginning of the Christian
Church, of the fortunes of the Apostles and of the earliest com
munities, but that it has a far more limited aim. It is intended
to give a parallel account of the two chief Apostles, Peter and
Paul, as the representatives respectively of Jewish and GentUe
Christianity, in order to show, by the equal position and cordial
agreement of the two party leaders on essential points, that the
equal authority and intimate union or compatibility of Jewish
and GentUe Christianity within the Church, rests on apostolical
foundation and example; consequently, that their incompatibi
lity, as it was not catholic, so neither was it apostolical. As
its historical statements mainly serve the purpose of holding up
the mirror of the past, as an instructive pattern to the tendency
of its own time to union within the Church, the Acts of the
Apostles must so far certainly be regarded less as a historical
work than as a writing with a practical Church tendency. But
although it is certain that the selection and arrangement of the
materials have been determined by this tendency, this is far from
deciding the question whether the materials for the history have
themselves been modified to suit this tendency. The fact that
the Acts of the Apostles gives an account of the relation of
parties in the primitive Church which varies considerably from
that which is contained in Paul's Epistles, certainly appears to
favour this supposition, and to support the hypothesis that the
author of the Acts of the Apostles has mtentionally made his
Paul like Peter, and his Peter Uke Paul, in order to efface arti-
•ficiaUy the opposition that actually existed between the two
parties. According to this view, the Acts ofthe Aposties would
be a proposal of peace made by the Pauline party, which was
wiUing to purchase the desbed union by very important con-

230 CONCLUSION.
cessions to Judaism — nay, almost by the denial of the funda
mental propositions of Paul,
There are nevertheless some considerations of the greatest
importance which are adverse to this view. Two of these rest
on general grounds. In the first place, a standpoint of this kind
is wholly without example in the history of PauUnism; for
although we have had occasion to observe a very important
modification of the original doctrines of Paul, yet this has
nowhere consisted in giving up the position of the party in
favour of a compromise of any kind, but in every phase of that
process there has appeared an ever unduninished consciousness
of the fuU right to autonomy possessed by GentUe Christianity,
independently of the law ; and the toning down of this specific
dogmatism of Paul, in the sense of a neutral view held by the
Church, never tookthe form of conscious concession to a foreign
standpoint, but was always an inward and unintentional modi
fication of consciousness, which inevitably occurred in Gentile
Christian communities which were without the presuppositions
of the dogmatic teaching of Paul, and which we might also
naturaUy expect, under the altered circumstances ofthe time, in
the presence of the new dangers and the new requirements of
the community. The whole analogy, therefore, of the rest of the
history of Paulinism is certainly not for, but against, the view,
that the Acts of the Apostles is a work with a tendency such
as has been described, which would purchase the recognition
and friendship of the Jewish Christians by making concessions
to them, and would sacrifice the historical Paul for the sake of
this object. It is certainly much more probable tbat the author,
possessed with the consciousness of his own time, in which
Paulinism had in fact already become very different from what
it was, apprehended in good faith the circumstances of the
apostolic times also, and understood and honestly made use of
his sources of information regarding it, with the presupposition
that the relation of Jewish and heathen Christianity could have
been no other in the time of primitive Christianity than it was

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 231
in his own,— namely, that of the mutual approximation, agree
ment, and union of the more sober elements of both sides, in
opposition to the extreme views of either party.
And, among other things, this view is favoured also by the
general character of the historical writing of our author as
directly set forth by himself as his principle in the preface to
Luke's Gospel, in which at any rate he has undeniably carried it
out. He there affirms that he " had accurately traced all things "
(Luke L 3), by which words he can only indicate the exact and
thorough cognizance of all the sources of information accessible
to him, whether written or traditionaL as well as the careful
comparison, testing, and conscientious use of them, for the pur
pose of accurately ascertaining and setting forth the actual facts
that occurred. 1 He certainly does not use his sources of infor
mation in a servile manner, but proceeds according to a plan and
method of his own, as he intimates in the same place by the
words, Ka^e^Tjs ypdif/ai . . . iva eTrtyv(i)S ttjv do-(jf>dAetav, — Considering
it necessary to ascertain the exact facts by means of a certain
critical sifting and handling of the traditional materials which
appeared to him generally trustworthy, especially in order to
exhibit the manifold details in their true connection and in
chronological order (KaOe^ys ypd^pai). This two-fold principle of
his historical work — the accurate cognizance and consideration
of his authorities on the one hand, and, on the other, the inde
pendent handling, critical sifting, and free arrangement of his
materials, may be actually traced without difficulty in Luke's
Gospel. The blending and diverse colouring exhibited both by
the language and the dogma of this Gospel, has often suggested
the question. How can the alternation of Hebraic and pure
Greek, of Ebionitish and Pauline narrations and speeches, be
explained, excepting by the use of different sources of informa
tion ? It is true that the PauUne standpoint of the author
unquestionably betrays itself in the preference and accumulation
of such narrations as serve to support Paul's doctrine of divine
1 Grimm, "Uber das Proomium des Lukas-evaugel," Jahrb. f. d. Th. xvi. p. 70.

232 CONCLUSION.
favour and universaUsm ; but this makes it the more significant,
indicating the more forcibly the honest endeavour of the his
torian to give an impartial consideration to his various sources of
information (rrda-iv TrapyKoXovO-qKon, L 3), that he has not dis
dained, on the other hand, to admit passages of the most decided
Ebionitish character. Let it suffice here briefly to refer to the
form in which he presents the Sermon on the Mount (vi. 20 f);
to the strong Jewish-Christian colouring of the history of Christ's
childhood, chaps, i. and ii. (cf. the emphasis laid on the legal
righteousness of his parents and those of John, i. 6 and 15 ; the
kingdom of David assigned to Jesus, i. 32 f ; the reference of
redemption to the nation of Israel, L 54 f, 68 — 74, U. 10, 34,
and simUarly xxiv. 21); to the promise made to the twelve
Apostles that the kingdom should be assigned to them, and that
they should sit on thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel
(xxii. 28 — 30) ; to the Ebionitish point of the narrative in
xviii. 18 — 27, and of the parables in xvi. 1 — 9 and xix. 31 ; to
the saying in xvi. 17, about the impossibility that the law should
pass away. But we may also learn from these very passages of
chap. xvL, how the Pauline author contrived to reconcile to his
views Ebionitish materials of this. kind, which his conscieuQe did
not allow him as a historian to leave out. He subjoins to the
first parable an explanation which, without prejudice to its
value, points its moral, not to the meritoriousness of almsgiving,
but to fidelity in smaU matters; he places the verse which
speaks of the imperishability of the law, between two others,
according to which the law is only valid untU the time of John,
when the gospel preaching of the kingdom begins (ver. 16), and
the Old Testament law of divorce is abrogated in the kingdom of
God, and replaced by another and stricter law (ver. 18). He
supplements the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (which
probably ended originally at ver. 26) by a conclusion, accorduig
to which the damnation .of the rich is a retribution not so much
for their luxurious living, as for their want of faith in the law
and the prophets, and in one who has risen from the dead (i. e. in

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 233
the preaching of the Old and New Testament). In Uke manner,
in close connection with the passage in which redemption is
referred to Israel, he refers it to aU nations, to the GentUes
(iL 31 f ) ; to the sending forth of the Twelve he subjoins that of
the Seventy (chaps, ix, and x,), and indeed he connects with the
latter the speech containing the more detaUed instructions, and
adds a more Uvely account of their success (x. 17 — 29), which
evidently relates to the success of the mission to the Gentiles ;
but he reserves for the Twelve the privUege of sitting in judg
ment (xxii, 30), No doubt he found the account of the sending
forth of the disciples ready to his hand in this two-fold form,
and therefore embodied both in his narrative, but he distributes
his materials in such a manner as seemed best to accord with
his Jewish-Christian views. In the same way, the tracUtion of
the special promise made to Peter, as the chief Apostle, may
have existed in two forms — that of Matthew (xvi, 17 f ), and
that of Luke (xxii, 32) and John (xxi, 15 f ), The first of these
two forms was either entirely unknown to Luke, or if known it
probably appeared to him to be a mere variation (doublette) of
the other, and so he gave the preference to the latter form,
because by means of its reference to the denial of Peter and the
necessity of his conversion, it appeared to give to his elevation
its just proportions, and to put him on an equaUty with the
other chief Apostle, Paul, who had likewise gone through the
stages of sin and conversion.
Now if the author of Luke's Gospel and of the Acts of the
Apostles has in the first of these writings unquestionably pro
ceeded according to his priUciple of making a thorough and
impartial use of his different sources of information, but of
aUowing himself, in the literary working up of the materials
before him, the free choice and arrangement and rhetorical
explanation of each situation in accordance with his own views
in matters of doctrine, we may venture to anticipate that the
same course has been pursued in the Acts ofthe Apostles. Thus
we shall, on the one hand, descry in the facts narrated no inven-

234 CONCLUSION.
tion with a particulor bias, but matter taken from oral or written
tradition. On the other hand, we must not forget that the choice
of matter, its arrangement and mise en scdne in each particular
instance, and especially the speeches which throw Ught on the
situations, are to be placed to the account of the free Uterary
representation by which the author's dogmatic views are en
forced, here as weU as in his Gospel.
If, with these presuppositions, we proceed at once to the most
decisive point, the account of the convention of the Apostles in
Acts XV,, we shall find that they are fuUy corroborated ; for the
statements here made, when compared with the authentic state
ment of the Apostle Paul in Gal, iL, certainly tum out not to be
historically correct ; but the difference is of such a kind, that we
should by no means be justified in presuming that there had
been any intentional misrepresentation. It is to be explained
partly, so far as the facts are concerned, by wholly unintentional
inaccuracies and transposition of detaUs in the tradition which
the author had before him ; and partly, as regards the speeches,
which we must naturally expect to have been freely composed
according to the universal custom of ancient writers of history,
by the honest presupposition of the author, that the peaceful
tendency of the parties within the Church of his own time must
have had its antecedent in the time of its apostolic heads.
As regards the facts, the first thing to be observed is, that
both the occasion and the result of the conference at Jerusalem
are in essential points quite correctly stated in the Acts of the
Apostles, As to the occasion, certain persons who were zealous
with regard to the law had come from Jerusalem to Antioch, in
order to put an end to the " freedom " in Christ which prevailed
at that place, and to subject the emancipated community to the
yoke of the law. These persons in this mixed community had
raised the question of the validity of the law, which had not yet
come up for decision as a question of principle ; they had thrown
those whose opinions were undecided and those who were un
stable in character into great perplexity, and endangered the

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 235
work to which Paul had devoted his whole Ufe, the establish
ment of Gentile Christianity freed from the bondage of the law.
If this crisis was to be overcome, if this question was to be
decided, and the minds that had been unsettled were to be
restored to peace, this could only come to pass at the central
point of Christianity, by an understanding with the revered
original Apostles, the "pUlars" of Christendom, So far we have
complete agreement between the Acts of the Apostles and
Gal, ii. That according to the latter Paul went to Jerusalem
in " obedience to a revelation," but according to the former at
the request of the community of Antioch, are not contradictory
views which mutually exclude each other ; for the inward
impulse was of course united with external motives, among
which the desire of the community would have stood first. But
it is too much to say that, according to the Acts of the Apostles,
the community of Antioch applied to Jerusalem, as to a superior
authority in the Church, fOr a judicial decision ; while according
to Gal. ii,, Paul negotiated with the original Apostles as an equal
with equals ; for, on the one hand, Paul must actuaUy have attri
buted to the decision of the original Apostles a certain influence
in the way of arbitration, otherwise he would not have sought .
an understanding with them ; and, on the other hand, the
account in the Acts of the Apostles itself conveys an impression,
not so much of a process before an ecclesiastical judicature, as
of a free negotiation between equals; only this negotiation is
certainly represented as of a more formal kind, and therefore
approaching more nearly to a councU of the Church, than it is
according to Gal, ii. But how natural and probable it is that
so important a conference should in tradition have assumed the
more pompous outlines of a formal and solemn councU of the
primitive community! — A further point, which has been exagge
rated, entirely without grounds, into a difference of great import
ance, reduces itself to the same category, viz,, that according to
the Acts of the Apostles the negotiations took place in public

236 CONCLUSION.
before the assembled community, but according to Gal, ii. con
sisted only of private conferences with the Apostles who were
" piUars." In the first place, this statement is not quite correct,
for in Gal, ii, 2, Paul makes a distinction between two public
bodies with whom he negotiated : first, avTots in general, i. e.
the community of Jerusalem ; secondly, KaT t'Stav Se to ts SoKovo-t,
the Apostles who were pUlars. GaL iL 3 — 5 must refer to the
negotiations with the assembled community, because the contro
versy with the false brethren who demanded the circumcision
of Titus can only have been a public one ; and thereupon fol
lows in conclusion the private conference with the Apostles
who were piUars, in vers, 6 — 9, at which, moreover, the presence*
of some of the revered elders is not distinctly excluded by the
words used. Now it agrees perfectly well with this that, accord
ing to Acts XV. 6 also, the Apostles and elders meet for the first
time at the second stage of the conferences, after a debate had
previously occurred with the Pharisaical zealots, informally, as
is evident, in the presence of the larger pubUc (ver, 5), It is
true, however, that in the Acts of the Apostles the result of
these negotiations in the narrower circle is represented as a
formal conclusion of the community, whUe it was in fact only a
private agreement between Paul and the three Apostles who are
caUed pUlars, with which it remains uncertain how far the rest
of the community concurred, as their consent was never asked.
That this more simple position of the matter was somewhat
deranged in the course of tradition, and assumed the more
imposing form in which it is presented to us in the Acts of the
Apostles, is not at all surprising. Finally, with regard to the
result itself, it is in the main quite in accordance with what is
related by Paul, and that in two ways — ^positively, for Paul
attains his chief object, the freedom of the Gentile Christians
from the law ; negatively, for as to other matters everything is
left as it was before, the lasting validity of the law remains Out
side of the negotiation, and is presupposed by the Christians of

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 237
Jerusalem as self-evident,^ This presupposition is in any case
indicated in ver, 21, whether we take these words as the ground
of the decision that the demands made upon GentUe Christians
must not go beyond the measure of the injunctions to proselytes,
or of the decision that at least so much must necessarily be
required. The injunction that the GentUe Christians should
keep themselves from the polluting idol sacrifices, from blood,
from things strangled and from fornication, cannot certainly, as
is represented in the Acts of the Apostles, have been imposed
at that time on the Gentile Christians by an official decree ; for
this is too decidedly opposed to the express declaration of Paul,
that those who possessed authority had laid nothing before him
(e/xot ovSev rrpocraveO evro, ver, 6), and that he held himself under '
no further obligation than that he should think of the poor
(ver, 10). Besides, it is quite inconceivable that Paul should
never mention that decision, not even when he himself forbids
the Corinthians to partake of sacrifices offered to idols, as being
an unchristian connection with the altar of heathen sacrifice,
and consequently with devUs (1 Cor, x, 14 — 22), But this erro
neous statement of the Acts of the Apostles is certainly not the
result of invention prompted by a tendency to particular views,
but is simply to be accounted for by the fact that it was the
custom of the primitive Church to refer everything, quod semper,
quod ubigue, quod ab omnibus creditum est, whether in faith or
morals, to distinct apostolic enactment and ordinance. There
can' be no doubt ^ that such abstinence had become a matter of
universal custom in Gentile Christian communities long before
the time of the author, not only because Paul himself took occa
sion to enforce similar views (cf 1 Cor, x, about partaking of
idol sacrifices, and 1 Cor, v, about prohibited marriages), but also
1 This is a case in which, least of all, a, statement originating in a tendency to par
ticular views ought to have been attributed to the Acts of the Apostles ; for its account
entirely accords with the historical situation, as deduced from Gal, ii, (compare above.
Part II, p, 5), whQe it could hardly be explained from the author's own views, or
those of his time,
" Cf , Lipsius, in Schenkel's Bibellex, sub verb, Apostelkonvent,

238 CONCLUSION.
because the proselytes of the gate had always been bound to
practise it, and these would naturally have formed in most
instances the basis of the Gentile Christian part of mixed com
munities ; it is self-evident that the proselytes who had become
Christians would have considered themselves bound by those
commandments, after' their conversion no less than before it, if
it were only that they might not break off theb intercourse with
the Jewish Christians ; and then the further inference is also
perfectly natural, that the GentUes who were subsequently con
verted should have adopted the same customs which they found
already existing among the oldest GentUe Christians, namely,
those who had been proselytes of the gate. This ancient prac
tice of the Gentile Christian communities, namely, binding
themselves by the obligations laid on proselytes, may very pro
bably have been referred by tradition at a later period to apos
tolical enactment, so that we shall only have to regard its more
distinct connection with the convention of the Apostles, as added
by the author in the exercise of his literary art; but it is so,
thoroughly in accordance with his general Uterary manner to
connect facts vaguely handed down by tradition with definite
occasions (selected by himself), that there is not the smallest
ground for referring it to any particular tendency. Whilst, on
the one hand, the explanation we have suggested accounts for
everything in a perfectly natural manner, it is difiicult to con
ceive, on the other hand, what object our author could have had
in gratuitously inventing this injunction. That it was, as has
been conjectured, a conciliatory proposal made by the PauUne
party to the Jewish Christians, is impossible, because the fol
lowers of Paul could not have offered as a condition of peace
a practice which already independently existed ; and because,
moreover, there were no longer any moderate Jewish Christians
to be conciliated who would have been satisfied with this con
dition, ' We have seen, then, that the facts of the convention have in
the main been represented with historical truth in the Acts of

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 239
the Apostles, and that what is unhistorical in the account must
be set down partly to.the tradition which the author had before
him, partly to the literary garb in which he chose to present it,
without however being influenced by a tendency to any par
ticular views. As to the speeches, it is true that the case is dif
ferent. Here we should naturaUy expect to find no historically
true account of what was said, for we must remember that it was
the universal custom of ancient writers of history to iUustrate
actual occurrences by speeches composed by themselves. And
how natural it is that in such compositions the historian should
either put his own views into the mouth of the speakers, or at
least make them speak as they might have spoken in his time,
but not as they actually spoke in their own ! Thus our author
makes Peter express his views about the law in a liberal and
Pauline spirit, as he (the author) thought on the subject, and as
enlightened .lewish Christians of his time might also very weU
have thought, but as Peter in his own time could neither have
thought nor spoken. That Peter referred to a case of GentUe
conversion that had occurred in his own mission work, is indeed
quite possible ; the occurrence of such individual instances must
in any case be assumed, for the account in Acts x, cannot pos
sibly have been a gratuitous invention ; but it is, according to
the Acts of the Apostles also, an individual case that is described,
• and an exception to the rule, which did not abrogate the rule
itself, according to which the original Apostles confined the
sphere of their labours to Israel This lUnitation, however,
which according to Gal, U. 9 was at that time laid down as
a principle, reposed on a fundamental view of the relation of
Christianity to Judaism, and of the permanent vaUdity of the
law (cf above. Part II, p, 5), which is certainly not that of
Paul, but rather contradicts the Pauline idea expressed in Acts
XV. 9 — 11, If Peter were in reaUty so thoroughly convinced, as
he there declares himself to be, that the law was only an intoler
able yoke, and that in opposition to it the only way of salvation
was faith Ui the favour of Christ, which was applicable equaUy

240 CONCLUSION.
to Jews and Gentiles, how could he cling to the difference,
which God himself had removed, between Jews and GentUes, by
confining his labours to the former? If he saw in the law an
intolerable yoke, how could he maintain its lasting vaUdity for
Jewish Christians ? How could he, after his momentary depar
ture from this law under the influence of tbe freer customs that
prevaUed at Antioch, allow himself to be frightened back into
submission to tbis yoke by the followers of James ? How could
he stand in need of Paul's explanation of the incompatibUity of
the law and faith, if he had himself already expressed precisely
the same convictions at Jerusalem ? We certainly see then
that Peter is here made to resemble Paul; this man of undecided,
moderate views, who could on occasion accommodate himseU to
a freer practice, but on the ground of his convictions took his
stand with James against Paul, and therefore on the decisive
occasion professed the principles of the party of the law, is
transferred to the camp of Paulinism, Our author makes James
speak more cautiously ; he only reminds his hearers of the say
ings of the prophets about the conversion of the GentUes, which
in no way went beyond the sphere of Jewish-Christian ideas,
according to which converted GentUes could join the IsraeUtish
community of the Messiah as proselytes, by which neither the
specifically Jewish character of the Christian community, nor,
above all, the permanent vaUdity of the law within it, were '
affected. In this difference between the speeches of Peter and
James, as weU as in the fact that it is the latter who brings for
ward the commandments enjoined on proselytes, a faint recoUec
tion is discernible of the stronger views of James as compared
with those of Peter, That Paul and his friends are made in
ver, 12 to defend their cause mainly by an appeal to their actual
success among the heathen, is also very conformable to the facts,
and agrees with GaL ii. 7 — 9,
In GaL U,, to the account of the conference of the Apostles in
Jerusalem, is added the sequel of the scene between Paul and
Peter in Antioch, in which the difference of principles which

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 241
had tUl then been concealed is for the first time brought into
view, and which therefore throws a clearer light on the actual
situation of parties in primitive Christian times than the nego
tiations at Jerusalem (cf above. Part II. p, 11), The Acts of
the Apostles gives us no account of this scene, but relates
instead of it only the quarrel between Paul and Barnabas, which
arose out of an insignificant occasion (the question whether Mark
should be taken with them again on their mission joumey), but
led to a violent ebuUition of feeling (xv, 36 — 41). It is very
natural to see in this account a faint trace of the earnest conflict
of which Paul gives an account. We cannot tell how far our
author may have had more particular information on this sub
ject; it is quite possible that tradition had already obliterated
the recollection of that scene in Gentile Christian circles, softened
the violence of the conflict, and lost the memory of its bearing.
It wiU appear the more probable that this was the case when
we consider that the chief Apostles, Peter and Paul, are abeady
brought together in agreement in the first Epistle of Clement
(chap. V,), and the dissensions between the parties of Paul, Peter,
and Apollos in Corinth are represented as less sinful than the
later dissensions with the presbyters, because they had aU been
iUustrious Apostles, to whom those' parties had attached them
selves (chap, xlvii,). This evidently presupposes that, even at.
that early period, there was no longer any true conception of the
real significance of the antagonistic views of the original apostolic
parties, at least in GentUe Christian cbcles ; in which case there
could have been no full and clear recollection of the most preg
nant expression of that antagonism, namely, the personal conflict
of the party leaders at Antioch ; at all events, its bearing could
have been no longer understood. It was far otherwise, indeed,
in the more decidedly Jewish-Christian circles, in which Paul
could not be forgiven for that scene after the lapse of a century,
as the Episties of Clement show. With reference to this, we
certainly cannot refuse to admit the possibility that our author
was aware of this conflict, but passed it over in sUence, in order
VOL IL K-:

242 CONQLUSION.
to spare the feelings of the Jewish Christians on this delicate
point. An attempt has further been made to treat the repeated in
stances in which, according to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul
accommodates himself to the laws and customs of the Jews, as
inventions which betray a certain tendency. But it ought first
to be proved that these instances cannot be historicaUy true. If
the refusal to yield to the unreasonable demand that Titus
should be circumcised (Gal. iL 3) is relied on, in order to show
that the account of the cbcumcision of Timothy in the Acts of
the Apostles (xvi, 3) is unhistorical, two points of difference
between these cases are overlooked — Titus was a pure Gentile
Christian ; Timothy, as the son of a Jewish mother, was half
Jewish by birth ; and, which is stUl more significant, in the case
of Titus the object was to give a decisive example of the prin
ciple that Gentile Christians were free from the law : in this
critical situation, to yield was equivalent to denying the prin
ciple ; but in the case of Timothy, not only was there an absence
of any reason of that kind for firmly carrying out the antinomian
principle, but to do so would rather have been contrary to the
object in view, because the offence that the Jews would have
taken at an uncircumcised half-Jewish assistant to the Apostle
would have been a constant hindrance in his missionary labours.
No reasonable person ought to deny that in general such external
grounds of expediency,' in matters which are in themselves indif
ferent — and circumcision was so regarded by Paul, according to
1 Cor, viL 19; GaL vL 15 — may determine our action; andthe
Apostle himself, in particular, has given such decisive evidence
(1 Cor, ix. 19 f) that such considerations of pastoral wisdom
exerted a determining influence on him, and disposed him,
though antinomian in principle, to a practical accommodation to
the adherents of the law, that there is no room left for doubt on
the subject. How far, however, such accommodation would and
ought to go, is a question which cannot possibly be answered
a priori, because in such questions of moral taste each decision

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 243
must be purely subjective. If b be said that Paul could not
have gone to the feasts at Jerusalem, because he himself had
reproached the Galatians (iv, 10) with faUing back into bondage
in keeping such (holy) days, we must also remember that he
himself, in Eom, xiv, 6, aUows days to be kept, provided it be
done " unto the Lord," i, e, in harmony with the Christian con
science. And it is as easy, on the one hand, to think of practical
reasons which would make it expe<Uent that the Apostle should
be present in Jerusalem at the times of the great gatherings
there, as it would be surprising, on the other hand, if these
journeys to attend the feast were invented in the Acts of the
Apostles for a special purpose, and yet neither emphasized nor
made use of, but only so cursorUy and casually mentioned as
they are in xviU, 22, The journey in xi, 30 may have a wrong
date assigned to it, but this is very far from justifying the accu
sation that it was invented with a special object. When, again,
in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul is made to visit first of all the
Jewish synagogue in his missionary journeys, and only to betake
himself afterwards to the GentUes, this is no less agreeable to the
nature of the circumstances than it is in harmony with the
express declaration of the Apostle, that the gospel was ordained
'lovSaicp re rrpcorov Kal "EAAtjvi, and that salvation had come to the
Gentiles from the faU of the Jews, The account of the proceed
ings before and after the Apostle was taken prisoner at Jerusalem
has given the greatest offence of aU, because, if historicaUy true,
it would throw a shadow on the character of Paul ; but we must
again reflect, first of all, on the subjectivity of judgments of this
kind which depend on moral taste. Does it not daily happen,
that in the same course of action one man sees impurity and
weakness, whilst another considers it permissible — nay, a proof of
wisdom sanctioned by duty, or of amiable consideration ? An
objective judgment possessed of scientific weight cannot be based
on merely individual views of this kind ; this consideration might
at least induce scientific critics to display somewhat more of cau
tion and eTfoxTj. We must then consider that the precise group-
k2

244 CONCLUSION
ing of events, and the causes with which they are connected by
means of the speeches of the persons who took part in them,
may be the literary work of the author, but that the facts them
selves which he relates may nevertheless very weU be histori
cally true. Why Paul should not make use of a ceremony
which was in his eyes a matter of indifference, without either
meaning or value, in order to quiet the heated minds of a
fajiatical multitude which were not to be reached by any appeal
to reason, it is not very easy to see. Besides, there are many
reasons to conclude that it was of very great importance to him
at that time to keep on good terms with the community at Jeru
salem (cf his zeal about the contribution for the poor, his anxifety
for the friendly reception of it at Jerusalem, Eom. xv, 30 f, the
conciliatory tone of the Epistle to the Eomans towards the Jew
ish Christians throughout, and particularly the friendly way in
which the primitive community is mentioned, ibid, ver. 27).
Whether this act of condescension on the part of the Apostle,
the actual occurrence of which appears to b» quite credible, had
so direct a reference to the accusation in ver. 21, that he taught
apostacy from the law, and was intended for a practical refuta
tion of it, as is represented in the Acts of the Apostles, must
ever remain doubtful ; yet, even in this case, Paul may weU be
defended against the too severe accusation of falsehood; for,
antinomian as he was in principle, yet he was not in practice a
fanatical assailant of the law, as his opponents falsely asserted
him to be ; but, on the contrary, he both showed and felt indulg
ence to weak consciences that were held in bondage to legality
(Eom. xiv.; cf above. Part II. p. 44). Lastly, as to the speech
which the Apostle made in his defence, we certainly cannot,
on the grounds that have been above discussed, expect that it
should be historicaUy accurate ; some things which the author
here makes Paul say could not weU have been so said by him ;
and besides, these speeches have beeil unmistakably composed
according to a consistent plan. But we must not seek even in
them a conciliatory tendency, which would have made Paul a

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 245
Judaizer in order to gain over the Judaizers. But when Paul
expresses himself as if his present and his former faith, before
he became a Christian, were not essentially different, we must
remember that the second Epistle to Timothy, a thoroughly
Pauline Epistle, to which no conciliatory tendency can be
ascribed, contains precisely the same language regarding the
faith both of Paul and Timothy (i. 3—5 ; cf above, Part II.
p. 215) ; and this indeed accords with the view ofthe universal
Church respecting the essential identity of the Old and New
Testament faith (cf also Heb. xL). In conclusion, it is to
be observed that it is precisely in those portions that have been
called in question, namely the scenes which occurred in Jeru
salem, that the Acts of the Apostles makes a decided impression
of its historical truthfulness by its epic liveliness and vividness
of narration ; and how can the hypothesis of its " tendency " be
reconcUed with the open way in which the hatred of the Jewish
Christians to Paul is spoken of, and in which their most bitter
reproaches are so bluntly expressed (xxi. 21) ? And its sUence
regarding any help and support which the hardly-pressed Apostle
of the GentUes may have found on the part of the Apostles to
the Jews, completely as it is in accord with the truly Pauline
account in 2 Tim. iv. 16 (written from Ctesarea shortly after the
occurrence), is no less inconsistent with this supposed tendency.
In fact, we can only wonder here, as in many parts of Luke's
Gospel, at the ingenuousness with which the author, far from
pursuing a purpose according to a plan which he has cleverly
devised and carried out, has, on the contrary, taken up, from the
sources of information before him, matter that by no means
accorded with his presuppositions, by which in other passages
he stiU abides.
The mode in which the doctrine of Paul presented itself from
the point of view of the later Paulinism of the Church, is to be
collected from the doctrinal speeches of Paul in the Acts of the
Apostles. It is incontestable that these speeches no longer con
tain the genuine doctrine of Paul, but only a very poor remnant

246 CONCLUSION.
of it. But in this respect they only share the peculiar character
of the rest of the later Pauline literature, especially of the Epis
tles of Barnabas, Clement, 1 Peter, and the Pastoral Epistles, and
therefore fall under the same category- — they are neither original
historical accounts, nor inventions in support of a tendency, but
true expressions of a later phase of the development of Paul
inism in the Church. Three specially important missionary
speeches of Paul are contained in the Acts of the Apostles ; first,
the speech at Antioch, xiii. 16 — 41, as an example of his speak
ing before Jews ; secondly, that at Athens, xvii, 22 — 31, as au
example of his speaking before Gentiles ; and thirdly, that at
Miletus, XX. 17 — 35, as an example of his speaking before Chris
tians. The first of these speeches, like that of Stephen, begins with a
historical reminiscence of the Divine choice and guidance of the
people of Israel until the reign of David, from which the transi
tion is at once made to Jesus the Messianic son of David, in
order to declare him beforehand to be the central object of aU
the Old Testament history and promise, and to make the evan
gelical preaching of him the fulfilment of this promise which
was given to Israel (xiii, 16 — 26), Then foUows the substance
of the preaching of salvation (Adyos t^s a-iorypias), consisting of a
brief statement of the two chief facts, the death and resurrection
of Christ (vers, 27 — 37), and their religious consequences — the
offer of forgiveness of sins and justification through faith (ver.
38 f ), concluding with a warning against unbelief (ver, 40 f ).
That the death and resurrection of Christ and justification by
faith should be held up, as they are here, as the substance of
evangeUcal preaching, is quite Pauline if taken by itself; but
it is too evident that the more precise sense in which Paul
regarded the saving death of Christ and justification, as weU as
the connection between them, is not to be found here. The
death of Christ is the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophe
cies, brought about by human ignorance, and therefore assumes

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 247
the aspect of a human disposition of events permitted and fore
seen by God, the guilt of which is extenuated by the ignorance
of its authors ; but it is by no means the divine institution of
a reconcUing vicarious act, which would constitute it the cen
tral point of the work of redemption wiUed by God, and the
new ground of salvation. It is not the means of reconcUiation
from which the forgiveness of sin is derived, and justifying
faith is not connected with it ; but when it is said in ver, 38,
that Std TOVTOV dc^ea-is dpapncov KarayyeXXerai, the forgiveness
of sins is only referred to Christ in that very general sense
in which the Messiah is regarded as the abiding mediator of
the forgiveness of sins according to the Jewish-Christian view.
The mention of justification by faith certainly has the appear
ance of a distinct allusion to the cardinal doctrine of Paul ; but
the remarkable words appended to it, dTrd rrdvrcov, Jv ovk -qSw-qOyre
ev rep vopup Mtotreois SiKaicoOyvai, iv rovrcp Trds b TTia-revcov SiKaiovrai,
betray an under-current of thought which is alien to Paul's doc
trine regarding justification and the law ; for they evidently
imply that, the law also was able to afford a certain kind of
justification, but not complete justification, so that the righteous
ness of faith was now ordained as something more perfect, by
wMch the deficiencies of the righteousness of the law were to
be filled up. But this amounts precisely to that joining together
of the righteousness of the law and that of faith which was the
Jewish- Christian view, and became at a later period the view of
the universal Church, but which is decidedly not the view of
Paul, according to whom these are two specificaUy opposite
things, which cannot complete, but can only do away with each
other. We may remark further, that the threatening with which
this passage concludes entirely accords with the general anti-
Jewish views of our author, inasmuch as it presupposes the
unbelief of the Jews as a phenomenon which was almost a priori
self-evident ; but that, on the other hand, it agrees neither with
the doctrinal wisdom of the Apostle Paul, nor with his high

248 CONCLUSION.
patriotic and theocratic appreciation of Israel, Lastly, the way
in which the conversion of some is referred to the predestinating
ordinance of God (xiii, 48) is thoroughly Pauline,
The second speech, before the cultivated GentUe world of
Athens (xvii, 22 f ), contains a fine defence of spiritual monothe
ism against the sensuous heathen polytheism ; and a noble phi
losophy of the history of reUgion, which contradicts Paul's view
of heathenism expressed in Eom, i,, and does not precisely agree
with his other view in Gal, iv. For according to the former,
heathenism is a turning away from a recognized God and rising
against Him, which is deserving of punishment, and which is by
no means overlooked by God as mere ignorance, but, on the con
trary, is punished by ever-deepening ruin. According to the
latter, it is a period of minority, during which God subjected
men to bondage under the elements of the world untU the point
of time, predetermined by Himself, at which they were to attain
to the right of sons, through Christ. According to one view,
heathenism is a punishment of human guilt ordained by God ;
according to the other, it is bondage ordained by God, in the
service of that which is not -divine ; in both cases, therefore, it is
a condition of godlessness ordained by God. In the speech con
tained in Acts xvii,, on the contrary, heathenism is represented
as an unconscious worship, a tentative seeking of men after God,
who is near them, and who indeed bears witness of Himself in
various ways to them — nay, whose offspring they instinctively
feel themselves to be, but who, nevertheless, being incomprehen
sible in his pure essence, remains "an unknown God;" where
fore in their search after Him who is unknown, and yet not
strange to them, they wrongly think to find Him in sensuous
images, in which consists the imperfection of this "ignorant
piety" (ov dyvoovvTes eva-e^eire, ver, 23) permitted by God (cf
xiv, 16), This ignorance was blameless only so long as they had
no experience of any higher truth, but for that very reason when
He who has hitherto been hnknown is announced to them as a
revealed God, this irresponsibility ceases ; the necessity of a

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 249
change of mind follows upon the perception of error (j^eTavoetv
TrapayyeAAet, ver, 30), L e, turning away from vain gods and a
return to the one Uving God (cf 14, 15, evayyeAtfd/ievot vpds drrb
TOVTCOV TOJV paraicov iTricrrpe^eiv irrl tov Oebv rbv ^covra). The word
/ieTttvoetv must be understood simply in this sense of conversion
from heathenism to the monotheistic faith in God; nothing
specifically Christian is as yet involved in it, a;ny more than in
the rest of his speech up to this point. We have nothing of the
kind untU ver, 31, when it is said that God will judge the world
on an appointed day, by a man fore-ordained for that purpose,
the same man whom he had previously raised from the dead, and
had thereby given evidence to every one that he was appointed
to be the judge of the world. The statement in this passage
that the raising of Christ from the dead is the ground of faith in
him, is certainly Pauline ; but it is not Pauline to say that the
ordaining of Christ to be the judge ofthe world is exclusively
the object of this faith. The mediatorial position of Christ as
the redeemer, which is placed by Paul in the foreground of
faith, is here made to recede behind the Messianic dignity of his
position as judge. This dignity, moreover, is attached to his per
son only_extemaUy, by virtue of the Divine wiU ((^ copia-e), with
out having any deeper ground in that person itself, which is not
Pauline Christology (for in Eom, L 4, to which the passage
before us probably aUudes, KaTd Trvevpa dyuoa-vvys is added to
bpicrOels vtos Oeov).
The third speech, xx, 18 — 35, is a farewell address to the
presbyters of Ephesus, before his last journey to Jerusalem, In
this case, the particular form of his leave-taking is undoubtedly
a literary suj)plementation ; for, according to the Epistle to the '
Eomans, although Paul certainly did not look forward to his
journey to Jerusalem without anxiety, yet he was by no means
so despondent as he is here represented to be. Even in his
imprisonment at Eome he retained, we know, a lively hope of
seeing once more the communities he had founded (PhU, i, 25,
ii, 24), which is psychologicaUy far more probable in the case of

250 CONCLUSION.
so restless and active a nature, than the plaintive, melancholy
tone of that farewell address. Besides, the speech itself does not
accord very well with the actual situation of affairs. It consists
mainly of the Apostle's self-defence with respect to his having
preached the truth and having been unselfish in his official
labours, for which there could hardly have been occasion in
addressing a community which had for years had the oppor
tunity of becoming acquainted with him. The hortatory part
passes over the present circumstances of the Ephesian commu
nity in absolute silence, and occupies itself instead with the
future dangers which threaten the Church in general from
ravening wolves, who should arise from amongst themselves ;
the presbyters being appointed by the holy spirit as overseers
and shepherds of the community (of God ?), which he has won
by his own blood, are to guard their fiock from the false doctrine
of these wolves, which could only tend to mislead and divide
them into sects (vers, 28 — 31), These false teachers, who were
to rise from among the community after the Apostle's death and
form a schismatic party, can be no other than those against
whom the Pastoral Letters make Paul repeatedly utter the most
strenuous warnings, by precisely simUar vaticinia post e'ventum —
the Gnostic heretics; whereas the real Apostle Paul says not a
single syUable about such future false teachers in his genuine
Epistles, but has always enough to do with his Judaizing oppo
nents of the present. This passage then proves more clearly
than any other that this speech was composed from the stand
point of the post-apostoUc period, and in fact near the beginning
of the second century (Uke the second Epistle to Timothy), We
are reminded again of the Pastoral Letters by the way in which
the presbyters are enjoined to guard the community from false
teachers. The intimation that they were appointed as overseers
by the holy spirit (ver. 28), betokens, on the one hand, an
already increasing exaltation of the priestly office (compare with
this 1 Cor, xvL 15 f, and above, Part I, p, 234); but, on the
other hand, the fact that no difference is made between presby-

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 251
ters and irrurKOTroi, indicates an early stage of the development of
the organization in the Church, and therefore exactly the same
standpoint as that of the two older Pastoral Epistles, Moreover,
certain expressions in the speech before us remind us of the
Epistle to Titus — ver. 30, AaAoGvTes Siea-rpappeva,— cf Tit, i, 14,
drrompec^opevcov ryv dX-qOeiav, and iU, 11, i^ecrrpaTrrai b toiovtos :
ver, 28, iKKXycriav -qv Trepierroi-qcraTQ Std tov tStov aipiaros, — cf Tit,
11, 14, OS eSoiKev cavTOV VTrep 'qpcov, iva . . . . KaOapia-y eavrcp Xabv
rrepiova-iov : ver. 21, perdvoia ets tov Oebv (of Conversion to Chris
tianity), — cf Tit, iU, 8, ot TreTTto-TevKdTes T(^ Oeco (" who have become
Christians ") ; and the emphasis laid on the Apostle's unselfish
ness in his missionary labours reminds us of the injunction in
Tit, i, 7, that the bishop should be p,-q ala-xpoKepS-qs, and again of
what is said of the false teachers in ver, 11, StSdo-K'ovTes d p,y Set,
alarxpov KepSovs x^P'^,
The Acts of the Apostles concludes the account of the labours
of Paul with a speech before the synagogue at Eome, which ends
with a solemn declaration that the judgment of hardness of heart
already foretold by the prophets was being fulfilled upon the
Jews, but that the salvation of God was sent to the GentUes,
and that they would also Usten to it (xxviii, 28), These two
things, the bestowal of Christianity on the Gentiles and the
rejection of Israel, form the substance of the Paulinism .of the
Acts of the Apostles. But neither is this -universaUsm the same
that was originaUy taught by Paul, nor is this anti-Judaism in
any degree PauUne. The former is not grounded, Uke the uni
versaUsm of Paul, on the central dogma of the abrogation of the
law by the death of Christ (we only find in one instance, and
that in the mouth of Peter, xv. 10, a kindred thought regarding
the intolerable nature of the law, which may be regarded merely
as a popular generalization of that Pauline doctrine) ; instead of
this, the cause assigned for it is the unbelief of the Jews and the
special divine revelations which prescribed the sphere of Paul's
labours. Now it is certainly not intended, in assigning these
external matters of fact as causes, to assert that the conversion

252 CONCLUSION.
of the Gentiles was a merely contingent event which might pos
sibly not have taken place at all ; on the contrary, it is shown to
have been predetermined from the beginning by the parting
command of Jesus to teach all nations ; and the author of the
Acts of the Apostles, with his predestinarian views (cf. xiU. 48),
must also have regarded the actual course of the conversion of
tbe world to Christianity as wiUed by God from the very begin
ning. But he mistook the specifically Pauline ground of univer
saUsm, because the specificaUy Pauline dogmatic teaching was
itself unknown to him, especiaUy on its polemic and antinomian
side. But this was not by any means the consequence of an
accommodation of Paulinism to Judaistic notions regarding the
law, nor was it an intentional concession to Jewish- Christian
pretensions, but it depended rather upon the fact that the dog
matic conception, as well as the practical interest of the question
of the law, had disappeared from the later Paulinism, in propor
tion as Gentile Christianity felt itself more and more secure in
its independent rights. In the place of the dogmatic- antino
mianism of Paul, however, we now find in the Acts of the
Apostles a national anti-Judaism which was entirely aUen to
Paul himself 'While Paul saw in the hardening of the hearts of
his nation Israel only a temporary degradation of them to a
position below that of the GentUes, but not a definitive rejection
of them (Eom. xL), this hope of the future conversion of Israel
possessed but little immediate interest for those who were born
GentUe Christians, because there was no national sjrmpathy to
support it, and whatever interest it might still retain woiUd
gradually have diminished with the actual course of events until
it received its death-blow by the destruction of Jerusalem. For
this reason we find, almost throughout the literature of the later
Paulinism (cf the Epistle of Barnabas, 1 Peter, the pseudo-
Ignatian Epistles, and above aU John's Gospel), the same judg
ment as in the Acts of the Apostles as to the rejection of the
Jews. The consciousness of the unconditional autonomy of
Christianity, this most essential fruit of the struggles of the

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 253
Apostle 1 aul, to whose mind it presented itself as a consequence
of the dogmatic antithesis of the law and the gospeL clothed
itself for the later GentUe Christianity in the popular but
superficial form of national anti-Judaism, which however did
not prevent a considerable portion of dogmatic Judaism from
creeping into Catholic Christianity, under the guise of the " new
law."i ^ Compare with the above, and with the whole of the concluding portion of this
¦^ork  of the critics. Overbeds, Ueberarbeitung von De Wette's Erklarung der Apostel-
geschichte (especially the Introduction) ; also Baur, Paulus ; Sch-wegler, Nach- Apostol.
Zeitalter ; Zeller, Apostelgeschichte — of the apologists, Me-yer, Comm. ; Lechler,
Ap. u. Nachapost. Zeitalter; Thiersch, Apostol. Zeitalter; Lelcebusch, Ueher Kompos.
u. Entstehung der Apostelgesch. — of those who take a middle course, Ritschl, Reuss,
Holtzmann (in Schenkel's Bibellex.).

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