^_^$siSinn.^

/

^9\

EXTEACT DECLARATION OF TRUST.
Maeoh 1, 1862.
I, 'William Binby 'Websiee, late Surgeon in the H.E.I. O.S., presently residing m Edin
burgh, — Considering that I feel deeply interested in the success of the Free Church
College, Edinburgh, and am desirous of advancing the Theological Literature of Scotland,
and for this end to establish a Lectureship .similar to those of a like kind connected with
the Church of England and the Congregational body in England, and that I have made
over to the General Trustees of the Free Church of Scotland the sum of £2000 sterling,
in trust, for the purpose of founding a Lectureship in memory of the late Reverend
"William Cunningham, D.D., Principal of the Free Church College, Edinburgh, and
Professor of Divinity and Church History therein, and tinder the following conditions,
namely, — First, The Lectureship shaU bear the name, and be called, ' The Cunningham
Lectureship.' Second, The Lecturer shall be a Minister or Professor of the Free Church
of Scotland, aud shall hold the appointment for not less than two years, nor more than
three years, and be entitled for the period of his holding the appointment to the income
of the endowment as declared by the General Trustees, it being vmderstood that the
Council after referred to may occasionally appoint a Minister or Professor from other
denominations, provided this be approved of by not fewer than Eight Members of tho
Council, and It being further understood that the Council are to regulate the terms of
payment of the Lecturer. Third, The Lecturer shall be at liberty to choose his own
subject within the range of Apologetical, Doctrinal, Controversial, Exegetical, Pastoral,
or Historical Theology, including what bears on Missions, Home and Foreign, subject to
the consent of the Council. Fourth, The Lecturer shall be bound to deliver publicly at
Edinburgh a Course of Lectures on the subjects thus chosen at some time immediately
preceding the expiry of his appointment, and during the Session of the New College,
Edinburgh ; the Lectures to be not fewer than six in number, and to be delivered in
presence ot the Professors and Students under such arrangements as the Council may
appoint ; the Lecturer shall be bound also to print and publish, at his own risk, not
fewer than 750 copies of the Lectures within a year after their delivery, and to deposit
three copies of the same in the Library of the New College ; the form of the publication
shall be regulated by the Council. Fifth, A Council shall be constituted, consisting of
(first) Two Members of their own body, to be chosen annually in the month of March, by
the Senatus of the New College, other than the Principal ; (second) Five Members to be
chosen annually by the General Assembly, in addition to the Moderator of the said Free
Church of Scotland ; together with (third) the Principal of the said New CoUege for the
time being, the Moderator of the said General Assembly for the time being, the Procu
rator or Law Adviser of the Church, and myself the said 'William Binny "Webster, or such
person as I may nominate to be my successor : the Principal of the said College to be
Convener of the Council, and any Five Members duly convened to be entitled to act
notwithstanding the non-election of others. Sixth, The duties of the Council shall be
the following : — (first). To appoint the Lecturer and determine the period of his holding
the appointment, the appointment to be made before the close of the Session of College
immediately preceding the termination of the previous Lecturer's engagement ; (second).
To arrange details as to the delivery of the Lectures, and to take charge of any additional
income and expenditure of an incidental kind that may be connected therewith, it being
understood that the obligation upon the Lecturer is simply to deliver the Course of
Lectures free of expense to himself. Seventh, The Council shall be at liberty, on the
expiry of five years, to make any alteration that experience may suggest as desirable in
the details of this plan, provided such alterations shall be approved of by not fewer than
Eight Members of the CounciL

ST. PAUL'S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST

ST. PAUL'S
CONCEPTION OF CHRIST

OR

THE DOCTRINE OF THE SECOND ADAM

Ei)z S>ixttent]} Series of tlje eTunningfjam Hectures

BY
DAVID SOMERVILLE, M.A.
MINISTER OF
ROSEBURN FREE CHURCH, EDINBURGH

EDINBURGH
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET
1897

PRINTED BY
MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH
LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNEr'S SONS
TORONTO : THE WILLARD TRACT DEPOSITORY

TO
THE MEMORYOF
MY FATHER

PREFACE

The following Lectures were prepared in fulfilment of the
duty laid upon me by my appointment to the Cunningham-
Lectureship. They are now published in the form in
which they were delivered in March of this year, with
the addition of such passages as had then to be omitted
for want of time. What appears now as the Sixth of this
course, on " The Eternal Nature of Christ," is additional to
those that were delivered.
The Lectures attempt to deal, in part, with what is
generally regarded as the leading task of Modern Theology:
to recover and present anew to the faith of the Church the
New Testament picture of our Lord. An American writer
has remarked that " all things seem to point to the fact that
the world is getting ready for a new conception of Christ." ^
If there is truth in this forecast, — if the minds of men are
indeed moving on towards a conception of Christ that will
relate itself in the closest way to the problems and tenden
cies of modern life, and by which He will make His appeal
afresh to this generation, — it becomes the more necessary to
renew our study of the apostolic writings which record the
original impressions of His Unique Greatness. The Gospels
^ G. A. Gordon in his Christ of To-day.

VI PREFACE
and the Christ of the Gospels mus-t always be the basis of
true thoughts regarding Him ; but the faith of the apostles
and their understanding of His Person and Work are
also of lasting importance. The fact that the eternal signi
ficance of the life and death of Jesus for the religious life of
mankind was only disclosed to those who believed in a
Risen and Living Christ, warrants us in regarding the
apostolic testimonies concerning the glory of their Lord as
a continuation of the revelation made to us in Him of the
mind and will of God. It is the more necessary to insist
on this, as there is a disposition on the part of certain theo
logians — of whom Wendt, who has done such good service in
the exposition of our Lord's teaching, may be taken as the
representative — to make that teaching the one norm by which
we may determine what does and what does not belong to
the essence of the Christian religion.^ This would practi
cally rule out of court the testimony of the apostles as an
independent source of truth in the construction of Christian
theology. It is not likely that men will ever consent to
hold so cheaply the great leading thoughts about Christ
and His Work which we owe to those who stood nearest
to Him, and who may reasonably be supposed to have
interpreted His mind most truly, and gauged most accur
ately the bearing of His mission on the great questions of
religion. The Pauline intuition of Christ, which it is the object
of these Lectures to expound, is indeed but one of several
that are contained in the writings of the New Testament.
And to some it will appear of less value than these others.
There will always be persons who are drawn more power-
^ See his Die Norm des echten Christentzmts.

PREFACE Vll
fully to the Johannine mode of apprehending the Master's
glory, even as there are others who will prefer the simpler
and more practical teaching of St. James. But certainly
none of the interpretations of the Christ that we owe to
apostolic insight has been so influential as St. Paul's, at
least on the religious life of the West. In any reconstruc
tion of theology his thought must find a leading place ; and
any explanation of the secret of Christ's power in human
lives will be entirely inadequate that overlooks those ele
ments in the conception of Him that we owe to the genius
of the great apostle to the Gentiles.
It is impossible to treat the Christology of St. Paul
without reference to doctrines of the Christian faith that
have received elaborate expression in the theology of the
Church ; and my references to them must appear very
insufficient, considering the complexity of the problems
that are involved. Notwithstanding, I have thought it
well to touch, however lightly, on the various points that
come up, so as to present a general survey of the field,
though quite aware that details ought often to have been
added in defence of positions laid down and in illustration
of statements made.
In the Appendix I have given a few supplementary
notes on matters that could not be discussed in the text
without interfering with the continuity of thought which it
seems desirable to preserve in a lecture. I had intended to
include in these notes a translation, already prepared, of
that portion of Rothe's Ethik in which the author works out,
in his own speculative way, the conception of Christ as the
Second Adam, but I found it would have added too much
to the bulk of the volume. For the same reason, I have

vill PREFACE
abandoned my purpose to deal with each of the Epistles
separately, with the view of bringing out the contribution
supplied by each to the systematic account of the apostle's
thought. Those who wish to see this done at length are
referred to Gess's work on the Person and Work of Christ,
the first part of the second division of which is occupied
with an examination of the passages in the Epistles that
bear upon this subject. It has been done also more briefly,
but very interestingly, by Schenkel, in his Christus-Bild der
Apostel; and still more briefly by Principal Fairbairn, in
his Christ in Modern Theology.
I have made large use of the results of the labours of
those who in recent years have laboured with so much
success in the field of New Testament Theology ; but as
regards the understanding of the mind of Paul on my
subject, I do not know that there is one name more than
another of which I ought to make grateful mention
for help received, unless, indeed, it be that of R. Schmidt,
whose Die Paulinische Christologie, which I read twenty
years ago, first interested me in the subject, and set me
on the lines of thought I have here followed. His little
book, indeed, is almost entirely an exegetical treatment
of leading passages. It is by no means easy reading,
and some of his positions are, I think, untenable. But
the thoroughness and originality of his handling of the
whole subject is memorable, and subsequent writers have
by no means acknowledged their full indebtedness to
him. But apart from authors whom I have consulted with
advantage, I feel that I am under special obligations to
Albrecht RitschI, by whose theological method I am con-

PREFACE IX
scious of having been largely influenced in my treatment of
the subject. It is deeply to be regretted, I think, that this
great theologian has been for the most part introduced to this
country in a way that hinders the appreciation of his real work
in theology, and that his name has been made familiar to
students chiefly in connection with errors he is supposed to
have taught. His system may be assailable in many of its
parts, and deserving of the criticism that has been directed
against it ; but the real value of his work lies not so much
in his system as in his method and the principles by which
he was guided. As one of his own disciples has said, " the
principle is fuller and richer far than the system." His
rigorous exclusion of all ideas in the interpretation of
Scripture that are due to outside sources ; his insistence on
the Person of Christ as the centre of religious thinking, the
source of Divine revelation, and the measure of all know
ledge on religious subjects ; the importance he attaches, for
the understanding of the significance of Christ's Person, to
the confession of the Christian Church as recorded in the
New Testament ; the emphasis he places on the ethical
understanding of religious truth, and on the practical
character of all vital theological thought,- — these principles
lead to a singularly fresh treatment of theology, and
account for the remarkable impulse he has given both to
theological activity and to religious life itself in his own
land. Were his real work better known amongst us, one
might hope to see a revival of interest in that department
of study which has fallen into such deplorable neglect
in the Churches of our country — I mean the study of
Systematic Theology.
I have, in conclusion, to thank many friends — in

X PREFACE
particular, the Rev. George Steven, M.A., Edinburgh — for
advice and assistance in the preparation of these Lectures;
as well as the Rev. William Aitken, M.A., Glasgow, for his
kindness in revising the proof-sheets.
I am sorry I have had to add a list of errata. An
old author, in a prefatory note to his work, entreats his
readers " to correct with their pens these errata, because
they pervert the sense, and some of them turn it directly
contrary to some of the greatest truths which I am defend
ing." The errata which I have corrected are not of so
serious a nature. I regret, all the same, that they were not
discovered at an earlier stage of revision.
DAVID SOMERVILLE.
Edinburgh, September 1897.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I

Church

The Genesis and Characteristics of St. Paul's
Conception of Christ,//. 1-30
The "Return to Christ" 
The absence of detail in St. Paul's Epistles regarding the earthly
history of Christ 
The Exalted Jesus the true Messiah of St. Paul
Wherein St. Paul's faith was that of the primitive
Wherein it went beyond the latter
The individuality of his faith and experience
The significance of the Resurrection of Christ in St. Paul's
thought of Him 
The Christology ofthe Epistle to the Hebrews
The Johannine Christ 
The relation ofthe Christ of St. Paul to both
The dogmatic conception of Christ
Its development in the theory ofthe Kenosis
The present state ofthe Christological Question
The Plan of Lectures 
Sources of information .....
Difficulty of re-thinking the thoughts of St. Paul

69
II1314
16 18
19
2021
23 2527
28 29

^

LECTURE II
Christ the Archetype of Humanity,//. 31-69
St. Paul's experience of Christ in his inner life, the key to his
Christology  -33
Christ the Spiritual Man .... ¦ • • 35
Spirit and Flesh in Christ  37
The Risen Christ the Type of Spiritual Manhood ... 40
Christ the Son of God  41

Xll

CONTENTS

PAGE
The ground of His Sonship in His ethical Perfection . . • 43
Are men by nature sons of God ?  44
The contrast between Christ and other " sons " .... 47
He is the Image of God in Humanity  4^
The Pattern or Archetypal Man  5°
Jewish Theology and St. Paul's doctrine of the Second Adam . 5 1
The First Adam and the Second  -52
The Incarnation tbe second stage of man's creation? . ¦ 53
The Resurrection of Christ and the Realisation of the idea of the
Second Adam .......•• 54
Christ the Ideal of Mankind, in what respect .... 58
The Epistles and the new type of character that Christ exem
plified  61
The history, in the thought of the Church, of Paul's interpretation
of the Person of Christ  63
Echoes of it in the New Testament . ... 63
Schleiermacher and his school . . .... 64
R. Rothe's doctrine of the Second Adam  65
Its influence on Anglican Theology  67
Christ compared with Religious Leaders of the race . . 68

LECTURE III

Christ the Redeemer and Founder of the
New Humanity, pp. 71-107
Christ in Pauline Epistles not merely the Pattern Man, but the
Redeemer 
The Death of Christ as the Revelation of God's love
Conception of God's love in Christ's teaching and Paul'
The Death of Christ an Accomplishment
Achieving forgiveness of sin .
Connection between Christ's Death and forgiveness
The explanation based on Gal. iii. 13 .
The theory of Sacrifice 
Explanation of St. Paul in Rom. v. 12-20
Paul's emphasis on the element of obedience in the
Christ .... ...
Why was obedience necessary ?
Theories of theology 
Where the real difficulty lies, — human analogies .
Function of faith in St. Paul's scheme .
Objection from science to validity of his reasoning in Rom. v.
The Death of Christ as accomplishing our death to sin and our
moral renewal 

Death of

73 74 7571797981848587

929495 98

contents

XIU

Significance of Resurrection of Christ in this connection
Paul's method as a moralist 
Objection to his idealism . ...
His faith in the invincible efficacy of Christ as Redeemer

PAGE lOI
103105106

of Wisdom

LECTURE IV
Christ the Life and the Lord of the New Humanity,
//. 109-147
The twofold activity of the Exalted Christ as Spirit and as
Lord 
Christ as Spirit or Immanent in Man
St. Paul's doctrine of the Spirit of God
His distinction between gifts and graces of the Spirit .
The Spirit of God and Spirit of Christ
The Spirit and the Person of Christ
Relation of St. Paul's doctrine ofthe Spirit to Xh&Book c
Union between Christ and His people
Exposition of Gal. ii. 20 
St. Paul's experience as pneumatic man
The IndweUing or Mystical Christ
The Mystical Body of Christ ....
The truth of Christ's immanence in the history of the
Mysticism . . ...
The Transcendence or Lordship of Christ .
" Lord " ascribed to Him as Exalted .
The issue of His life-work .....
The Lordship of Christ in the Christian life
Christ Lord, but subject to God ....
Identified with God in St. Paul's experience
Confession of His Lordship the confession of His Divinity
Quotation from Dr. Dale to this effect ....

Church

in "3
113115ii6
117 118121123124126 /
128 I
130133^ 134135136
137140143 145146

LECTURE V
Later Developments : Christ the Fulness of God, the Head
of the Church and of all Principalities and Powers,
//. 149-180
Contrast between later and early Epistles . . 151
Historical circumstances of the Church at Colosse . . . 153
Enlargement of St. Paul's thought of Christ stimulated by these 154
Christ the " Fulness of God"  155

XIV

contents

This the expression of a religious truth, the equivalent of the
"Spiritual Man"  158
Christ the " Image of the Invisible God"  159
Bearing of these ideas on Christ's Archetypal relation to man
kind  160
The Death of Christ as removing the dualism between Jew and
Gentile (Eph. ii. 14-16)  . 163
As removing the dualism between men and angelic intelli
gences (Col. i. 19)  165
Christ's Exalted Glory represented under the conception of His
Headship  167
Head over the Church  167
Relation of Headship to the ideas of " Spirit" and " Lord" . 168
Head over " principalities and powers "  170
Value of this doctrine for us  172
Christ the Final End of Creation  176
Harmony ofi Cor. xv. 24-29 with Col. i. 16 . . . . 178
Emerson's idea that these lofty expressions apphed to Christ
are but " sallies of love and admiration " ... 179

LECTURE VI

The Eternal Nature of Christ, //. 181-220

References in Epistles to the Preincarnate life of Christ
Examination of passages ... . .
In particular Phil. ii. 6-9 ... . .
Col. i. 15-18 ... . . .
The value of such statements 
Supposed influence of the ideas of the synagogue
Of ideas borrowed from Greek speculation
Unsatisfactoriness of this view .....
Also, of the explanation of the German speculative school
Theories regarding Eternal Nature of Christ
That He pre-existed as the Heavenly Man
As the Second Person of the Trinity ....
Doctrines of Kenosis 
As the Eternal God-man 
Christology of Apollinaris 
Harnack's identification of it with the PauHne view .
Problem insoluble 
Relation of earthly Form of Christ's Being to His
incarnate indefinable 
Equally so, the relation of the latter to His state as Exalted

Pre

183184
188 19119319419s196
197199
200202204209
211
212214215217

contents

XV

On its metaphysical side, the Person of Christ a mystery
The real proofs of our Lord's Divinity

PAGE 2l8 219

LECTURE VII
The Christ of History and Pauline Interpretation,
//. 221-259
The relation of the Christ of Faith to the Jesus of History
"Not Paul but Christ" 
Trustworthiness of the Gospel records 
The Messianic consciousness of Jesus 
Agreement between Jesus' judgment about Himself and Paul's
thought 
The "Son of Man" and the "Second Adam" . . . ¦
St. Paul's representation of Christ as Son of God and the
embodied Spirit of God in agreement with the Gospels
The meaning of Christ's Death in His teaching and St. Paul's
Objection to St. Paul's representation that it takes account only
of the Death of Christ 
Its one-sidedness, as ignoring Christ's work as Prophet
The Historical Christ in the faith of the Church
Emphasis in modern times on the Historical Christ .
The plea for a Christology based on the history
The importance of the historical for an understanding of the
religious worth of Christ 
Depreciation ofthe historic picture by Dale and Weiss
The virtue of the Exalted Christ in Paul's Gospel
Van Dyke's insistence on the prophetic work of Christ in The
Gospel for an Age of Doubt 
The judgment of history on this view 
Uses of the knowledge of Christ's earthly history in relation to
communion with the Exalted Christ 
Harmony of the two Pictures in Christian experience
Von Hofmann on St. Paul and the Gospels
Lasting value of St. Paul's interpretation ....

223 224
225226229 230
231
232 234
236238 241
242 243 246248250251252255257
258

APPENDIX

Lecture I. Note A. St. Paul and the Historical Christ . 263
„ „ B. St. Paul's idea of the Christ before his
Conversion  265

XVI contents
PAGE
Lecture I. Note C. The Conception of Christ in the
Pastoral Epistles .... 267
Lecture II. Note A. St. Paul and the Supernatural Birth of
Christ  271
„ „ B. Gore on the Gradual Apprehension of
the Christian Ideal . . . 274
Lecture III. Note A. The Revelation of God's Love in the
Death of Christ and the Resurrec
tion  276
„ ,, B. The Sacrificial Language in St. Paul's
Epistles . ... 277
„ ,, C. The Meaning ofa Cor. v. 21 . . 278
„ „ D. Rom. iii. 23-26  280
„ „ E. Whether Christ suff'ered Spiritual
Death  282
„ „ F. Owen on the Atoning Element in the
Death of Christ .... 284
„ „ G. Haring on the Death of Christ as a
Demonstration of the Evil of .Sin . 286
,, „ H. On the Doctrine of the Fall in Jewish
Literature . ... 287
„ „ I. St. Paul and the Imitatio Christi . . 289
Lecture IV. Note A. The Difference between St. Paul's
Doctrine of the Spirit and that of
the Book of Wisdom . . . i^p,
,, „ B. Recent Literature on the Pauline Phrase
eV 'X-picrrS . . . . 293
„ „ C. The use of term Kvpcos in the
Septuagint . ... 295
Lecture V. Note A. On the Angelology of St. Paul . . 297
„ „ B. Beck on Truth and Life
Lecture VI. Different Forms of the Theory of the
Pre - existent God - manhood of
Christ 
Lecture VII. Note A. Dorner on the Idea of Christ in the
Middle Ages  307
„ „ B. The Historical and Exalted Christ . 308
„ „ C. The Christology of RitschI and his
School  309
„ „ D. Beck on Intercourse with the Christ of
the Gospels . . . . ^23
Errata .... . . . .

303

305

331

I

THE GENESIS AND
CHARACTERISTICS OF ST. PAUL'S
CONCEPTION OF CHRIST

ST. PAUL'S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST

LECTURE I
The Genesis and Characteristics of St. Paul's
Conception of Christ
I PROPOSE in the lectures which I am to have the privilege
of delivering, to offer a contribution toward the understand
ing of Paul's conception of Christ. The most notable
feature of modern theological thought is the revived interest
in Christological inquiry that characterises it. In the life
of the Church Christ is Supreme ; and there is a widespread
feeling that in the theology of the Church ampler justice
must be done to the supreme significance of His Person for
the scheme of Christian truth, and that renewed effort is
needed to unfold, with due regard to simplicity and fidelity
to fact, the contents of His Person in their bearing on the
life of faith. Dissatisfaction is felt and expressed with
forms of thought that have become the traditional modes
of apprehending the distinctive Greatness of the Church's
Lord ; and a longing is entertained for simpler and more
living apprehensions of the Jesus who of old won the love
and confidence of men. What is spoken of as the theo
logical reconstruction that is going on around us has for its
watchword the familiar, though somewhat hackneyed cry.
Back to Christ : let us, if it is at all possible, overleap the
centuries, and go behind the systems and dogmas that have

4 ST. Paul's conception of christ
served to obscure rather than to reveal the living form
of the Lord, that we may see Him
"As He lived and loved sublimely mild,
A Spirit without spot."
Every movement of reform within the Church in the past
has originated in the impulse received from such a renewed
acquaintance with Christ at first hand. And it seems
to me that we have everything to hope for the revivifying
of theology and Christian faith from the fresh contact of
men's spirits with Christ in His human grace, disengaged
from all that time and the fancies of men have done to
hide Him from our eyes. Only we must take no narrow
view of this return to Christ. There are those who look
for its accomplishment exclusively to the success of the
efforts that are made in these days to recall the figure
of the Prophet of Nazareth by the help of the abundant
light that is thrown by modern research and reflection on
the scenery and surroundings of His life, on the wisdom of
His teachings, and the perfection of His human character.
And to them a study of Paul's thought of Christ does not
promise much, for Paul was not a historian, but a prophet ;
and it is not so much the Jesus of history he brings before
us as the Christ of faith, and that, it may be said, is
no direct or immediate vision of Him at all. The New
Testament can scarcely, however, be regarded as recognising
this distinction, at least in the sharpness with which it is
often made, for it is with the eye of faith that even the
historians of our Lord's life look at the picture they set
before us. It is a judgment of faith they habitually apply
to the interpretation of it. But in so far as the distinction
is real (and there is a manifest difference between the
Gospels that describe the Christ whom men saw and heard
and the Epistles that speak of Him after He had become in
a peculiar sense the object of faith), the contrast that is

GENESIS OF ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 5
founded on it is an imaginary one ; and it is begging the
question to infer that the picture we owe to the Epistles
must be less real or less in accordance with fact than the
other. The circumstance that it brings Christ before us,
not in historical situations, but in His spiritual relations to
men, will excite the suspicion of its truthfulness only with
those who maintain that when Jesus died He passed for
ever out of all connection with the human race ; but the
presupposition, I need hardly say, of the New Testament is
that He died in order to rise again and live in the hearts of
men, and to carry on an unseen ministry on their behalf
And on this understanding, a picture of Him that draws its
colours from intercourse with the Invisible and Heavenly
Christ, and from the experience of the influence of His
personality on the inner life, may be as true as that which
is constructed out of the bare facts of history.
All this will fall to be more fully considered in the course
of these lectures. At the present stage it need only be added
that we must not prejudge the question, or fancy that in
trying to recover the image of the Christ we are free to use
only such materials as are contained in the historic records
of His life. If He is to retain His place in the faith of men
as the Christ of God, as not merely the subject but also the
object of religion, as the Author of religious benefits to the
human spirit, and the Divine Answer to its cry for a light
and peace and strength it has not in itself, — the return to
Him that men crave must mean not only the fresh study of
His incomparable greatness as a Prophet and religious
Hero, but also the living apprehension of Him as He is
presented in the thoughts of those who had believing
fellowship with Him. They attained to an understanding
of Him that sprang from the experience of His benefits ;
and, if they have little to say of His earthly life, they have
a great deal to tell us of the religious significance of that
Hfe and of the moral and spiritual contents of His Person.

6 ST. Paul's conception of christ
Such a view of Him as is given to us in the words of those
who have inwardly appropriated the message they have
read in His life and death need not be antagonistic to
anything recorded to have been done and said by the
historic Christ, while it will possess a value to all who are
in quest of religious certainty, additional to that which can
be claimed for the picture that is taken wholly from
historical material. It is the Christ of faith, present often
when the sublime figure of the Gospels could only be
discerned through a distorting medium, that has proved a
living power in the hearts and lives of men. My meaning
will become more apparent if we devote this lecture to some
introductory remarks on the general character of Paul's
conception of Christ, the genesis of it in^ his personal
gxperience, its relation to other Christological conceptions
in the New Testament that have a similar origin, and also
to the dogmatic conception that has been evolved in the
course of theological thought ; and the result will bring out
more clearly the scope of this inquiry, and the course that
is to be followed.

I
In taking a general survey of the Epistles of Paul with
a view to gathering up the scattered information they
contain of the historical Christ, we cannot help being struck
by the poverty of detail that characterises them. When we
remember that at the time Paul wrote the generation had
not passed away that had seen and heard Jesus, and when
we consider that the recollections of Him must have formed
the most precious legacy of believers, we might have
expected to find frequent allusions in the writings of the
apostle to the gracious acts and words of the Lord Jesus ;
but in this expectation we are disappointed. Paul frequently

GENESIS OF ST. PAUl's CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 7
appeals to the Old Testament,^ but his references to the
teachings of his Master are exceedingly scanty, and do not
bear on the great principles of religion so much as on
matters that are of comparatively trifling import.^ And
while he does give great prominence to the death and
resurrection of Christ, and mentions one or two incidents,
such as the institution of the Lord's Supper, in connection
with these events, there is a quite remarkable silence as to
the life and ministry of Christ as a whole, and as to scenes
and incidents that might well have been appealed to in
illustration of the grace of Jesus and of those features
of character in which He is an example to His people. It
is possible of course to exaggerate this characteristic of the
Epistles ; and good service has been done by writers who
have investigated very carefully the various allusions to the
gospel history, and have been able to show that a firm
historical basis for the life and ministry of Jesus of
Nazareth can be constructed from the writings of Paul.^
' In the Epistle to the Galatians there are ten quotations from the
O. T., in Romans about fifty.
^ See e.g. i Cor. vii. 10 (comp. Mark x. 12) ; ix. 14 (comp. Matt. x. 10).
The Lord's words are quoted in these passages in a free way, showing
that Paul took them in the sjiitit rather than in the letter. In i Cor.
xi. 23 we are not required to believe that he received the words of the
institution direct from the Lord. He wishes to trace the institution back
to Christ Himself ; but he does not mean that the words that follow
were put into his mouth by Christ ; they were received by the apostle
doubtless through tradition. In i Thess. iv. 1 5 the reference may be to
some saying of Christ's that is not contained in the Gospels. Paret, in
accounting for the absence in Paul of details of Christ's teaching, urges
first, that had he indulged in such details he would thereby have been
following the practice of the Pharisaic Scholasticism of his day, which
adduced in order quotations from the sayings of the ancient Rabbis ; and
second, that in the principles and inward spirit of his teaching he was
conscious that he was in perfect harmony with the mind of Christ, so
that he did not need support or proof from individual quotations {Jahr.
f Deuts. Theol. III. i. p. 45).
3 This has been done by Dr. Matheson in a series of articles in the
Expositor (Second Series, vols. i. and ii.) on " The Historical Christ of |
St. Paul." The author has gone over the allusions in the Pauline

8 ST. Paul's conception of christ
Still, the fact remains that there is a surprising dearth
of detail, and that a very few sentences would embody
all that we are expressly told by the apostle of the historic
life of Jesus. How is this to be accounted for ?
The supposition of ignorance cannot, it seems to me,
be seriously entertained. Some knowledge of the earthly
career of Jesus must have been possessed by Paul, even
before his conversion ; we cannot imagine him undergoing
so radical a change in the absence of all impressions of
Jesus' personality and in ignorance of the truths He was
reported to have taught. Impressions of the life and
teaching of Jesus of Nazareth were widespread in Jewish
society at the time, and Paul must have shared
them. And on that occasion to which he refers in the
Epistle to the Galatians, when, after his conversion, he went
to Jerusalem on a visit to the apostles, and remained with
them fifteen days, he had the opportunity of making himself
acquainted with the course and incidents of our Lord's life,
and the principles of His teaching. He seems, moreover,
to have had access to sources of information about the
historical Christ apart from the common tradition, which
probably owed its origin to apostolic circles ; for once he
quoted a saying of Jesus' that is not recorded in the Gospels
(Acts XX. 35). But if we are right in supposing on Paul's
part an intimate knowledge of the human life of Jesus, the
difficulty seems all the greater of explaining the fact that
the image of Him that was most vital to the apostle's faith.
Epistles, both in thought and language, to the earthly life of Jesus, and
out of these has constructed a life-portrait of the historical Christ that is
identical with that in the Gospels. His conclusion is : " In the light of
St. Paul's Epistles the facts recorded in these Gospels are proved
beyond a shadow of doubt not merely to belong to the first Christian
century, but to be the product of the first Christian age and the objects
of imphcit behef with the first Christian converts." Dr. Matheson is
sometimes fanciful, but his argument on the whole is well put, and is
valuable from an apologetic point of view. See Note A on Paul and
the Historical Christ.

genesis of ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 9
and that is stamped most unmistakably on his letters, is not
made up of historical reminiscences, is not drawn from the
tradition of the earthly life and teaching of Jesus, is not taken
directly from history, but from a different source altogether.
There is no evidence, it must be borne in mind, that
Paul ever met Jesus in the flesh,^ or that he had personal
associations of a human sort with Him such as the other
apostles had. We may speculate as to what might have
happened if he had come under the personal influence of
Jesus in His lifetime. It is hard to think that, bigoted
though he was in his Pharisaism, he would have resisted
the impression which Jesus made on all noble-hearted men
who thirsted, as Paul must ever have done, after a perfection
which was above them. Be that as it may, the fact is that
he first came to know Jesus and to believe in Him, on the
way to Damascus, after He had Risen from the dead and ^
had been Exalted, so that his direct knowledge of Him
began where that of the other disciples ended ; and the
knowledge that dates from that period, and was derived
from the impressions of the Saviour thus apprehended as
the Lord, who was Spirit, retained to the end the character
thus given to it at the first. It is always of the Exalted Jesus
Paul speaks, of whom he predicates what he believes to be
true regarding Him. The supreme worth of Christ for
Paul was one that belonged to Him in His present and
invisible heavenly life. In his view, the Christhood of Jesus
was not an accomplished fact till He had risen from the dead
and had entered on the higher stage of Being and Activity
that followed. The historic Jesus alone was no Messiah to/
Paul. His earthly career, with all that distinguished it,
was simply a preparation for, and a prelude to, a fuller life'
^ In I Cor. ix. i Paul asks : " Have I not seen Jesus Christ our
Lord .? " but this reference must be to the appearing to him of the Risen
Christ on his way to Damascus. This constituted him a witness to the
Resurrection.

ID ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
and a vaster progress in the souls of men that was to
reveal Him in His true proportions as the Divine Christ.
The knowledge of the Risen Lord then was to him the
essential thing in the understanding of Christ.^ And since
only they who knew Him as Glorified, knew Him as the
Christ of God, understood the real significance of His
mission, and shared in the blessings that He had come to
give to men, we can see how natural it was for Paul to pass
by the memories of Christ's earthly course in his anxiety to
set forth the greater glories of the Risen Lord. There is a
)disposition among popular writers on theological subjects to
exalt Christ at the expense of Paul. They dwell on the
superiority of the teaching of the former to that of the
latter, and limit the acceptance of Paul's authority to those
doctrines of his that are found as well in the teachings
of his Master. But Christ and Paul were not rival teachers ;
and, before we criticise the apostle, it is necessary that we
should understand him and the precise relation in which he
stood to the Lord. He does not come before us as a com
mentator, or an interpreter of the words of Christ, but as
an interpreter of Christ Himself, and of the relation of His
death and Risen Life to the religious wants of men. Jesus'
own work was primarily not to teach, but to Hve the Life_;
not to say something, but to be and do something.^ And
' In this connection the infrequency of the name of " Jesus " alone
(the earthly designation), in the Epistles of Paul, may be noted. In
Colossians it does not occur at all ; in Galatians, Philippians, i Corin
thians, only once ; in i Thessalonians twice ; in Romans three times ; in
2 Corinthians twice. The formula "The Lord Jesus Christ," occurs in
the undisputed Epistles seventy-three times ; the " Lord Jesus " alone a
little over a dozen times ; Kipio; alone, where the reference is to Christ,
is found about one hundred and thirty, " Christ " alone one hundred and
eighty times.
^ Strong {Christian Ethics, Bampton Lecture, 1895) observes that
there is " extraordinarily little of positive moral exhortation in the
Gospels " (p. 48; ; and that " the important element in the Gospels is the
life historically described rather than the moral precepts which emerged
in the course of it " (p. 50).

GENESIS OF ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST II
Paul recognised it as his task not to expound or enforce the
doctrines of his Master, but to open up the message of His
life and death. Men who do great deeds do not speak
about them. " Heroes," as one has said, " are not their
own heralds." Christ was not His own apostle or inter
preter. It was given to Paul to tell men what Christ in
His real nature was, and what was the significance of His
life and death for mankind. If we hear from him scarcely
any echo of the utterances of the historic Christ, the reason
is, that it had not been the surpassing beauty or wisdom of
the teaching of the Prophet of Galilee that had led him to
accept Jesus as the Messiah, but the power and grace of
the Risen and Glorified One ; and hence it is round the
latter that all his testimony turns. Not that he disparaged
the historic tradition ; the memories of Jesus remained a
precious heritage, for they were memories of Him who was
the same in heaven that He had been on earth, and who
was known in His Eternal Nature by the things He had
done and said in time. But they were inferior in value to
the personal knowledge of a living Christ, and we cannot
wonder that the interest that belonged to the earthly Son
of Man was for him overshadowed by the grandeur and
the power of the conception he derived from intercourse
with the Risen and Glorified Son of God.-^

II
And this brings us to the inquiry, what that conception
was that Paul owed to his knowledge of and fellowship
' We are also to bear in mind in this connection the vividness with
which the apostle looked forward to the coming in the near future of
the Glorified Christ, and his intense interest in the salvation presently
to be revealed, which must have withdrawn his thoughts from the past
" days ofthe Son of Man." We now look back upon that hfe, and every
word and incident of the historical Christ is of profound interest to us ;
Paul looked forward to the Christ to come, " forgetting the things that
were behind" in his anticipadon ofthe glory to follow.

12 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
with the Risen Christ. Fundamental to it, of course, was
the belief common to Paul with the primitive Church, that
Jesus, the historic Jesus, was indeed the Christ, the Chosen
of God, Supreme over all. This truth, which he had
struggled against and had refused for long to admit, he
accepted at once as soon as he was convinced by super
natural means that Jesus was alive, and that in having been
raised from the dead He had received the seal of His
Messiahship. From that moment he transferred to Jesus
who had suffered and died on the Cross all those ideas of
sovereignty, universal Lordship, and judicial authority
which the Jews associated with the office and Person of
the Messiah, recognising in Him who had died a death of
shame in love to men. One who embodied these ideas in
their truth and purity. In the meek and lowly Jesus,
crowned with glory. He now saw the fulfilment of the
Messianic ideal. It is difficult for us to appreciate the
vastness of the change, intellectual and religious, which was
involved in this faith. To confess One as the Christ and
God-sent King of men, who had lived in poverty as Jesus
had done, and who, dishonoured by men, had died a male
factor's death, meant the complete surrender of all pre
conceived ideas, and the acceptance of an entirely new
conception of what was worthy of God and man.^ Nothing
was more repellent both to the Greek and the Jewish mind,
than the notion that One who had been in His earthly
appearance the very embodiment of human weakness and
helplessness, could either truly represent the character of
God or exhibit the highest conception of human worth.
The Messiahship of Jesus was the apotheosis of meekness,
humility, patient self-sacrificing love ; and to recognise the
moral beauty of this Ideal, and the Divinity and claim to
universal Lordship of One who had realised it as Jesus had
done, was an act of faith so great, so completely in defiance
^ See Note B on Paul's Idea ofthe "Christ" before his Conversion.

GENESIS OF ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 1 3
of the accepted dogma about the Christ, so revolu
tionary in its effects on the character of the believer,
that it was viewed as springing from Divine inspiration.
" No man," said Paul in writing to the Corinthians,
" can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy
Spirit." 1
The conviction, however, that Jesus was the Christ,
while the turning point in the religious history of Paul, was
the common conviction of all believers in the apostolic age.
And proceeding to inquire into what was distinctive in the
Christological thought of the apostle, we must now consider
the frujt of^that conviction in his inner life and experience.
Here we must take into account the extraordinary
personality of the man, and the influence of natural genius
in shaping his religious life and colouring his apprehension
of Christian truth. We know him indeed only through
his Epistles, but we cannot fail to be impressed with the
evidence these afford of his extraordinary fitness, by natural
endowment and psychological characteristics, to be the
instrument by whom a spiritual understanding or inter
pretation of the Christ of history was to be conveyed to the
Church. It is not only his amazing grasp of mind and
capacity for dealing with principles of truth that strike
one, it is, above all, the firmness and delicacy of his spiritual
touch, his power of concentration on the problems of
religion and life, his vivid understanding of, and keen
sympathy with, the conflict of humanity torn by the con
tending forces of good and evil ; all this marked him out as
pre-eminently fitted to discover for himself and tell to
others what the living Christ is, and can do as the
^ I Cor. xii. 3. Stanton {Jewish and Christian Messiah, p. 122)
shows that the idea of a suffering Messiah was contrary to prevailing
Jewish beliefs. Drummond, also, in his The fe-wish Messiah (p. 358),
says that " there was no anticipation that the Messiah must submit to
pain and dishonour." See also Schiirer (II. ii. p. 186), and Balden-
sperger {Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, p. 145).

14 ST. Paul's conception <df christ
Redeemer from sin and death and all that hinders the
Perfection of man.
From the moment he was laid hold of by the Lord on
the way to Damascus, and had surrendered himself to Him,
he found himself in possession of a new life, in which
Christ was everything to him — the Revealer of God's
grace, opening up a way of acceptance and pardon,
irrespective of his own doings, as well as the Pattern and
the Power of an obedience to the Divine Will that flowed
from the springs of affection and sentiment. In fellowship
with Him he stepped into a wonderful experience of life.
The consciousness of Sonship to God, and of spiritual
freedom, of separation from all that had dragged him down,
and union with and hopeful effort after the loftiest ideals
of life and conduct that had hitherto moved him only to
despair, a sense of peace and moral power, — these and
other such elements, testifying to the new creative force
under which his inner life had come, entered into the
experience that finds such abundant expression in the
Epistles in which he poured out his heart to the Churches.
That new force was the Spirit pf God infusing into his soul
a passion of love for the Personal Christ that was hence
forth the dominant note of his life ; and that experience
received its specific character from the many-sided Good
which he found in Christ, the fulness of Blessing to his
whole nature that proceeded from Him. Now it is here,
in the consciousness of what the Glorified Christ was to him
in his personal life, that we are to look for the genesis of
Paul's Christology. The conception of Christ's nature
that was vital to him was derived from the experience of
the new life. He saw Christ through the medium of all
that wealth of religious benefit that flowed from living
union with his Lord. The Christ of Paul, in a word, is
the Christ of his experience, Christ interpreted to him by
his vivid consciousness of the Divine life which he owed to

genesis of ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 1 5
Him. His Christology is the account of that experience in the
terms suggested by thought and reflection upon it. It is a
judgment or series of judgments regarding Christ that are
based on the impressions of Him received in the life of faith.
It is this feature, its being borrowed from his own
religious experience, that distinguishes Paul's idea of Christ
from a philosophical conception. There are those who account
for the apostle's Christology on the supposition that, once
convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, he proceeded to
draw on his acquaintance with the doctrines of the Jewish
schools, and constructed by a process of reasoning a
Christ who answered to the theological ideas of the age.
On this view, the Christ of Paul would be a purely ideal
creation and destitute of objective reality. The question
how far and to what extent Paul was influenced in his
Christian thinking by the current ideas of the age, and by
the intellectual training he had received in the schools of
the Rabbis, and whether his teaching is encrusted with
elements of error and imperfection from that source, which
must be disengaged from the rest in estimating what is of
permanent value in his representation of the truth, is a
question that has to do with Paul's apprehension of
Christianity as a whole, and which I do not feel called
upon to discuss at large in dealing with a particular aspect
of his theology. It will come up again and again in the
course of these lectures in its bearing on particular aspects
of our subject, as points occur that suggest the inquiry
whether Paul transferred to his thought about Christ ideas
that are traceable to outside sources, and therefore I need
not dwell upon it now.
Meanwhile it is only fair to bear in mind his own account
of the origin of his beliefs, and he tells us expressly that he
owed them to the " revelation of Jesus Christ " ^ It was not
then that he, Paul, clothed Jesus with ideas of Christhood
1 Gal. i. 12.

1 6 ST. Paul's conception of christ
that he got elsewhere ; but Christ Himself, through all that
wealth of moral and rehgious good which He communicated to
His servant and made part of his inmost possession, supplied
Paul with the ideas under which the latter regarded the Lord.^
It was no mere intellectual conception that ruled the apostle's
mind, no philosophical theorem resting on the authority of
the schools. It was a conception of His nature that was
most intimately related to his own experience of the
redeeming power of Christ, and was as certain to him as
were the facts of his own soul, its truth resting on the
imperial authority inherent in every proposition regarding
realities that are accessible to human experience.
The Christ of experience whom Paul brings before us,
is at the same time connected in the closest possible way
with the historic Personality of Jesus. It is true, indeed,
that he takes account of only one event in the Gospel
history, viewing, as Baur says,^ the life of Jesus entirely
in the light of the Death on the Cross. That event, how
ever, had for the apostle a supreme significance,^ for it
communicated to the Heavenly activity of the Risen Christ
its power to save men from sin and death. His Christology
is accordingly an interpretation of the historic Jesus, and
more particularly of His Death, from the view-point of one
who believed that He had not only died, but had risen
1 We are not to infer, however, that this "revelation of Jesus Christ"
was equivalent to the communication to the mind of the apostle of the
articles ofthe Christian faith. These were the result of reflection, but the
material of his reflection was the impressions received in the life of faith.
" It is manifest," says Paret, " that in his doctrinal Conceptions Paul in
the main elaborates the experience of his own inner life. His doctrine
is a part of his person."
^ Baur's Paulus, p. 290.
3 This point of view is taken by all writers of the N. T.; it is shared
by the evangelists themselves who narrate the story of Christ's life.
How otherwise can we account for the length and particularity of the
narrative of the passion and death of Christ, compared with the brief
outline of the life they give, except on the supposition that the Death
was in their view the supremely important event in Christ's course ?

genesis of ST. Paul's conception of christ 17
again, and who had entered on the experience of a Life that
flowed from the Crucified and Risen One. The Resurrec
tion was to Paul the disclosure of the nature of Christ. It
was not only the crowning stage in the development of the
Life that had been lived on earth, its natural consummation,
but as such it was also the revelation of the inner nature
of Christ and of the forces of His personal life that were
concealed, as well as hindered in their proper exercise on
others, as long as He was in the flesh. He came forth
when He rose again, revealed in His proper Being, and freed
from all that had prevented the universal significance and
worth of His Person being seen and recognised.^ It is,
therefore, when viewed as Risen and Glorified that Jesus is
properly understood, and His worth for the human race
estimated aright. The nature of a thing, as Aristotle
reminds us, is understood only when its process of develop
ment is over ; and on this principle Paul habitually takes
his stand on the Resurrection of Christ, where the last
stage in that wonderful history was reached, and shows us
from the light that thence falls on what went before, what
it all means, what the issue of it all was for Christ and the
work He had come into the world to do. Not till He had
passed through death to the Resurrection-life was He fitted
to become the Redeemer and Restorer of man to his ideal
state, a Second Adam to the human race, the Power of a
new life, moral and spiritual, to His brethren.
The conception of Christ as the Second Adarji which
is the nerve of the Pauline Christology, possesses this
^ "Weil sich das wahre gottliche Wesen Jesu erst durch den Tod
und die auferstehung vollkommen offenbarte, so hebt auch erst mit
diesen Thatsachen und durch sie eine tiefere Erkenntniss des Wesens
Christi an. Die Synoptiker, welche die Grenze und Schranke ihrer
Darstellung an diesen Begebenheiten haben, haben eben damit auch die
Schranke ihrer Lehre von dem Wesen Christi. Es ist Christi ewiges
Wesen verhiillt vom Fleisch, von der crap^ : der Menschensohn
verdeckt den Gottessohn" (Grau, Entwickelungs-Geschichte der N,
Tlichen. Schrifthums, ii. 14).

1 8 ST. Paul's conception of christ
peculiarity that it is, as Sabatier puts it, " a blending of^
history and faith"; it is an interpretation of the historic
Jesus from the view-point of the Resurrection, and drawn
from the apostle's own experience of the working of the
Spirit of the Risen Christ on his inner life. And the
object of these lectures will be to expound this interpreta
tion, to exhibit the significance to the apostle of the Person
of Christ in the light of this conception of the Second
Adam, to the truth of which his experience as a Christian
man bore witness. But before entering on our task, it may
be useful in what remains of this lecture to distinguish
this from other Christological conceptions that we owe to
apostolic inspiration, as well as from that which is the
product of dogmatic theology. Ill
In the New Testament we find other two classic
interpretations of the historic Jesus besides that of
Paul, other two leading types of Christological doctrine.
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, Christ is presented
to us as the Eternal High Priest of the human race,
who is sat down at the Right Hand of God, reigning
in His Glorified manhood. The standpoint of the
¦author is the Exaltation of Christ ; it is the theology
of the Ascension and Exaltation that he sets forth.
He wrote to Christians who had been brought up Jews,
and who had associated the stability of their Christian
standing and their freedom of access to God with the
permanence of the temple service, and the stated per
formance of the ofiices of the Levitical Priesthood. When
they perceived these institutions passing away, they
naturally enough fell into doubt as to there being now any
legitimate way of approach to God, any certainty that God
had fellowship with them or they with God, The author

genesis of ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 1 9
writes to point them to Christ and His Glorified Humanity
as the new and living way to the Father, to assure them of
an access to God in prayer and worship that is of a nature
fitted to inspire perfect confidence in the worshipper.
There seems to be little or nothing in the outward events
of Jesus' life on earth to suggest the work or office of a
priest, or to warrant the author conceiving of Christ under
this scheme of thought. But with great skill and tender
ness he dwells on the temptation and sufferings of Jesus as
intended to perfect Him in the qualities of character
needed in One, who, after death, was to reign over men and
to act on their behalf as their High Priest and Representa
tive in the presence of God. This truth, then, that Christ
is the Eternal High Priest of men, is the contribution
which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews makes to
the Christ-idea; it is a truth that sets in a light of its own
the perfection of the religious state and standings of
believers, and the correspondence between Christ and what
He is become, on the one hand, and the needs of human
nature, on the other. It is a truth which, while religious in its
character, is based on historic fact, and is an interpretation
of the historic Christ seen with the eye of faith in His
relation to human need.
And so with the Johannine view of the Person of
Christ. The Gospel of John, whatever of historical value it
may possess, is strictly speaking a doctrinal treatise ; it is
history written to illustrate a truth ^f faith, the truth that
in Christ we have the Perfect and Final Revelation of God.
The point of view here is neither the Resurrection, as with
Paul, nor the Ascension, as with the author of the Hebrews,
but the Incarnation. John is the theologian of the
Incarnation"; his concern is to show that Jesus is the Word
or Logos of God, the perfect embodiment of the Divine
mind and character; and for this purpose he sets Jesus
before qs as He walked about anjong men in Jerusalem

20 ST. Paul's conception of christ
and Galilee, and bids us mark that this highest and besi
of men is the Son of God, and His character the revelation
of the perfections of the Heavenly Father.
These are the leading ideas of the Christ of the apostles
He is the Second Adam, the true High Priest, and the
Logos — the Redeemer of men, the Fulfiller of all symbolic
worship, the Revealer of God. As the Second Adam, He
is the Christ of sinful mortal men, and appeals to the uni
versal need, moral and spiritual, of the human race, in
contrast to the National Deliverer that answered to the
Jewish ideal of Messiahship. As the High Priest after the
order of Melchisedec, He is declared to be the true abiding
Representative of Man in the Heavenly Places, clothed
with a function that is in vivid antithesis to the temporary
and imperfect priesthood of those who, under provisional
systems of worship, acted with God for their fellowmen.
While as the Logos He is the manifestation of the Father
in a human life and history, satisfying the desire for a true
and living knowledge of God in a way that was impossible
under systems of speculation in which the Logos was no
more than an abstract idea. In this threefold conception,
as Redeemer, Perfecter, Revealer, we have a presentation
of the Person of Christ that is liberated from all admixture
of particularistic elements which betrayed the radical im
perfection of the Jewish, Hebrew, and Greek ideas of Christ
hood, and that commends Him to our faith, as able out of
the riches of His life to meet the various needs of men as
religious beings.
It is, moreover, to be observed that while each is dis
tinct from the others, all three alike are based on history,
and while, strictly speaking, religious conceptions, they are
interpretations of the historic Christ. They are, in short,
different aspects of the one Christ interpreted by the
Christian consciousness, and by the experience of the Good
it finds in Him. ApostoHc Christology, then, is the doctrine

GENESIS OF ST. PAUl's CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 21
of the Person of Jesus as understood and interpreted by
the needs, aspirations, hopes, of the human soul. We can
know Him only through the impressions His exalted Per
sonality makes upon us when it is brought into connection
with the deeper elements of our nature. The truth thus
known is eternal, as all truths of faith are, and independent
of the details or circumstances of His earthly life, but, at
the same time, it is truth that rests on history ; it is truth
respecting Him in those deeper relations and wider aspects
which the study of every great historical character more or
less reveals, when, abstracting from outward details, we
grasp its idea or spiritual content.
In this respect all the three forms of Christological
doctrine in the New Testament differ from the Christology
that has been formed by the application of human thought
to the subject of the Person of Christ ; and it is necessary
to emphasise the distinction between the religious conception
that we find in the New Testament and the intellectual or
dogmatic one that is the product of ecclesiastical theology.
At an early period in the history of the Church, the neces
sity arose for safeguarding its faith from the inroads of
error. To preserve the truth of the revelation that had
come through Christ, the Church was compelled to give
intellectual expression to its faith, and to state in the terms
which were current at the time, and were supplied by the
Greek philosophy, which then moulded the thinking of men
on the highest subjects, what it believed to be true regarding
the different aspects of the Person of Christ, as these
became matters of debate in the conflict with heresy. Now
it was the reality of the Divine Factor in the Personal
Christ that was endangered by speculation, now it was the
truth of His humanity ; again, it was the integrity and
reality of the union between the Divine and the Human.
Error on these matters was serious ; religious interests were
at stake ; the issue was, had men really in Christ the salva-

22 ST. Paul's conception op christ
tion they believed they had, a real revelation of God
expressed in the terms of a genuine human Life ? Accord
ingly, the Church was occupied during the early centuries
of our era in defining its faith against false opinion. And
as the monument of the gigantic labour spent upon this
task, we have the great Dogmatic decisions of the Councils
on the Person of Christ, culminating in the formula of the
Council of Chalcedon of " the two natures in one Person." ^
The work had to be done, and it is not easy to see how it
could have been better done. But the result was by no
means an unmixed gain. The faith was cast into the
mould of intellectual formulae that really added nothing to
the knowledge of Christ, and were never intended to add to
it, their sole purpose being to fence round the knowledge of
faith so as to protect it from error. But it was inevitable that
men who were so much occupied in defining should attach to
the definition the importance that belonged to the truth
itself^ It became to them the equivalent of the latter.
The intellectual conception thrust into the background the
religious, and belief in the dogma was substituted for the
faith that rests on intuition. That this has indeed been the
result we may see from the answer to the one question in
our own Shorter Catechism that deals with the Person of
Christ, " Who is the only Redeemer of God's elect ? " " The
only Redeemer is the Lord Jesus Christ, Who, being the
Eternal Son of God, became man, and so was and continueth
^ Properly speaking, of course, the last stage of the development
of the dogma was not reached till, as the result of the Monothelite
controversy, the doctrine of the Two Wills in the Person of Christ was
affirmed by the Sixth General Council more than two hundred years
after that of Chalcedon. This doctrinal finding, by which the last effort
of the Monophysites to make good the unity of the personal life of
our Lord was overcome, brought out into clear light the contradic
tions contained in the formula of Chalcedon, for two wills means two
subjects, or egos, in which they reside, and thus we are landed at once
in a double personality. The unity was reduced to a mere abstraction.
^ See Fairbairn, Christ i-n Modern Theology, p. 89, and Gore's
Dissertations, p. 173.

GENESIS OF ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 23
to be both God and man in two distinct natures, and one
Person for ever," — where the dogmatic definition, the result
of the evolution of centuries of theological thought, which
was originally intended to serve as a bulwark of the faith
against error, is represented as the very truth of the faith
itself. By being thus treated as sources of information
about Christ, the dogmatic statements absorbed the interest
that was properly due to the Christ of history and Christian
experience. In the final form given to them, they made
the understanding of the historic Christ an impossibility,
for the Divine element in His Person had been defined in a
way that when applied to the interpretation of the historic
Christ, involved the sacrifice of the human element, and
destroyed the naturalness of the Picture in the Gospels.
That injury has been inflicted on the life of the Church by
the tendency of dogma to emphasise the Divine at the
expense of the Human in men's thoughts about Christ, is
admitted even by those who naturally are disposed to attach
the highest importance to the dogmas of the ancient Church.
" There is no doubt, I think," says Gore, " that the genuine
teaching of the Catholic Church for many centuries about our
Lord has removed Him very far from human sympathies,
very much farther than the Christ of the New Testament." ^
It was to be expected that as soon as an interest in
historic inquiry arose, and men sought, unfettered by
theological opinion, to reconstruct from the Gospels the
image of the historic Christ, that they would discover the
inadequacy of the formulated dogma of the Church, and
would either reject it altogether, and along with it the
faith which had been translated into the creed, or they
would endeavour so to modify the dogma as to leave
room for the understanding of the Jesus of history and
the maintenance of the faith that had been based upon
Him. And this is just what has happened. In modern
1 Dissertations, pp. 205, 206.

24 ST. Paul's conception of christ
times the growth of the historic spirit has led to an
amount of attention being given to the study of the
records of Christ's earthly life and of His human Person
ality that has greatly enriched our knowledge. But the
result has been to confirm the impression of the insuffi
ciency of the Christological dogma. Some proclaim the
hopeless variance between the Jesus of history and the
Christ of dogma, and, accepting the purely humanitarian
position, ignore the religious significance of the Person of
our Lord. Others continue to maintain the old faith of
the Church in Him as the Divine Christ, but frankly
admit that the dogmatic statements in which that faith
has been set forth call for revision or modification, and
that something is needed to bring into harmony the
findings of faith and the facts of the evangelical narrative.
This is the object of the labours of the many students who
have in recent years done good work in this department of
theological research. One serious attempt has been made,
and it is the most notable result of the Christological move
ment in modern theology, to develop the dogma of the
ancient Church so as to leave room for the understanding
in a human way of the life of Jesus. I refer to the theories
of Kenosis, which under various forms of statement agree
in regarding the Divine nature in the Person of our Lord
as having in the Incarnation undergone a change resulting
in its being contracted within the limits of humanity, and
in the suspense of those Divine attributes whose presence
and exercise are incompatible with a genuine human
consciousness. These theories are deserving of our earnest sympathy,
for they are the efforts of believing men who aim, in
consistency with their faith in the Higher Nature of
Christ, at doing justice to the condescension of Divine
Grace in the assumption of our human nature. And
theologians of this school do succeed in presenting to

genesis of ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 25
us a Picture of Jesus that is distinguished by its fidelity to
the record.^ The serious difficulties, however, connected
with nearly every form in which the theory of the Kenosis
has been advocated by modern theologians, have prevented
its general acceptance as a satisfactory solution of the
problem. It is at least doubtful whether instead of being
a development of the ancient dogma it is not an entire
subversion of it. Few readers of the article in his Disserta
tions, in which Mr. Gore espouses the theory and compares it
with the opinions of the Greek Fathers, will regard him as
successful in the endeavour to show its harmony with the
dogma as formulated by them, or with the theoretic pre
suppositions on which they work. And the fresh specula
tion to which we are driven to make out the consistency of
such a doctrine of the Person of Christ with the Catholic
dogma, speculation in a region where all is so uncertain,
points to the wisdom of suspending our judgment on the
matter in dispute. But if we are not satisfied with the
last effort to save the old Christology, what is there left to
us but to return to the New Testament and recover if
possible the intuition of the apostles? Giving up the
attempt to construct an intellectual conception of the
Person of Christ that will satisfy speculation, we must
learn to content ourselves with the understanding of His
religious significance, and the knowledge of His nature that
is gathered from the life of faith. On this view the
Personality of Christ will come before us, not so much as
a problem to be solved, as a fact to be^ apprehended and
interpreted ; and this happily iT'the attitude that serious-
minded men in our generation are disposed to take toward
the subject under discussion. They are less interested in
the explanation of the Person of Christ than in the inter
pretation of It. How is He to be understood ? What is
1 For a fine instance of this, see Gess' Christi Person u. Werk,
vol. iii. pp. 10-43.

26 ST. Paul's conception of christ
the significance of His work for men ? What is the place that
belongs to Him in our own life and in the life of the world ?
These are the questions that are of interest to us, that must
determine the method in which we approach the study of the
subject, and to which an answer is found in the representa
tion of those who, like Paul, depict the Christ of faith.
The Christology that will then fall to be considered
embraces, it must be evident, more than is included under
the term in dogmatic theology, where a rigid distinction_ is
observed between the Person and work of the Redeemer.
The nature of the Person is indeed only revealed in the
experience of the peculiar effects that proceed from Him on
the life and character, in the specific influence that He
exerts on those who yield themselves to His sway. There
is thus the closest and most vital connection between the
doctrine of the Person and the doctrine of the Work of
Christ ; and the terms in which we express our Christo
logical beliefs will be determined by our Soteriological
experiences, that is, by the conception we have formed
to ourselves of the Redemption of Christ.^
1 R. Schmidt {Die Paulinische Christologie, 1870) insists that the
understanding of Paul's doctrine of the nature of Christ depends on our
understanding of his distinctive doctrine of the significance of Christ's
redemption, and that every genuine insight of the person of Christ
includes the knowledge of the worth of His salvation (pp. 4, 5).
Similarly, Baur {NTliche Theol.) says, " The view of the Person of
Christ is always conditioned by the view of His work. Christ can
neither have done anything for, nor communicated anything to, men,
.except what was in Himself in principle (auf principielle Weise)." It is
a position common to theologians of the school of RitschI that the con
sideration of what Christ does in the experience of the life of faith must
precede the understanding of what He is in His own Person. And it is
significant that Gess, the orthodox opponent of RitschI, reverses the
usual order of treatment in his constructive book on the Person and
Work of Christ, and begins with the discussion of His Work. " To
proceed from the work to the Person," he says, " is the way to a living
knowledge." " It is only real insight into Jesus' work that opens up to
view the heights and depths of the Being that is able to do this work"
(vol. iii. p. 7).

GENESIS OF ST. PAUL's CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 27
The inquiry, then, into the thought that at once regu
lated and expressed Paul's faith regarding Christ must take
the form as well of an inquiry into the apostle's experience
of the Good which he found in Him. The Person is made
known in what He does for us, and the consciousness of
what He does helps in turn to the understanding of who
and what He is. Keeping this in view, I propose in my
next lecture to consider Paul's interpretation of the Person
of Christ, furnished to him by that specific experience of His
influence which reveals Him as the Pattern or Archetypal
Man ; and in the lecture that follows, his interpretation of
the death of Christ, in which He is viewed as the Redeemer
from sin and the Founder of a new humanity. In the
fourth lecture we will go on to consider the significance of
the Resurrection-life of Christ, His present activity, on the
one hand as Spirit, and on the other as Lord, by which He
continues to carry on His work as the Second Head of the
Human Race. We will thus have gone over the main
truths asserted of Christ when He is designated the Second _
Adam. Three things are predicated of Him in this con
nection ; first, that He is the Pattern Man ; second, that
He is the new Representative of the human race ; and
third, that He is the Power of a new and Divine life within
humanity itself, reproducing and perpetuating His own
Manhood. We will then proceed to the exposition of the /
development of these leading ideas in the later Epistles,
what are known, from the prominence in them of the |
thought of Christ, as the Christological Epistles. The \
sixth lecture will deal with those passages in his writings
generally that bear on the Pre-existence and Eternal Nature
of Christ, His transcendental relations to God and Human
ity. And in the closing lecture we will compare the Christ
thus depicted in the apostle's writings with the picture of
the historic Christ in the Synoptic Gospels, adding such
reflections as are suggested by this study as to the relation

28 ST. Paul's conception of christ
of the one to the other, and the place that belongs to the
Pauline Christ in the life and teaching of the Church.
With regard to the sources of information from which
we are to draw for this study, it is enough to say that I
accept as Pauline and available for use in the exposition of
his teaching not only the four leading Epistles whose
genuineness is almost universally recognised, but also what
are known as the Epistles of the- imprisonment. For, how
ever unlike in certain particulars the latter may be to the
former, the peculiarities do not seem to be such as to
require us to refer them to a different authorship. The
most recent opinion as to the authorship of the Epistles to
the Colossians and Ephesians, coming from a school that
cannot be charged with any championship of orthodoxy in
criticism, is that the doubts which, in the view of many,
attach to their Pauline authorship, are not insuperable. We
are not likely, then, to go far wrong in proceeding on the
tradition that refers them to Paul.^ The authorship of the
Pastoral Epistles constitutes a different problem. But as
the material they offer for our present purpose is incon
siderable, the propriety of their use for the understanding
of the apostle's doctrine on the subject on hand need not
be discussed.^ Let me ask your indulgence in carrying out the task I
have set before me. To re-think the thoughts of Paul is
no easy work, and in no part of his teaching is one more
frequently baffled in the attempt to penetrate the meaning
of his words than when his theme is Christ, and what Christ
is to the human spirit. It is not only that his language is
cramped, and that in some of the most important passages
we must remain in doubt as to which of several meanings
that suggest themselves we are to accept as the intended
^ Jiilicher, Einleitung in das N.T., pp. 84-97.
2 See Note C on the Conception of Christ in the Pastoral Epistles.

GENESIS OF ST. PAUL's CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 29
one.i Nor is it merely that the intellectual atmosphere
Paul breathed was so different from ours, and current ideas
to which reference is made are so little understood by us ;
and his arguments, owing to his training in the Rabbinic
schools, are so difficult for us to fit in to our logical forms ;
but, being the language of experience and the reproduction
in human modes of thought of the facts of his inner life, 
an inner life fused in so wonderful a way with the life and
spirit of his Master, — it seems to demand an experience
sympathetic with his, as rich, as full, and as subtle in its
apprehension of spiritual things ; and also a soul magnetised,
if one may be allowed the expression, as his was with the
love of Christ, in order that a true account may be given
of who and what he believed Christ to be. " Where lives"
the Christian," exclaims Herrmann,^ " who could with truth
presume to say that he treasures the thoughts of Paul as
his very own ? Surely all of us read the apostle with the
feeling that he has a different measure and a different
energy of faith from ours." There is truth in the remark.
It is but a feeble echo at the most that one can hope to
catch of the grand strain of Christological thought that
sounds through the apostle's writings, and which, stirring
the deepest feelings of his heart, so often rises into the
exultant language of a hymn. But since it has pleased
God to reveal the truth of His Son, and of His salvation
through the medium of a life and of experiences that bear
witness to His commanding power over the human will, and
to the satisfaction to all that is deepest in man that flows
^ Holtzmann speaks ofthe following passages as " die sieben vornehm-
sten cruces interpretum " : Rom. v. 12, viii. 3, ix. 5 ; i Cor. xv. 45 ;
2 Cor. V. 3 ; Gal. iii. 20 ; Phil. ii. 6 ; and, he adds, " aber der Stellen
sind unsaglich viele, die sich aller hermeneutischen Kunst so unzuganglich
erweisen, dass auch eine so methodisch als moglich geiibte Exegese
immer noch einen Rest von Zweifel iibrig behalt " {Lehrbuch der Neutest.
Theologie, p. 204).
2 Ifftercourse with God, p. 186,

30 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
from the voluntary surrender to that power, it is our duty
to renew the endeavour to look with the eyes of this great
interpreter of Christ at the picture of the Risen Glory of the
Lord. We may cherish the hope that some features, at
least, of that picture will be disclosed to the honest student,
and that the vision, however partial it may be, will reward
the effort to get it.

II

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF
HUMANITY

81

LECTURE II
Christ the Archetype of Humanity
In my opening lecture I aimed at showing that if we
would be guided aright in our inquiry regarding Paul's
thought of Christ, we must interrogate his inner life and
experience as formed in union with the Risen Lord. It
was the consciousness of the Power of Christ on his per
sonal life that led him into that understanding of his
Master, " for whose excellency he counted all things loss." '•
His Christology was in this way the grodugt of his
experience, the expression of what he had found Christ
to be in his deepest life. There is in friendship such
a thing as a union between two of so intimate a character
that the inner forces that mould the life of the one pass
into and become factors in the personal life of the other,
and by their effects on his experience disclose to him the
inmost nature of the man who has thus entered his per
sonality to possess and dominate it. Now, from the
moment that Paul was arrested by the Risen Lord on
the way to Damascus and surrendered himself to Him,
his whole soul was thrown wide open to His influence,
to receive impressions that resulted in the communication
to him of what was most distinctive in the personal life
of his Master, ahd in the forming within him of an
experience, with features of its own, that in its turn shed
light on the nature of the Heavenly Being with whom
he had been brought into so intimate a fellowship. The
new elements that enriched his personal life, and that were
J Phil. iii. 8.
3

34 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
due to the influence of the Exalted Christ, supplied him
with the means of construing to his thought the nature
of that wonderful Personality that had made all things
new within him.
His Epistles contain the record of that experience ;i
and from them we learn that in its essential features it
was, on the one hand, a consciousness of new moral power
identified by him with the power of the Holy Spirit of
God, and, on the other hand, a consciousness of rel^ious
satisfaction rooting itself in reconciliation or sonship to
God. He was conscious, in short, from the outset of his
connection with Christ, of power proceeding from Him
that was the power of the Holy Spirit, for by it that
which was spiritual in him regained its supremacy over
the flesh. And He who shed that influence on his inner
life was thus revealed to him as a Being whose nature
was Spirit, a Man distinguished from and contrasted with
all others in this, that the Spirit of God was the indwelling
Power of His personal life. Again, in communion with
Christ, the old Judaic feeling of legalism and estrangement
in his relation to God had given place to the consciousness
of forgiveness and sonship ; and this too, derived from
Christ, pointed back to Him as the Son of God, differing
from all others in the reality and power of His Divine
Sonship and in His perfect oneness with God, constituting
Him the Source to all who believed in Him of the Standing,
Spirit, and Character of the children of God.
We have here the root conception of Christ in the
i"Im Epistolaren," says Auerbach in his Auf der H'ohe, "ist
personliche Gegenwart des Schreibenden : der Brief hat noch Stimme."
It has often been pointed out how well fitted this form of literary
expression is to be the medium by which truth that is personal and
subjective in its character is conveyed. Of Paul's Epistles, Ewald says,
" Es gibt in alter Zeiten und Volker Schriftthum sehr wenige Schrift-
steller, deren Werke ein so unverkennbares, festes und gewaltiges
Geprage ihres eigenthiimlichen Geistes tragen " {Sendschr. des Apostel
Paulus, p. 2).

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 35
mind of the apostle. He is at once the Pneumatic or
Spiritual Man, in whom the Holy Spirit of God is operative
as the very principle of His Personality; and the Man
who is the SON OF GOD, the embodiment through His full
participation of the life of the Father of the filial relation
of Man to God.
This, in a single sentence, is the interpretation of the
Person of Christ that we find in his writings, and that
evidently dominated his thoughts ; it is a religious inter
pretation, and takes account not of the metaphysical
nature of Christ's Person, but of His significance for the
moral and religious life of man. And in what follows
it will be my object to expound this interpretation in
its bearing on the fitness of Christ to occupy the central
place assigned to Him in Paul's writings in relation to
the human race as the Second Adam or Archetypal Man,
adding a brief account of the history of this interpretation
in the thought of the Church. I
I. The one element in the conception of Christ that
ruled the thoughts of the apostle was that of Spirituality.
Christ is the Spiritual Man in whom the old antagonism
in human nature between flesh and spirit has been over
come. It is the Exalted Christ to whom the apostle
always refers ; and it is of Him that this description holds
in its absolute truth ; but it holds also of the historic Jesus
and of His state of humiHation, and we must look at it
as the account of what He was when on earth in order
to understand the full significance of it as the account of
His glorified Person.
The supremacy of Christ as the Spiritual Man is best
understood when we bear in mind what Paul's doctrine
of human nature is. He regards man in his ideal con-

36 ST. Paul's conception of christ
stitution as made up of two parts, spirit and flesh. This
is, of course, not a metaphysical definition, it is a religious
account of the matter. It has respect to man as a religious
being, having a nature that connects him with God and
the spiritual world, as well as one that connects him with
the world of sense and the material order of things. In
virtue of his power of choice, man may determine himself
either in the one direction or the other ; he may obey the
higher law of his being, or he may surrender himself to
the desire and impulse of his sensuous nature; and,
according to the choice he makes, he becomes either a
spiritual or a carnal man. In point of fact he has made
his choice in favour of the flesh, and this choice is repeated
in every member of the human race, so that owing to the
preponderating influence of the appetites and desires that
have their seat in the material part of us, we are now
carnal in character and mind, conformed to the principle
of the flesh. Paul denies to human nature in its actual
condition the possession of the Spirit of God.^ He recog
nises, of course, the presence and working in human nature
^ " Not till faith with its consequences begins," says Holtzmann
in expounding the doctrine of Paul, "does the transcendent Spirit
become an immanent principle in man." But it is going too far to
assert, as he does, that the spiritual is the exclusive attribute of God,
and is, "apart from our renewal by Christ, which is essentially our
elevation to a higher stage of being, alien to the nature of man"
{N.T. Theol. p. i6). Gloel is more cautious : " If the apostle nowhere
expressly mentions the spirit of man when he speaks of our carnal
state, the reason is that in his view man's 'spirit' does not unfold itself
in its religious susceptibility and religious self-activity till it comes
into contact with the Divine Spirit" {Der Heilige Geist, ^. ^). The
spirituality of man's nature even as fallen is demonstrated by the activity
of the nous or faculty of moral cognition and will (practical reason)
which is the organ of the Spirit of God, by which the latter finds access,
under the Gospel, to the springs of our being to renew us in knowledge
and reinforce our wills (Rom. xii. 2 ; Eph. iv. 23). These and other
points relating to the psychologia sacra of the apostle are well put in
the useful monograph of Simon on Die Psychologic des Ap. Paulus,
1897.

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 37
of spiritual elements, the activity of the nous, or mind, with
its perception of a law that coerces the animal nature, the
existence, in short, of an Inner Man that responds to the
voice of God and duty. But when he speaks of Spirit,
there is present to his mind the idea of power, energy,
a principle of Hfe and activity, and there is no such
principle in man's nature. We are "without strength,"!
though we strive after the Ideal we cannot reach it. The
flesh is supreme, and if elements that are spiritual are
still found in us, we are without the Spirit of God whose
energy is needed to make them vital and dominant.
Without this indwelling of God man is now a moral
failure, and the highest capacities of his nature remain
undeveloped. In contrast is Jesus Christ, the Man in whom God
is Immanent, and who, in consequence, realises the Ideal
of our being. In Him also were Spirit and Flesh, but
related to each other as they ought to be — the Spirit of
God controlling the flesh and determining all the activities
of the personal life, so that He became the Type of the
Spiritual Man. To this peculiarity in the Person of Christ,
the indwelling of the Spirit of God, is to be referred the
fact, so fundamental in Paul's thought of Christ, of His
personal holiness and entire freedom from sin. What
distinguished Christ from all other men in the view of
the apostle, and constituted the secret of His power to
save, was His sjnlfissneas. And in referring this excep
tional position of Christ in humanity to His supernatural
endowment by the Spirit of God, we are not to understand
him as implying that it was not also the personal attain
ment of Christ. The apostle, indeed, says nothing explicit
as to the process by which Christ achieved holiness, but
that the latter was in no sense a ready-made virtue, or
the result of a natural and necessary process, may, I think,
^ Rom, V. 6,

38 ST. Paul's conception of christ
be inferred from the fact that the apostle asserts the
solidarity of Christ with mankind in sharing with them
the flesh or material nature, with its weakness for good,
its openness to temptation, its mortality.^
I can refer only in passing to the controversy on which
so much has been written as to what precisely is meant by
the term " flesh " in Paul's writings. A certain class of
writers maintain that he was influenced in his use of the
term by the usage of Greek philosophy, and that he held
the essential evil of matter. According to them, his teaching
is that the flesh, in virtue of its being material, is in itself
evil, and that assumed by Christ it was in Him, as in us
all, the seat of sinful passions and desires ; His personal
sinlessness being conserved by the admission that while it
was an objective reality in His flesh it never became sin
subjectively, or His own personal act, having been kept
from passing into an act of will by the opposite principle of
the Spirit. There is no proof, however, that Paul used the
term in this metaphysical sense, while the strong probability
is that he held the Old Testament view of the historical
connection between the flesh and sin. The two things
are separable in idea, although in concrete experience and
in the life of the race the flesh is sinful ; but the distinction
leaves us free to hold that the flesh of Christ was that of un
fallen human nature. It is another question whether it really
was so. The doctrine that Christ was not born by ordinary
generation seems to secure for Him a participation of flesh
' Rothe has discussed the process by which Christ achieved holiness
in his speculative construction of the idea of the Second Adam in his
Ethik (iii. pp. 135-170). But there is much force in Kahler's remarks on
attempts to explain this matter : " The inner course of a sinless develop
ment is as inconceivable to us as life on the Sandwich Islands is to a
Laplander. How can we, who are so different from Him in the very
roots of our being that we need to undergo a new birth in order to
acquire an element of likeness to Him, pretend to apply human
measures to His development, its stages and course ? " {Der Sogenannie
Historische Jesu, 1896, pp. 53, 54).

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 39
exempt from sin. But whatever Paul's view was concerning
the supernatural origin of Christ's life, this doctrine was not
taught by him, and we can scarcely proceed upon it in the
interpretation of his language on the subject under con-
sideration.i Some accordingly have held, not on speculative
grounds but on grounds of Scripture, and what appear to
them the necessities of the case, that the flesh attributed by
the apostle to our Lord in His humilation was in itself,
and apart from His personal will, identical with ours, —
convinced that unless we take this view we cannot hold
that His temptations were ours, or that His victory over
evil is available for us. On the other hand, we have state
ments of the apostle's that make us pause before we go so
far. We are told that " Christ knew no sin " ; ^ and such
an aloofness of it from His very consciousness is scarcely
consistent with its presence as an active principle or power
in His material frame. Again, we read that He came in
the " likeness of sinful flesh," ^ a phrase that seems to have
been chosen to guard against the idea of a perfect identity
between the flesh of Christ and that of ordinary men. Two
things may be like without being the very same. And the
similarity between Christ's flesh and our own may well
have been accompanied by a difference affecting the
experience of the moral life, when we remember the
strength of the Divine consciousness in Him. At the
same time, the dissimilarity must not be pressed. The
likeness was real enough to involve Him in a conflict with
sin in the flesh that caHed forth His active "condemnation"*
of it. For whatever else the apostle may mean to imply
by that expression, he points to a dealing on the part of
Christ with sin, in which he practically denied its right to
rule in human nature, and demonstrated that a man who
has the Holy Spirit for his life and strength is superior to
1 See Note A on St. Paul and the Supernatural Birth of Christ
- 2 Cor. v. 21. ^ Rom. viii. 3. * Rom. viii. 3.

40 ST. Paul's conception of christ
the flesh, and need not succumb to its weakness. And
this practical condemnation of sin in the flesh involved
a continual resistance to it in its manifold approaches
and forms of assault on His integrity, that establishes
a community of feeling and experience between the
sinless One and His brethren of a very real- descrip
tion. If the flesh of Christ was not in itself sinful, the being
in the flesh was nevertheless a humiliation to Him, and
marked a lower stage in His history compared with that
which followed. The flesh is a hindrance to the full
unimpeded activity of the Spirit ; it is weak, mortal,
perishable, and the death of Christ is spoken of as
significant of a new and higher step in the development
of His Person ; for, rising again. He became wholly
spiritual, filled and pervaded by the unbounded power of
the Spirit of God, which, although given to Him without
measure when He was in the world, was then restrained by
the material conditions of His earthly life, and could not
till death took place glorify every part of His humanity.
He became, then, in the fullest sense a Spiritual Man, so
identified with the Spirit of God indeed that He is called
Spirit. " The Lord is the Spirit." ^ It was as Spirit that
Christ was first known to Paul, and it was the impression
of Him as thus apprehended that ruled his thought of
Christ to the end. Not that there is intended any nega
tion of body. Paul does not conceive of Spirit apart from
corporeity. He refers to the " Body of Glory " ^ in which
the Risen One is clothed. Nor is the manhood lost sight
of in his conception of the Exalted One. It is noticeable
that he often applies to Him the name of Jesus, redolent of
earth and of human memories. But withal, Christ as
Exalted is in His very nature in a pre-eminent sense
Spirit, free from the limitations of sense and flesh, the " Life-
' 2 Cor. iii. 17. ^ Phil. iii. 21.

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 4 1
Giving Spirit," ^ or Dispenser of Spiritual Energy to men.
Moreover, in His Glory as Spiritual Man He is the Fore
runner of His brethren, who, with the laying aside of the
flesh, are destined to enter on a similar form of life and
activity. Perfected in their spiritual nature they will then
receive bodies ' like unto His Body of Glory." ^
To sum up then under this head: in the Risen Christ*
the apostle sees the triumph of the principle of Spiritualityi
in Man. He beholds a manhood dwelt in by the Spirit of/ '
God and reaching its true end in the sinless perfection of
its powers and in the attainment of eternal Life. Thus
is Christ, Risen and Glorified, the realisation of the true
idea of our nature, — Man, drawing his life from the Holy j,
Spirit of God, become thereby holy and immortal. ^__  -
2. But to Paul Christ was more than the Spiritual Man.
He was also the SON OF Gop, the Original of that sonship
that is a primary fact of Christian consciousness, the Man
in whom the filial relationship was embodied in its absolute
truth. The intimate connection between the Divine Son-
ship of Christ and the indwelling in Him of the Divine
Spirit is set forth in the opening of the great Epistle to the
Romans, where Paul speaks of the subject of the Gospel
as being " God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was
made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and
marked out as, or appointed ^ to be. Son of God, with
1 I Cor. XV. 45.
2 Phil. iii. 21 ; Rom. viii. 12 ; i Cor. xv. 49 ; Eph. i. 18-20. "Glory"
(So'^u) is almost a technical expression in Paul's writings. It is the
characteristic of all that belongs to the world of heavenly reality. There
belongs to everything that has its origin in heaven a " glory." It is
the full manifestation of the " Spiritual." When all hindrances to the
perfected activity of " Spirit" are removed, it appears as "glory." What
is outwardly So'l* is inwardly ¦s-ntt/^a. Christ is called the "Lord of
glory" (i Cor. ii. 8). He is also called the "Lord of the spirit"
(2 Cor. iii. 18). These are like the reverse and obverse sides of a
coin, the outward and inward aspects of the Exalted Christ.
3 Weizacker, in his version of the N. T., has it " Gesetzt zum
Sohn Gottes mit-Macht." In their Commentary on Romans, Sanday

42 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
power according to the Spirit of Holiness by (or in
consequence of) His resurrection from the dead." ^ Two
things are to be noticed here.
On the one hand, we have the statement of the two
factors of Christ's Person, the Flesh and the Spirit, and of
the relations arising out of these to men and to God. As
regards the flesh. He was a Jew and the Son of David.
He is declared here and elsewhere ^ to be a Man of a
particular nationality, having in His veins the blood of the
Royal House of Judah. The Davidic descent of Christ
was after all a carnal distinction, and of no value in the
kingdom of God, and it surprises us to find the apostle who
is so strenuous an opponent of all inequalities among men
that arise out of the flesh, taking account of this accident of
Christ's birth. Possibly it was his object to commend the
gospel thereby to the Jewish section of his readers, who
from this description of Christ would recognise Him as the
Messiah promised to their fathers. Or he may have
wished, in condescending to particularise His nationality, to
make broad and plain the fact that He was a true Man.^
But the real importance of the words quoted attaches to
the account they contain of what Christ is in reference to
the Spirit that constituted His higher Nature — " appointed
to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of
and Headlam render it "designated." But this rather misses the
meaning: we want a word to express the truth, that while He
had been a Son before, Christ at the resurrection became a Son of
God in power, "passed into a form of human life in which He
had power over that which formerly had power over Him" (Hofmann,
in loco). ' Rom. i. 4. 2 Rom. ix. 5.
3 This is Dr. Bruce's explanation of the apparent importance Paul
attached to the Davidic descent of Jesus {Paul's Conception of
Christiatiity, pp. 332-334). In his Pastor Pastorum, Latham remarks on
the fact that Jesus Himself carefully abstained from basing His claim
to be the Sent of God on His royal ancestry : " He never proclaims
Himself the Jewish Messiah. No Greek or Roman would have listened
for a moment to one who declared himself the special Prophet of the

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 43
HoHness." The ground of His Glorified Sonship is said to
be the Indwelling in Him of the Holy Spirit of God ; ^ and
we gather that the Sonship itself is a union with God that
is ethical in its character and manifestation, consisting in a
community of mind and spirit with God, an identity with
Him in moral feature and purpose. It is a relationship in
which, as a man, Christ stands to God. By the perfection
of His filial Spirit and life He fulfils the idea of our
humanity, and is thus qualified to be the First-born of
many brethren and the Author of Sonship in His people.
Inasmuch as it is a relationship which He graciously shares
with us, it is plain that it is as a man, the Man in whom
the Divine Life was found in its fulness, and who in His
human excellences altogether resembled God, that He is
called His Son. What deeper significance the term has in
Paul's writings when applied to Christ will appear in
another lecture ; but there is no doubt it is as a human
Son of God we are to think of Him when He is so called.
His pre-eminence being not that He is God's Son, while
all others are, and can only be, sons of men, but that He
is what He is, in distinction from all others, God's Son, in
order to share His glory with us, to invest us in His own
Sonship, and so to raise us to the dignity and power of
true manhood.^
Jews. Though of the House and Family of David (Matt. xxii. 43, 44 ;
Mark xii. 35-37 ; Luke xx. 41), He will accept no advantage on this
score. He repudiates for the Saviour of the world the title of the
' Son of David,' which from its nature was based on legitimacy and
must rest on the veracity of genealogical rolls. The apostles were
to divine the nature of His Personality by long and close intercourse
with Him, more than by canvassing claims or interpreting texts"
(p. 415). 1 "The ground and cause of His Sonship-in-power was that the
Spirit that ruled His life was a Spirit of Holiness, that His life was a holy
one" (Hofmann).
2 The identity of Christ's Sonship with that of His people was the
point in dispute in the Adoptianist controversy in the eighth century.
It was maintained, by those who were strenuous in holding by the

44 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
The Other thing we learn from the opening words of
the Epistle to the Romans is, that it was when He rose
again from the dead that Jesus entered on His full glory as
the Son of God. He was appointed, or determined, to be
the " Son of God with power in consequence of His resur
rection from the dead." The meaning is not that Jesus
then first became Son of God, but that the glory of His
Sonship, which was obscured before, was then manifested,
and the full power that belonged to it entered upon. His
Messiahship became an accomplished fact. His distinction
from all others, as a Man who had lived a human life under
reality of Christ's human nature, that unless Christ was the human Son
of God, the sonship of believers must be wholly different from His.
Accordingly, besides His sonship by nature as God, the Adoptianists
predicated of Him a sonship as man by grace. In this latter sense He
was the Son of God by adoption, as we are ; and under this scheme of
thought justice was done to the truth of Christ as the Firstborn of
many brethren. This doctrine, however, was condemned on the ground
of its involving a double personality in Christ. After this abortive
attempt to rescue the humanity of Christ, the reign of Greek orthodoxy
continued undisturbed till the Reformation. A remarkable effort has
been made in modern times by Dr. Candlish (Cunningham Lecture,
First Series, On the Fatherhood of God) to base the identity ofthe Sonship
of Christ with that of believers on their participation of the eternal
Sonship of Christ as God. He avoids the dualism of the Adoptianist
view by holding that the Sonship of Christ as God and His Sonship as
Man are one and the same. He regards the eternal filial relationship of
Christ as separable from His Divine nature, and capable of being com
municated to men ; and he maintains that in Christ's human Person
humanity becomes partaker in His filial relationship as God. Immense
ingenuity is expended on the exposition of this view ; but it cannot be
denied that there is involved in it, first, a Doketic understanding of the
Humanity of Christ, for He cannot be a man as we are men if the basis
of His Humanity is not such a relation of man to God as is proper to the
creature, but one that is proper to Him as the second Person of the
Trinity ; and second, the Deification of humanity, for must not this
follow if man is made partaker of a relationship proper to the Son of
God as God ? The speculation, formed in the interest of religious truth, is
another instance of the extreme difficulty of doing justice to the religious
view of the Person of Christ, when we approach the subject with the
mind fettered by the categories of metaphysical thought. Though
advocated with great acuteness it does not seem to have had much
influence on the subsequent course of theology.

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 45
our limitations, lay in this, that He was the Son of God.
Paul does not allow that men in their natural state are sons
of God any more than he will allow that they have the
Spirit of God. And his teaching in this respect is criticised
by many on the ground that it falls far behind that of his
Master, who proclaimed the universal Fatherhood of God.
But let us do no injustice to the apostle. He does indeed
expressly say that the end of Christ's mission was that we
might receive the "adoption of sons,"i which implies
that apart from Him this is not our privilege. But in the
.same passage he compares Humanity, while under the law
and before Christ came, to a child that is " under tutors or
governors." If then the actual relation of man to God as
affected by sin is that of a servant, obeying a law that is
foreign to his likings, and conscious of God as Law Giver
and Judge rather than as a Father, man is nevertheless a
servant who is by birth a son or child of God, and is
destined to receive the position and spirit that are proper
to sonship. In distinguishing between the legal relation,
in which man is God's servant, and the relation of grace
which he owes to Christ, in which man is God's son, Paul
does not deny a natural capacity for sonship in man as
made in the image of God. But the apostle sets no value \
on metaphysical distinction ; he deals with religious facts.
It is enough for him that men in their actual state are at
best servants, and can make no claim either to the posi
tion or character of children. While acknowledging
that God is Father of all, he declines to say that
all men are God's sons in any real sense ; for the
only sonship that is of value in his eyes is that which
is accompanied with the power of sonship, with the
full status before God as well as tlie love and devotion
to Him that enter into the very idea, and that were
exemplified in the life and character of Him who
1 Gal. iv. 5.

46 ST. Paul's conception of christ
was the Son of God. He alone was God's dear Child,
the image of His Father, partaker with Him of a Hfe of
love and holiness.^
At the same time, Paul teaches that as long as He was
in the flesh, Jesus was the Son of God in weakness, and
that it was not till He was raised from the dead that He
was determined to be Son of God "in power." While
He was in the flesh he was under the law, in appearance
a servant rather than a son, submitting to all the legal
ordinances of the Jews. Not that there was anything of
the servile spirit in the obedience that was thus conditioned.
As He partook of the flesh without its sin, so He was under
the law without partaking of that spirit of slavish subjection
which the legal system engendered in those in whom the
spirit of sonship was absent.^ His goodness was none the
1 Xhree stages of Sonship are recognised in Paul's Epistles : i. The
natural sonship, of no account with Paul because a potentiality rather
than an actual fact ; 2. the Spiritual, or real sonship, by faith in Christ
"the Son"; 3. T'ht perfected form oi'it'vn. glory. The third is so great
an advance even on the second, that it is spoken of as the " adoption "
(Rom. viii. 23), which we as yet " wait for." It would be wrong to infer
from the last named passage that we have not already received this
" adoption of children '' ; we know from Gal. iv. 6, 7 that we have. It
would be equally wrong to infer from the passage just mentioned that
we are not in a certain sense children by nature and before we believe.
" Adoption " is a legal term, and is borrowed from the ceremony common
among the ancient Romans and Greeks (not among the Jews) of
investing in the rights or privileges of a son one who was no blood
connection of the family, and might have been a slave in it. It would be
wrong, however, to press the metaphor in the interpretation of the
spiritual fact. "Adoption" in the kingdom of God is consistent with a
previous filial relationship of an inferior sort, and means, as we see
from the double " adoption " in the Christian life, the investment
in fuller privileges and powers, in a sonship worthy of the name, of
persons who had been sons in an imperfect degree. See the interesting
paper on " Allusions to Roman Law in St. Paul's Epistles," by Ball, in
Contemporary Review, August i8gi.
2 " Christ had not to make, in His own Person, the transition from His
religion to that of redemption, from His relation of servant to that of
Son, but without any such change He developed Himself so that God
was always manifest to Him as Love, and He bore Himself ever to God

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 47
ess spontaneous that it manifested itself in obedience to
egal enactments. But the freedom which belongs to a
spiritual Being from outward arrangements and ordinances
that are carnal in their character was thereby concealed.
And, moreover. He was, from His connection with the flesh,
subject to weakness and death, under the power of that to
which in His proper nature He was superior. Hence it was
the Resurrection that manifested the real Glory and Power
of Sonship. He then left behind Him all that impaired
the freedom of His activity as a Son of God and the com
pleteness of His spiritual resemblance to His Father, entering
on a condition in which He was raised above weakness and
death, and invested in all the prerogatives that belong to
Divine Sonship in its perfected form.
According to the teaching of our apostle, then, the
constitution of the Person of Christ presents a radical
contrast to that of all other men, in virtue of which He
occupies a position that no other can share with Him.
But let us mark wherein the difference and contrast con
sist. It is no exact or intelligible account of it to say
that " He is God and Man in two distinct natures and
one Person," while we are human beings only. The
antithesis between the Divine and Human that is implied
in this definition of His Person is not applicable to the
matter, and does not give a true account of the difference
between Christ and us. For, on the one hand. He is not
represented as Divine in a sense that isolates or places
Him out of relation to others as One possessed of qualities
that cannot be communicated or transferred to them.
And in the second place, it is ascribing to those with
whom He is contrasted more than is true to say that, in
our natural state, we are perfect and complete men, for
as to His Father, as a trustful Son of God by means of the love imprinted
on His personality from the first" (Schweizer, Christi Glaubenslehre,
II. i. 11).

48 ST. Paul's conception of christ
we are defective in what constitutes proper manhood, in
the higher life of the Spirit and Divine Sonship.'' The
real contrast is to be found here, that while Christ is the
Spiritual Man and Son of God, we are carnal, and at
best servants of God, than while He perfectly fulfils the
idea of a human personality, we entirely fail, being only
potentially what He was in very truth. God made man
capax Dei, capable of His own life, and of manifesting His
own perfection. But Christ alone expresses the Divine
thought, and stands out in contrast to all others in the
very constitution of His inner life which was determined
by the Divine Spirit to be the Life of God's true Son on
earth. There is then a constitutional difference between
Christ and all other men ; but the ground of that difference
is not so much metaphysical as religious, although there is
a metaphysical element in the case too, as will appear in
another lecture. We are not to find His Divinity in anything
outside of His human life, but in the Divine Perfection of
that human life itself, in the perfection of His love and
holiness. He is more than Man, He is Divine ; but His
Divinity, in so far as it is apprehensible by us, is that of
which human nature is capable, without which it is an im
perfect and fragmentary thing, and infinitely less than what
God made it to be — a Divinity which He communicates to
as many as receive Him and in Him become children of God.
From this peculiarity in the Person of Christ there
flows a twofold distinction from others, in the light of
which His supreme significance for the moral and rehgious
life of mankind is apparent. On the one hand. He is the
Image of God in humanity, the pure and perfect revelation
of Divinity in a human life. We can know God only
through the medium of the best and worthiest qualities of
1 The incompleteness of man in his present state, compared with the
completeness of Christ's being, is finely set forth in the suggestive book.
But How, if the Gospels are Historic? (pp. 149-159).

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 49
our own nature :^ and he who carries our humanity to its ,
true height becomes thereby the organ by whom God can
communicate Himself and reveal to us all that we are able
to know of His nature. And in virtue of His human
perfection Christ is to us the embodiment of the highest
truth we can know about God as a spiritual Being. We
learn from the goodness of Christ how we are to think of
Him whose invisible qualities He translated into the
language of human dispositions and actions. What of
God became human in Him, was His Spiritual Being, His
Love and Truth and Grace, not such natural or meta
physical attributes as His Omnipotence or Omniscience
which cannot be expressed in a man. Only that can be in
man and was in Christ, which man was made capable of
sharing with God. This is limited to the Spiritual or
Personal qualities. Christ is the Revelation of the Love [
and Holiness of God.^
It must be observed, however, that Paul does not dwell- —
much on this aspect of Christ, on His being personally the
human representation of God. In one passage,* indeed, he
speaks of the " light of the knowledge of the glory of God "
made visible in the face of Jesus Christ His Son, where it
is evident that the Perfected humanity of Christ is viewed '
as the mirror in which we are to see reflected the glory of
the Divine character.* And the idea of Christ's Lordship,
which, as wiU appear more fully by and by, is so pro
minent in Paul's conception, is based on the truth that He
is the Son of God, and as such the Revealer of His mind
1 " For man, man alone, is the adequate medium through which God
can reveal Himself" (Rothe, Ethik, ii. p. 140).
2 This does not mean that Christ had not supernatural knowledge and
power, but these were given to Him by God and exercised by Him as man.
^ 2 Cor. iv. 6.
* Inhis Commentary on this passage, Calvin says: "In Christo suam
justitiam, bonitatem, sapientiam, virtutem, se denique totum nobis
(Deus) exhibet. Cavendum ergo, ne alibi eum quasramus ; nam extra
Christum, quicquid se Dei nomine venditabit, idolum erit."
4

50 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
and will. But while it is fundamental with the apostle
that Christ is the revelation of the Grace of God, the
exhibition of the Divine character, it is not so much to the
personal life of Jesus that he makes his appeal in proof of
this, as to the gracious ends accomplished by God through
the death on the Cross. To this I shall return in my next
lecture. For the present it is enough to remark, what is
indeed obvious to everyone familiar with the Epistles, that
the idea of Christ as personally the Image of God does not
receive in the thought of the apostle anything like the
place that is given to the other aspect of His Person, under
which He is viewed, not in relation to God as His
Image, but in relation to mankind as its Pattern or
Archetype. II
Here we come to the characteristic feature of the
Christology of the apostle. In virtue of the constitution of
His Person as now unfolded, Christ is the ARCHETYPAL Man,
the Revelation of the Divine idea of human nature, the
Second Man,^ the Prototype of a new race differing from that
descended from the first man in its realising the capacity
for the Divine and Spiritual that must otherwise remain a
capacity only in the nature we are born with, — a race of men
who are Spiritual (/caTci irvevfia) in the law of their being,
children in their relation to God, immortal in their destiny,
in contrast with those who have the first Adam alone for
their progenitor, who are carnal {Kara adpKo), under
condemnation, doomed to die. As Head of a new Man
kind He is called also the " Heavenly " Man ^ to describe
His origin and nature. He is also called the " Last "
Man,* to intimate that He is the perfected Form of Man
hood, that nothing higher or more Divine, or more fully
1 1 Cor. XV. 47. ^ I Cor. xv. 49. ^ i Cor. xv. 45.

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 5 1
answering to the capacities of our souls can be looked for
than the Christ-Type already embodied in the Risen
Jesus. Now, in the application of these terms to Christ, Paul,
it is alleged by certain writers, has clothed his Christology
in the garb of Jewish thought. Reference is made to
Philo, whose doctrines had at this time penetrated into the
schools of the Rabbis and moulded their theology. After
the manner of Plato's speculations, Philo distinguishes be
tween an " earthly " and a " heavenly " man, the latter being
the pre-existent idea, the former its imperfect realisation in
the individual human being. The theology of the Syna
gogue, combining this idea with the belief that widely
prevailed that the Messiah existed in heaven until the
time of His appearing on earth, conceived of the Christ to
come as the Heavenly Man ; and Paul, it is said, sharing
this idea, transferred it to Christ, and taught that He existed
as the Heavenly Man in a previous state before He was
born into the world. The hinge of the question is the
meaning we are to assign to i Cor. xv. 45-47, where he
speaks of the Second Adam as " the Man who is from
heaven." The passage is confessedly one of the most
difficult in Paul's writings; it seems most in accordance
with the context to take the words " from heaven " (ix rod
ovpavov) as pointing to the nature and origin of the Second
Adam, or rather to the nature and origin of the spiritual
body with which He is now clothed, for the whole discus
sion in the passage has reference to His body. " The first
man was of the earth " ; and his body, composed of earth,
was liable to death. "The Second Adam" was of a
heavenly nature (e^ ovpavov) ; and His body, partaking of
the same element, is immortal, and the seed of a life in
believers that is immortal. Other interpreters of note, such
as Gess, Hofmann, and Meyer, view the words "from
heaven" as referring to the second coming of Christ in

52 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
glory, when believers shall receive the resurrection body.
The uncertainty of the sense of the words, and the variety
of interpretation they admit of, is a valid reason for our
refusing to accept as Paul's this doctrine of the pre-
existent Heavenly Man, to which there is no further refer
ence in his Epistles. It may well be that he borrowed from
the systems with which he was familiar the terms in which
he expressed his thought, for that thought had points of
affinity with the speculations of the schools. These terms
would naturally occur in thinking of the truth that was
revealed in Christ. But the truth itself was not derived
from these speculations. It was an intuition which he
owed to his spiritual understanding of his Master. The
Person of the Risen One, seen as the complete expression
of the Divine idea of man, was recognised by him as that
Second Adam of whom philosophy vaguely talked, as the
New Spiritual Head and Progenitor of the human race,
from whom was derivable all that entered into God's
great gift to men of life eternal, even as sin and death
had come to all from their natural Head, the first
Adam. There may seem to be, indeed, a lack of propriety in
the application of the term " Second Adam " to Christ, when
we think of the dissimilarity between Him and Adam.^
They are alike, indeed, in this, that both were parents of
orders of beings that take after those from whom they are
severally descended. But in all other respects the parallel
assumes the form of contrast, the most striking that can be
1 Nosgen, indeed, thinks that the term " Second Adam " applied by
Paul to Christ expresses Soteriological rather than Christological truth,
that he means by it to describe simply Christ's function as the Author of
eternal life in men, and not any peculiarity in His Person qualifying
Him to discharge that function. (See his Christus der Menschen u. Gottes
sohn, pp. IIO-II5). There is nothing, however, to warrant this limita
tion, and we cannot separate the effect of the working of Christ from its
cause in the distinctive content of Christ's Person.

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 53
imagined. The "first" man was natural ; Christ is spiritual.
The first was " from the earth " ; Christ was " from heaven."
The first was a " living soul," a being animated by a merely
natural life, sensuous in his constitution ; Christ is a " Life-
producing " Spirit. If in spite of these differences Christ
is still spoken of as a Man, the Second Man, it is to remind
us that it is the spiritual that is the truly human, and that
human nature is properly beheld in Him who was the
Spiritual Man and Son of God, and not in the other in
whom it existed only in an incomplete and imperfect form.
In I Cor. XV. 45, 46, Paul seems to teach that there were
two stages in the creation of the being that was to answer
to the Divine idea. The initial stage was reached when
the man stood forth, perfect in his physical organisation,
with the possibilities of higher functions latent in him ; the
second, and final one, when he received a fresh accession of
spiritual endowment for the realisation of these possibilities,
and true manhood was seen to consist in union with God
and in the exercise of a spiritual nature through an orgaft
adapted to it.
Whether the ascent from the lower to the higher might
have been made by man himself, and the spiritual in this
way evolved by a natural process in the course of obedience
to the Divine Will ; or whether, even had man not fallen,
the Incarnation would still have been necessary to reveal
the Archetypal Man, is a question on which much has been
written on both sides. Many have held strongly the latter
view, — that the idea of the incarnation corresponds with
the very perfection of man as he was constituted at the
first, and not merely with the restoration of man who had
missed his end ; that even, therefore, though sin had never
entered, the Son of God would have come in order to raise
man to the perfection that answered to the idea of his
creation in the Divine mind. There is much to be said in
favour of this view, especially when account is taken of the

54 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
teaching of the Epistle to the Colossians, which will be
considered at a later stage.-' Paul's Gospel, however, deals
not with the ideal relations between God and man, but with
the actual relations consequent on sin and death. It begins
not with the Incarnation, but with the suffering and death of
Jesus as necessitated by the actual condition ofthe race. The
interest of the question is mainly speculative. The entrance
of sin through our sensuous nature has rendered a normal
development from the natural to the spiritual impossible;
and by the supernatural act of God, a Personality has
appeared who fully answers to God's idea of human nature,
and who, like him who was the partial fulfilment of that
idea, is a Public and Central Person, and is exalted to be
the author, in all who attach themselves to Him, of a life
that in its essential features and destiny answers to
His own.
It is indeed a radical part of the Pauline idea of the
Second Adam that it is in Christ as Risen from the dead it
is fully realised. It is the Man that has passed victorious
through death, and has entered on a new life clothed in a
body that is the appropriate organ of a spiritual nature,
who is to be regarded as having lived the life and fulfilled
1 Among modern theologians who hold that the Incarnation was
necessary apart from sin, may be mentioned Bishop Westcott, in his
Essay on the " Gospel of Creation " in his exposition of i John ; and
Edwards {The God-Man, pp. 82-89) ! also T>oimt.r {Doctrine of Person of
Christ, vol. ii. p. 82, Eng. tr., and Christian Doctrine, ii. p. 218). Gess,
on the other hand {Christi Person u. Werk, vol. iii. p. 476), argues
strongly against this view. " The testimonies of Christ and the Apostles,"
he says, " tell us that the Father's love sent the Son, and that the Son
was willing to be sent to seek that which was lost. That God's love must
have sent the Son as Man even had man pursued the right path, we are
unable to maintain, because we are not in a position to say that it was
not possible for man by other means to have attained to the goal of his
being, i.e. to love God with all his powers, and to render to God the
service of his life." Gess has not, however, in my opinion, shaken
the force of Dorner's striking argument on speculative grounds in
favour of the view that the Incarnation is rooted in God's plan of
creation,

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 55
the destiny of man. " If in Adam all die, while in Christ
all shall be made alive," ^ this Life-giving Power belongs to
Him who rose from the dead, and who is now in possession
of a humanity that has been redeemed in its integrity from
sin and death, and transfigured in all its parts. He is in
this way fitted to be the seed in His people of a life
similarly complete in its taking up into itself all the
elements of our present life, changed and transfigured, into
a form that will be the counterpart of the Glorified Manhood
of Christ Himself^
But for another reason also, death and resurrection had
to intervene before Christ could be revealed as the Second
Adam. As long as He was in the flesh, this significance
of His Person was concealed from men. Belonging to a
particular nation, appearing at a special period in the
world's history, holding definite relations as an individual
Man to certain other men, manifesting Himself in special
ways and forms of activity called forth by the circumstances
in which He was placed. He exhibited a particularism as
regards the outward aspects of His Personality that hindered
men perceiving what was universal, essential, and of world
wide significance in His human nature and in the ideals that
were embodied in His life. There was needed a change in
the outward form of His Being ; and that change came when,
laying aside the flesh at death. He rose again in the power
of a Glorified Humanity, and entered on those universal
relations to mankind that disclosed the higher, the ideal
1 I Cor. XV. 22.
2 The popular idea that the resurrection body will be the same
organism that the spirit of man has had during life, has no warrant in
Paul's writings. The spiritual body must be wholly different. The
apostle's idea of it was formed in the vision he had on the way to
Damascus, when the Lord came to him from heaven— the place of light-
in a body of " glory," relieved from ordinary conditions that limit our
material bodies to one spot. On Paul's doctrine of the Resurrection
Body see the wise and careful statement of Professor Salmond in his
Christian Doctrine of Immortality, pp. 568-572.

56 ST. Paul's conception of christ
truth of His Person. It is a connection with the Risen
Christ on which Paul insists as alone of worth, because
alone securing for us those blessings and benefits that are
moral and religious in their character, and have nothing
to do with distinctions that arise out of the life of sense.
As belonging to the sphere of the Spirit, Christ is now
loosed from those relations that are rooted in the flesh.
And in union with Him all differences pertaining to the
lower sphere, whether of nationality, culture, social posi
tion, sex, are seen to be only provisional and temporary,
and to be now merged in the higher unity of the Spirit
and of those spiritual relations that bind together into
one fellowship all who share the one Perfected Humanity
of Christ. " There is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor
free, male nor female, but ye are all one in Christ
Jesus." 1
The universalism of Paul's Gospel is closely connected
with the significance he attaches to the Person of Christ
as the Second Adam, and as forming a Type of spiritual
Manhood that is universal and final. There are some,
indeed, who would have it that in thus presenting the Risen
Christ as the ideal for man, Paul has substituted for the
Jesus of history, who is rich in human qualities of
character, a bald conception of Manhood stripped of all
definiteness and points of contact with reality. They
criticise his conception of the Second Adam as being
little more than the abstract idea of a Man who, having
no longer any connection with the earth or the circum
stances of an earthly life, is consequently destitute of
those features of interest by which human beings are
distinguished, and which are necessary to give warmth
and colour to our ideas of human character. But it
would be a great mistake to imagine that in placing the
Risen Christ before our faith Paul has exalted a mere
1 Gal. iii. 28.

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 57
ideal, or has sacrificed historic truth to the demands of
a speculative system. Christ was in no sense whatever
an abstraction to him. Some of the expressions used of
Him, such as the " Son of God " and " the Power and
Wisdom of God," might be familiar to Jewish ears and
readers of Rabbinical theology. But to Paul Christ was
no incarnation of a Divine attribute. Although He was
indeed divested of those characteristics and accidents of
time and place by which human personalities are marked.
He remained, in the ground-work of His human character,
the same that He was on earth, unaffected by the change
that followed death, possessed of a Personality so intense,
so vivid, as to excite the most ardent affection, for " never
man," as one has said, " loved Christ with so absorbing a
passion as did Paul." His love for Christ is indeed without
a parallel in the history of religious emotions. He never
lost the vision of Him whom he saw but once on the way
to Damascus. Dedicating his whole being to the Christ
" who had loved him and had given Himself for him,"
he had no thought but to please Christ, no aim but to
advance His glory. All this is evidence that he did not
regard his Master as having undergone the deprivation
of those qualities that evoke the boundless love and
adoration of the human soul, or as having suffered the loss
of aught essential to His true humanity, when He died
and rose again, to be no longer a mere individual member
of the race, but invested with universal significance as the
Second Adam.
The truth is, as has often been pointed out, the character
of Christ as depicted in the Gospels themselves is entirely
independent of those peculiarities, arising out of circum
stances of time and place, that are incident to the best
human characters, and prevent any one of them being
typical for others. The type of excellence realised in
Jesus escaped all onesidedness and taint of peculiarity

58 ST. Paul's conception of christ
that could disqualify it from being the ideal. Although
set in the mould of special circumstances, the life of
Jesus issued in an example of goodness that included in
it every essential feature of man's nobihty, and that had
in it nothing national, limited, isolated, or that was
adapted to certain persons more than to others.^ It was
the essence of man's moral nature embodied in a per
sonality intensely individual, and capable of arousing the
deepest affections of the soul, and at the same time free
from any idiosyncrasy that could affect its universal
import. And Paul, in investing the Risen Christ with
the powers and prerogatives of a Second Adam, is just
recognising the truth of what the records of the historical
Jesus themselves bear witness to, of His possession of
a humanity that was without one " transitory touch of
time or kindred or aim," and is therefore of a universal
significance. " If," as one has said, " the Christ of the
Church is an Ideal Being, it was Jesus who made the
Ideal. The Ideal in Him is simply the result of that
disengagement from the earthly vestiture which death
and distance work in all who live in history ; " only, in
the present instance, it was the Resurrection even more
than the Death that revealed the inner life of the historic
Jesus and illustrated His fitness to be the Second Head
of the race.
But wherein does this fitness consist? Paul's designa
tion of Christ as the Second Adam means that He is to
be regarded as the true Type or Ideal of Manhood, that
He is and possesses in Himself that which constitutes
Him the Pattern after whom humanity is to be re
modelled. And that statement caHs for some explana
tion. There are various functions and activities of
^ Bishop Westcott emphasises this point in his writings. See in
particular his The Gospel of Life, pp. 299-301 ; and the Victory of the
Cross, pp. 43-46.

CHRIST the archetype OF HUMANITY 59
human nature, and we must distinguish amongst them
if we would have a clear idea of the sphere in which
Christ is to be recognised as Supreme, the Ideal to be
followed as a Pattern. There is the sphere of Science
and that of Art ; and great names might be mentioned, of
whom our race is proud, who have excelled in these
forms of human activity and may be regarded as having
reached an ideal greatness. But we do not think of
Christ as the Ideal of Knowledge or of Art, because we
know He did not come either to enlarge our knowledge
of the world or to furnish conceptions of beauty such as
we owe to the imagination of natural genius. He came
to meet the moral and religious needs of the race that are
far deeper and mofe imperative than those to which the
scientist or artist makes his appeal. J\nd it is in this
moj;al and religious sphere that He is to be recognised as
the Ideal, who lays on every man the obligation, and
inspires in every man the hope of being what He is.
For, while Newton and Shakespeare and Darwin obtain
our admiration, they do not make us feel it is our duty
to follow them, still less do they suggest that each one
of us has that capacity of thought and imagination that
can ever bring us into equality with them were we to
make the attempt. But to understand what Christ is,
and to have our eyes opened to His greatness, is to feel
at the same time, amid all that humbles us in the
discovery, this is what I was made for, what I ought to
be, — to love as Jesus loved, to live as Jesus lived.__
What we mean by Christ being the Ideal Character is
that He presents to us human nature in its typical or
ideal form, related to God and to men as human nature
ought to be, under which He is recognised to be the law
for everyone, in obedience to which everyone reaches
the true end of his being. There is no human being
who may not see in Him the Divine Idea and Purpose,

6o ST. Paul's conception of christ
the true conception and end of himself He is God's
truth and word to every man of himself
And if the further question be asked, in what respect
does the apostle teach us so to regard Christ, the answer is
suggested by the view of the constitution of the Person of
our Lord that was sketched in the beginning of this lecture.
That indwelling of the Spirit of God that was the moulding
principle of His Person secured that He was all that a man
ought to be, both in His relation to God and to His fellow
men, both as a Son of God and a Brother to man. And
accordingly we find in the letters of the apostle references
to His commanding importance both as the Religious and
the Moral Ideal for men.
He is the Religious Ideal. He is the Son of God ; in
rHim we behold, in a perfect form, the true relation of man
to God. Paul does not dwell on the Sonship of Christ or
on its ideal character, on the trust, the childlike obedience,
the humility and sincerity in which it was manifested. His
Epistles seem to take for granted the readers' familiarity
with the Gospel Picture, and simply refer to the Sonship of
Christ as an essential part of the good that comes to believers,
a religious ideal realised in Christ that it might be realised in
those who connect themselves with Him — " as many as put
on Christ," by faith and love, " have become sons of God." ^
He is also the Moral Ideal. The Spirit of God, the
^ principle of the Personality of Christ, is in fact the Spirit of
Love. In asserting the supremacy in Him of the Spirit over
the flesh, Paul meant that in Him the Spirit of Love was
supreme. The life and character of Christ were the incar
nation of grace to sinners, of sympathy, of humble, loving
service. And therein is He the Ideal for us in our social
relations. But neither on this does Paul enlarge. The
history of Jesus was known to his readers. It was uni
versally recognised as an imperishable memorial of pure
^ Gal. iii. 22.

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 6 1
unselfish love. We are surely not wrong in supposing
that the apostle was drawing from his own impressions of
that wonderful history when he sang the praises of Love in
I Cor. xiii., and outlined the character that love inspires.
We learn how deeply he was impressed with the all-sufficiency
of Christ as the Moral Ideal in one passage in the Epistle
to Romans (xiii. 1 4), where, after enumerating the graces of
the Christian life and the dispositions it beomes believers to
manifest in their relations to one another, he sums up all
and ends the discussion in these words, " Put ye on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh," intimating
that in fellowship with Him they will be united with Love
at its source and will be mastered by a principle of action
that must issue in all goodness.
Paul makes little reference, as we saw in last lecture, to
the historic Christ. But the new type of character that the
historic Christ originated and exemplified is never absent
from his thoughts, and the Epistles are largely occupied with
its delineation, and with precept illustrative of it.^ These
writings are considered to be doctrinal by some ; they are
really ethical. The mind of the author is absorbed in the
Heavenly Ideal of human character that had appeared on
earth, and that had in it the power to create a new humanity.
And where doctrine is taught it is to show how that new
type of character is produced, and what motives the Christian
religion can bring to bear on its production. " Paul's
writings," to use the words of another, " retain their hold,
not because he is thought to be inspired, nor because he was
the first and greatest of the apostles, but because he held
up the Ideal of renewed character with a vividness, a reality,
a sense of never-ending wonder, which are always needed to
express the feelings appropriate to the faith struggling up
in every age towards that same Ideal to embrace and
1 In the epistle of Barnabas, Christians are described as a "nev/
type " of men, ivolfiasu iifiiis oIaxoi/ tu^oi/ (chap. vi.).

62 ST. Paul's conception of christ
possess it." It is, indeed, only in the course of the ages,
and bit by bit, that the rich fulness of that Ideal is appre
hended. Many degrees of religious culture are found
amongst men, many varieties of mental gift and moral
discernment. These differences reveal themselves in the
presence of Christ, each individual, each race of mankind,
each age of the world discovering in Him that virtue it is
prepared specially to value, the embodiment of that idea of
human worth that is peculiar to it. It has been finely said
by Dean Church in his well-known sermon on " Christ's
Example," ^ " That one and the same Form has borne the
eager scrutiny of each anxious and imperfect age : and each
age has recognised with boundless sympathy and devotion
what it missed in the world, and has found in Him what is
wanted. Each age has caught in those august lineaments
what most touched and swayed its heart, and as generations
go on and unfold themselves, they still find that Character
answering to their best thoughts and hopes : they still find
in it what their predecessors had not seen or cared for:
they bow down to it as their inimitable pattern, and draw
comfort from a model who was plain enough and universal
enough to be the Master as of rich and poor, so of the first
century and the last. It has been the root of all that was
great and good in our fathers. We look forward with hope
to its making our children greater and better still. ' Regnum
tuum regnum omnium saeculorum : et dominatio tua in
omni generatione et generatione.'" ^
What Paul has further to teach us of the Power of
Christ to reproduce in others the type of character embodied
in His own Person will fall to be considered in another
lecture. In bringing the present one to a close, it remains
that we review very briefly the history in the thought of
^ In his The Gifts of Civilisation, pp. in, 112.
^ Ps. cxiv. 13. See Note B on The Gradual Apprehension of the
Christian Ideal.

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 63
the Church of that interpretation of the Person of Christ
that has occupied our attention.

Ill
The idea of Christ as the Archetypal Man is original
to the apostle among the writers of the New Testament.
We have an echo of it, indeed, in the Epistle to the Hebrews,
which is not surprising if that production was written, as
many think it was, by a disciple of Paul's. In the second
chapter (vers. 5-10), the author in very beautiful language
dwells on the contrast between man's actual condition and
the Divine idea of his destiny. Called by his birthright to
sovereignty, he is as yet in subjection, and so far he is a
failure and a disappointment. But the writer sees Christ
Sovereign over all, having passed through suffering and
death to glory and honour; and Christ Exalted is to him
the pattern and pledge of man's exaltation. Here there is
a virtual recognition of Christ as the Ideal of humanity, the
Second Adam ; although it is not, as it is with Paul, because
He is the Spiritual Man who is also the Son of God that
the author regards Christ as the fulfilment of the Divine
idea of man, but because He is Lord of all and Sovereign
over the world, because He has risen by the way of sorrow
to supreme Dominion. His account of the natural man
differs also from Paul's. With the latter, the token of man's
present inferiority is that he is of " the earth," " a living
soul," ruled by the flesh instead of ruling it by the spirit ;
while, according to the author of Hebrews, the token is
man's subjection to the angels, a description, however, which
is equivalent to the statement that he is in subjection to the
material order of things, and which, on this side, approaches
very closely to the Pauline thought.
This is the most distinct trace of the influence of Paul's
interpretation on the books of the New Testament canon.

64 ST. Paul's conception of christ
When we pass on to the fathers of the Greek Church, we
find that, in the case of the earlier of them at least, this
truth met with a recognition that manifested a real sense of
its importance. Passages from Irenaeus might be quoted to
this effect. Among the later writers, however, it was lost
sight of in the degree in which metaphysical definition took
the place of earnest attempts to interpret the religious
significance of the Person of Christ. And it is not till we
come to the theological thought of modern times, that we
find a large and fruitful appreciation of the great Pauline
thought of Christ as the Archetypal Man. Nor is this con
fined to any one school of theologians ; it is common to all,
and is a characteristic feature of what may be spoken of as
Modern Theology. Much is due doubtless to the influence
of Schleiermacher, who set forth the religious worth of the
Person of Christ in a way that proved epoch-making. The
pre-eminence of His Person, this theologian showed, is to be
seen in the fulness, originality, and strength in which the
consciousness of God lived in Him, guaranteeing His Moral
perfection, and ensuring His close fellowship with God.
While a real Man, He was so penetrated and possessed with
God, that He became the Creator of a new race of men,
determined in their personal life, as He was, by God. Thus
did He prove a Second Adam, at once the Pattern and the
Power of a life and experience resembling His own, carrying
in Himself the germs of a new spiritual Creation. Schleier-
macher's non - recognition of the supernatural, however,
lessened the value of his representation ; for with him the
Resurrection of Christ, that is so vital in Paul's Christology,
was a non-essential of the faith. But it is scarcely possible,
apart from the idea of a Risen and Living Christ, to regard
the Person as possessed of creative power to reproduce in
others its own fulness of religious life and truth. A certain
section of Schleiermacher's followers, of whom Schweizer,
Lipsius, and Pfleiderer may be named, while recognising

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 65
with their master what is unique and original in the Person
of Christ, accept the consequence that must follow when the
supernatural is denied, and distinguish between the Person
of Christ and the idea or principle it embodies. He is
indeed, they say, the supreme instance in an historic indi
vidual of the religious principle, the principle of Divine
sonship. But the truth or value of the principle is not
dependent on the personal embodiment of it, though the
latter is useful as an illustration of the former, or even as
first introducing us to the experience of its truth.^ The
principle is the essential thing, and is to be accepted on the
ground of its own truth irrespective of its realisation in the
historic Christ. The effect of all this is to exalt the religious
idea or principle at the expense of the Person, and to lessen
the significance of the living Christ as a Source of Life to
men. He is no more the object of faith, nor can He be
regarded as the author of that new manhood with its Divine
relationships and spiritual endowments which is our de
sideratum. He is simply an example of the manhood each
must attain for himself by faith in the truth of the Father
hood of God. Experience, however, is against the supposition
that a mere idea can have the operative power ascribed to it
under this system. Life needs life to quicken it. What is
wanted is a Supreme Personality like that of the Risen
Christ, who is all that we ought to be and from whom
influence proceeds that can awaken in others life similar to
His own. We cannot separate the Person from the idea ;
the idea has for us no existence, no vital force, except in
the Person, and it is only faith in the Personal Christ that
can ensure its realisation in us.
The treatment of the subject by Richard Rothe is free
1 A good criticism of the views of this school of theologians will
be found in Gess' Christi Person u. Werk, vol. iii. p. 254, in a chapter
entitled " Modern Attempts to Explain the Work of Jesus on the Pre
supposition that He is Originally no more than a Man,"
5

66 ST. Paul's conception of christ
from the defect that I have noticed in Schleiermacher and in
those who claim to be his disciples. In Rothe's scheme of
thought, the Resurrection is of first importance in liberating
the Person of Christ from material limits and conditions,
and in affecting its complete spiritualisation. The idea of
the Second Adam is fundamental in his Christology, and is
expounded in one of the most interesting and original parts of
his Ethik} No one has done fuller justice to the command
ing Personality of Christ as the New Beginner of the human
race. An individual indeed He is, according to Rothe, but
He is unlike all other individuals in His being no partial
or defective realisation of human nature, but the realisation
of it in the genuine union of all its special sides, related to
other men as the centre is related to the different points ofthe
circle. Not that the Second Adam exhausts in Himself the
idea of humanity, but He is the principle of its realisation,
inasmuch as there dwells in Him a completeness of human
nature that suffices for the separate unfolding into an
organic whole of the differences among the various members
of the human race. He is an absolutely perfect instrument
for exerting a saving, transforming influence upon the
individual members of humanity, of such a kind that each
man finds the fulfilment of his own separate and partial
individuality by means of that which He supplies. No
one has set forth more strikingly than Rothe has done in
these chapters the supreme Place that Jesus occupies as
the Second Adam, as the Head of a Spiritual Life that
issues in the full realisation in those united to Him of the
Divine Idea of humanity.^
' Vol. iii. pp. 135-170.
2 The style of Rothe, which is heavy and dragging, is apt to deter one
from the reading of his great work, the Ethik ; but the massive thought
well repays the effort. There is a just characterisation of him in
Lichtenberg's History of German Thought in the Nineteenth Century :
" It might be said that in reading him one feels as if walking amidst
fragments of rocks flung abroad at hazard, and that they arrest and

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 67
This Pauline conception has come much to the front in
the theology of our own country in this century. Readers
of F. D. Maurice's works and our own Thomas Erskine's
will remember how much is made by these theologians of
the idea of the Second Adam, although with their exposi
tion of His universal significance for the higher life of man,
there are combined in their writings Neo-Platonic specula
tions regarding the original relation of Christ to the human
race which will appear to some of doubtful value. None
have made a fuller use of this conception than the writers
of the modern Sacramentarian School, from Canon Wilber
force, in whose work on The Doctrine of the Incarnation it
receives a large place, to Canon Gore in our own day.
Although here, too, as it appears to me, the value of their
contributions is impaired by the attempt to make the
Church in its ordinances, and especially in its sacramental
acts, the sole channel or medium by which the supernatural
Influence that flows from the new Adam or Representative
of our Race, is communicated to men. Hampered by their
adherence to the definitions of the Greek theologians, and
understanding the life communicated by the Second Adam
in a quasi-physical sense, writers of that school connect it
with physical media in a way that leaves them open to the
charge of taking a magical view of the operation of the
grace of God in the soul.
The deep hold of the Pauline interpretation of the
historic Christ on the Christian thought of the ages is a
testimony to its truth and to its correspondence with the
actual effect of the working of Christ on human hearts and
lives. Wherever men have submitted themselves to the
wound us at every step ; yet here and there are found blocks of the
purest granite, and afar off" is heard the murmur of foaming cascades.
And, in fact, in its substance the thought of Rothe is like granite, while
his speculation produces the effect of mountain torrents, the mere sight
of which refreshes and inspires power " (p. 500),

68 ST. Paul's conception of christ
power of His Personality, the result has been the creation
in them of a new type of moral and religious life, than
which none higher, more fruitful of inward satisfaction,
more stimulating to progress can be conceived. To
awaken and sustain this new life of sonship and spirituality
in men, is the Prerogative of Jesus Christ. What is
wanting to the integrity of our true life can be supplied only
by Him who, in His own inner life, is all that man is not.
The Personal alone can heal the personal. At different
periods in the world's history there have appeared men of
original genius, who, in respect of the vast influence they have
exerted by their lives and words on the religious destinies
of their fellowmen, may be compared with Christ. The
names of Paul, Augustine, St. Francis, Savonarola, Luther,
Calvin, and Wesley will occur in this connection. These
and such like men were endowed by nature above others
with a passion for religion, an enthusiasm for God, for truth,
for holiness, that accounts for their extraordinary power to
impress themselves upon their fellowmen. They were in a
peculiar sense organs created to influence men for God.
It is part of the Divine plan to carry on the work of the
Kingdom by great personalities fitted by nature for the
functions they are to discharge. And Christ is sometimes
mentioned in the same breath with these prophetic souls as
a great religious genius, whose nature and appearance are
no more mysterious than theirs. But such comparisons
overlook one great point of difference. The power they
exercised was derived power, and power derived from Him ;
His was original. They, one and all, bowed down before
His supreme Personality in whom they saw the truth of
religion and humanity embodied. And they recognised it
as their highest, their solitary function, to interpret Him to
their fellowmen. Their influence was due not to anything
in or of themselves, but to the measure in which the Power
and Truth and Spirit of Christ went forth through them.

CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE OF HUMANITY 69
Christ, on the other hand, is alone in being in His own
Person the Interpretation of God, and the Fountain of a
Divine Life at which all others draw their inspiration. We
may speak of Him, if we choose, as a Religious Genius, if
we mean by such language to emphasise the fact that, as
with the others so with Him, there was an original basis
of endowment and nature that explains the influence that
proceeds from Him on the moral and religious life of men.
But the dependence upon Him of all who have possessed a
measure of His power, the fact that in all alike it is derived
from Him and is proportioned to their success in assimilating
the contents of His Personality, points to a peculiarity of
nature that no other shares with Him, and that sets Him
on a platform where He stands apart, superior, supreme.
Here is not a Man merely, but the Archetypal Man, and we
are forced back on the recognition of a nature in Him that
is an absolutely new fact, and is identified in a special way
with the life of God, on an origin that is exceptional, on a
function in relation to the spiritual history of the human
race that is His alone.

Ill
CHRIST THE REDEEMER AND
FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY

LECTURE III
Christ the Redeemer and Founder of the
New Humanity
The siibject of my last lecture was the Pauline Interpreta
tion of the Person of Christ, the key to which is to be found
in the apostle's consciousness of the influence of the Exalted
Christ on his inner life. From this point of view He is
presented to us by Paul as the Second Adam or Archetypal
Man, qualified by the very constitution of His manhood
and by His being the personal embodiment of the Divine
idea of human nature, to be the Firstborn of many
brethren, the prototype of a race after His own likeness
and destined to attain to His perfection. We now proceed
to the apostle's interpretation of the Death of Christ, the
event in which the earthly history of Jesus is summed up
by him, the one event in that history which is represented
as possessing supreme worth for the religious Hfe of man.
Here, too, we shall find that the conception of the Secgnd
Adam is ' the regulating thought of the apostle ; not so
much because He is the realisation in His own Person of
the true idea of man, as because of the Representative
character that attaches to His personal act in dying for
men, by which He determined human life and destiny
toward God and Righteousness, even as the act of the
first Adam had determined it towards sin and death. In
the Epistles of Paul Christ is not presented simply as the
typical instance of the New Humanity. Were He no more
than this, no more than the Pattern Man, His personal life
would have no power to redeem us from sin ; contact with
7S

74 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
Him would have no power to take us out of ourselves,
would, indeed, only make us more deeply conscious of our
distance from Him and from God. To the faith of the
apostle, however, Christ had proved Himself to be a
mighty redeeming power, the Divine instrument by whom
he had been restored to fellowship with God, — the Author,
in short, of a new relation to God and of a new disposition
of love to His will.
Now, Christ had this significance of Redeemer to the
apostle in virtue chiefly of His Death, or rather in virtue of
the issues that had been wrought out by God through His
Death. In order, therefore, that we may understand the
supreme place he assigned to Christ as the Author of our
fellowship with God, we must consider the interpretation
put by him on the Death of Christ, the Divine thought he
found expressed in it, and the effects on the spiritual life of
mankind that he ascribed to it.

I
Now, in the first place, the death of Christ had for
Paul absolute worth in relation to our salvation as the
REVELATION of God's gracious love to man ; and to this
aspect of it is consistently referred its power to produce
penitence and to awaken trust in God. Nothing could
be farther from Paul's thought than the idea that the
death of Christ was needed to win the love of God for us,
or to overcome any reluctance in Him to show mercy to
sinners. On every page of his writings we are taught that
the event on Calvary, so far from begetting love in God's
heart, simply revealed and put into exercise the love that
was there from eternity. God is habitually set forth as the
originating cause of the redemption that has come to us
through the Cross, and as manifesting His love in the
blessings that Christ has brought to us. " God hath set

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 75
Him forth to be the propitiation." 1 " When the fulness of
the time came, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman,
made under the law, to redeem them that were under the
law." ^ " God was in Christ reconciling the world to Him
self" * " God sent forth His Son to condemn sin in the
flesh." * Words could not more emphatically proclaim that
the death of Jesus was an event ordained by God for the
accomplishment of His own gracious purpose towards the
race. It was the deed of men, and revealed the enormity
of their sin, but God was present in it as well, revealing
His grace to sinners ; and what followed from it in the way
of blessing expressed God's love and God's purpose to bless
and save us.
Paul's conception of the Divine character is sometimes
contrasted unfavourably with that of his Master. Christ, it
is said, taught that God is the Father of all; Paul, that
God is the Judge of all and the Loving Father only of
some. But this is not just to the apostle. He also teaches
that God is in His very nature a gracious Being, who is
impelled by His own love and pity for men to seek their
recovery to Himself, and welcomes them to His Fellowship
on a basis not of works but of trust in His free forgiving
love. There is, however, a difference between the teaching
of Jesus and Paul here. With Jesus, God's love is a truth
of intuition. He sees into the heart of the Father, and
beholding it written there, He proclaims it abroad that
men may believe it; He makes it visible in His own
gracious intercourse with sinners, that He may thus com
mend it to their faith. With Paul, on the other hand, the
truth of God's love is partly an inference from the death of
Christ, and partly an experience of the happy issues to
himself of that event. He makes no reference to the
teaching of Jesus on this subject, or to the instruction to
1 Rom. iii. 25. ^ Gal. iv. 4.
3 2 Cor. v. 19. * Rom- viii. 3-

76 ST. Paul's conception of christ
be gathered from His historic life ; but arrives at the truth
through the personal discovery of the gracious ends secured
by the death of the Cross. Those who discard Paul for
Christ, and are content to rest their faith in the love and
Fatherhood of God on the authority of Christ alone, place
themselves at a disadvantage in the maintenance of that
faith. They not only lose the confirmation of it that
comes from the Cross of Christ and the experience of
salvation, but they have also to contend with the doubt,
arising from the fact that Jesus died a victim to the wicked
ness of the world and the powers of darkness, lest He who
rules the world and suffers His Dearest and Best thus to
perish and yet gives no sign, should not be Love after all.
Paul, viewing the Death and Resurrection as the two
parts of a Divine arrangement intended to work out human
redemption, is not troubled with this difficulty. The death
of Christ was the very hinge on which the execution of
God's redeeming purpose turned ; and so far from being a
stumbling-block to his faith, the Cross became the object
of his glorying, for it was the supreme revelation of the
infinite love of God to men. " God commendeth His own
love to us," he could say, " in that, while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us." ^ It will not do to base our
faith in the doctrines of Christianity on the teaching of
Christ alone, and apart from the revelation of truth con
tained in the historic facts of the Death and Resurrection
as interpreted to us in the Pauline Gbspel.^
' Rom. V. 8 and Gal. vi. 14.
2 Referring to the Death on the Cross, Gess asks, " How can one
maintain that here God's love and faithfulness is revealed? Could it be
more completely concealed than it was from the Friday afternoon to the
Sunday morning ? Only by the Resurrection was the mystery solved,
and it became credible, and gradually indisputable, that what appeared
the very opposite of love and faithfulness must nevertheless have been
love and faithfulness" {Christi Person u. Werk, vol. iii. p. 263). See
also extract from Haring to the same eff'ect in Note A on 'the Signi
ficance ofthe Resurrection in Relation to the Love of God.

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 77
The peculiarity, moreover, that belongs to the apostle's
presentation of the love of God as an inference from the
death of Christ, suggests that in his view, that event was
something more than a revelation of the love of God, it was
an accomplishment as well, an offering to God, a deed that
effected the redemption of men. Those who would explain
the virtue of the death of Christ to save solely on the
ground that it is a manifestation of the love of God that
has force to draw us out of our sins and win us to His love
and service, are certainly out of harmony with the apostolic
thought. Love, indeed, is revealed in that deed ; but, as
Paul puts the matter, it is not that God reveals His love in
the d.eath of Christ, and so redeems us, but rather that God
redeems us by the death of Christ, and so reveals His love.^
Redemption is an objective benefit that has been obtained
for us by the death of His Son. We are called, therefore,
to consider that event as a deed, an achievement by Christ,
and a factor in our redemption as much so as the love is
from which it issued and to which it bears witness.^ This
is the leading point of view from which the matter is
regarded by the apostle, and, accordingly, we go on now
to consider the characteristic features of his teaching on
this subject. II
In approaching this theme, namely, the nature of the
connection between the death of Christ and our salvation
^ The difference between these two conceptions of the Death of Christ
is well illustrated by Dr. Dale in his Christian Doctrine, pp. 219, 220.
2 In His death Christ acts at once on God's behalf, revealing to us
God's love, and on our behalf, offering to God what we ought but
cannot offer. These two points of view are difficult to adjust, the one
to the other ; and error has arisen from theologians pressing the one to
the exclusion of the other, sometimes emphasising the death of Christ
as a Revelation, so that no reason can be found for it as an Offering to
God ; at other times exaggerating its purpose as an Offering so as to
compromise its value and purpose as supreme Revelation. It is the task
of theology to harmonise these two sides of truth.

78 ST. Paul's conception of christ
viewed as a veritable ACCOMPLISHMENT on His part, it is
necessary to recall what Paul's conception was of the
salvation that he traces so directly to the death of Jesus.
His experience, as we found, was a very rich and full one,
including benefits that were both religious and moral in
their character. The new life in Christ was at once a
life of forgiveness, of restored fellowship with God, of son-
ship, and all that enters into the perfection of our religious
standing ; and it was a life of moral power, of deliverance
from the dominion of sin, issuing in the renewal of the
whole being. All this moral and religious good which
formed his consciousness of salvation was connected directly
with the death of Christ, and gave to that event the char
acter of a deed possessing saving power. Now, while that
good was in his experience an indivisible unity, while
forgiveness is in fact inseparable from moral renewal, still
the two things are separate in idea, and are dealt with
separately by the apostle : and we may look at these
two elements of his Christian experience as distinct effects
of the death of Christ. We ask, then, what further light
is shed by Paul's Epistles, first, on the connection between
the death of Christ and the forgiveness of sin, or the
perfection of the religious state of man ? and second, on
the connection between that event and freedom from sin
itself, or the attainment of the moral Ideal ? ^
What is the teaching of the apostle regarding the
death of Christ and its connection with the forgiveness
' It is one of the merits of Ritschl's treatment of Pauline doctrine
that he brings out clearly that Justification does not bear directly on
the ethical life, that it has to do with our relation to God and secures
our religious perfection. Its direct consequences, falling within ex
perience, are peace with God and the firm hope of acquittal at the
last judgment, confidence in prayer, patience under the sufferings of
life, trust in God's providence, mastery over the world and all the ills
of life — all of them religious determinations. See his chapter on " The
Religious Functions that flow from Reconcihation with God," in his great
work on Rechtfertigung u. Vers'ohnung vol. iii. pp. 575-635, third ed.

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 79
of sin, or restoration to the favour of God ? That there
was in his view a most intimate connection between these
two things every page of his writings shows. That on
the ground of what Christ did when He died for men
God is now dealing with His creatures on a principle of
grace, forgiving sin and receiving them into His fellow
ship, on the condition of their faith in Him and in the
love manifested in Christ — this, in broad terms, is the
tenor, not of one Epistle, but of all. Nor is this doctrine
peculiar to Paul ; it is the doctrine of the New Testament
writers generally. The apostolic Churches with one accord
attached this value to the death of their Lord. In writing
to the Church at Corinth Paul reminds them that he had
preached to them what he had received, and what had
become part of the tradition of the Church, that " Christ
died for our sins according to the Scriptures and rose
again " ; ^ that is, that the death of Christ possesses the
significance of a Deed of salvation — is the ground on
which sin is forgiven. We find allusions in the New
Testament to current doctrines that were subversive of
the Christian faith. We do not find one that suggests
the suspicion that any section of Christians denied that
Christ's death was the ground of man's salvation ; ^ and
in this matter we are safe in saying that the teaching
of Paul echoes the testimony of the entire Church.
There is more reason for hesitation as to the answer
to be given to the question, what is distinctive in his
doctrine here, and what explanation is contained in it
of the connection, admitted by all, between the death of
Christ and the forgiveness of sin ? Why had Christ to
die in order that sin might be forgiven ? Wherein does
the efficacy of that event to achieve the result consist?
1 I Cor. XV. 3.
2 This point is emphasised by Seeberg in his work, Der Tod Christi
in seiner Bedetttungfiir die Erlosung (pp. 180, r8i).

so ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
When we ask what answer Paul enables us to give to
this question, it is evident, from the different interpreta
tions which his words bearing on it have received from men
at once competent and believing, that we are here on more
uncertain ground, where it becomes us to proceed with
caution. There are some, indeed, who despair of the
attempt to harmonise the different points of view that
we find in the Epistles. They hold that Paul had no
consistent doctrine on the subject, and that we must be
satisfied to believe that there is a connection, abandoning
the hope of arriving at any reliable conclusion as to the
how or why of it. One would be slow to adopt this
view. It is not likely that so penetrating a mind as the
apostle's would be satisfied with a belief in Christ that
could not give any account of itself to his intelligence,
that did not embrace in it some perception of the way
in which the death of his Lord was related to so vast a
change on the religious fortunes of men as he ascribed to
it. It is to be expected, indeed, that some of the forms
of statement used by him in this connection would be more
luminous to those for whose benefit he wrote than they
can be to us whose religious training differs so widely from
theirs. He wrote no systematic treatise on the atonement.
He never formulated his views. His utterances were on
each occasion directed to meet the religious wants and
difficulties of the Churches he had founded ; and it is by
no means easy for us to put ourselves into their mental
condition and appreciate the bearing of what he says on
their thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, it is
easy for us to read far more into his affirmations than
they really contain, and to understand him as answering
our problems while in reality he is dealing with problems
very different. But giving all weight to such considera
tions, we are prepared to find in the Epistles the outline
at least of some scheme of thought on the subject that

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 8 1
will commend itself to the Christian intelligence of all time,
and that, while not satisfying our curiosity or removing all
our difficulties, will fit in with the facts of our experience.
Let me, in the first place, refer to explanations that
have been ascribed to Paul that do not seem to me fairly
to represent his thought. On the one hand, he is made
responsible for the view that Christ's death secured forgive
ness in virtue of its being the vicarious endurance of the
punishment that followed transgression under the law, and
that would have been inflicted on us had He not, by
bearing it in our room, released us from liabiHty. Hold
ing the view taught in the Rabbinical schools that the
relation between God and man was of the nature of
a legal compact under which man had contracted guilt
and exposed himself to punishment, and sharing also their
view that the innocent individual might take upon him
the punishment that was due to the transgressor, and
so deliver him from the liability to punishment, — -the
apostle, it is alleged, ascribed to the death of Christ
efficacy to bring about the remission of sins in virtue of
its having been undeserved by Him personally, and its
having, consequently, power to take the place of the
sinner's death and deliver him from it.^ This is the view
supposed to be set forth in Gal. iii. 1 2, where we read
that " Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law
being made a curse for us." Now it is undoubtedly true
^ According to the Pharisaic theology, forgiveness of sin was im
possible without payment of the debt by some one, if not by the
offender, then by another for him, who, by reason of his innocence,
did not need on his own account to die the death that was the penalty
of sin, whose submission to it would compensate for its remission to the
guilty. An outward mechanical idea of guilt and forgiveness and religion
generally underlies this scheme. We have here, too, the real root of the
Catholic doctrine of the merit of the saints being available to cover the
shortcomings of others. The Pharisees taught the vicarious righteous
ness of the patriarchs and saints of Israel. See Weber, Altsyn. Theo
logie, pp. 267-300 ; also Apocal. Baruch, xiv. 7.
6

82 ST. Paul's conception of christ
that deliverance from the law, both in its condemnatory
and enactive power, was one chief element in the salvation
Paul owed to Christ and to His death. But in using the
term law he sometimes had in view the idea of law
generally, the idea of moral obligation in a preceptive
categorical form which is part of our constitution as moral
beings ; and at other times that legal system which had
been imposed by God on Israel for a temporary purpose.'
It is with law in the latter sense — the Jewish national
law — that he brings the death of Christ into connection,
in the striking passage in Galatians. This he does in
order to show that it had achieved the deliverance of the
Jews from the consequences of their failure to keep that
legal system, with all its ceremonial details, under which
they had been placed for providential ends. And there
arises a serious difficulty in the way of our giving a universal
scope to an argument that is intended primarily to explain
the deliverance of the Jews from the consequences of the
transgressions of their law, and that carries on the face
of it the marks of its limited significance ; for the sentence
which Christ is represented as bearing in the place and
stead of others, the curse of transgression, " the hanging
on the tree " (ver. i 3), is not the sentence of death as a
universal fact, but the sentence of death threatened under
the special laws of the Jews.
We have, indeed, no means of determining even how
Christ's bearing the curse of the law resulted in its removal
from those who were under it ; and questions arise here
which we cannot answer with certainty. Was the deliver
ance itself a subjective one? Or was it more, was it
¦¦ Perhaps it would be more correct to say that, according to the
object he has in view, Paul, in speaking of the law, thinks sometimes
of the ritual aspect of it, as in his Epistle to the Galatians ; at other
times of its ethical aspect, as in Romans. For an instructive account
of the meanings of " law " in Paul's writings, see Grafe's Die Paulinische
Lehre vom Gesetz, 1893.

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 83
objective as well ? That is, did Christ's undeserved endur
ance of the curse of the law at the hands of those who
administered it deliver believers from the law and from
the fear of its threatenings by the impression made upon
their minds of the worthlessness and moral effeteness of a
rehgious system that had culminated in such a crime?
Was it that the believing Jew felt he might well afford to
ignore the threatenings of a legal system that had been so
bHnd as to inflict its heaviest curse on its own Messiah ?
Is that what is meant by Christ having delivered us from
the curse of the law through His having submitted to be
accursed for our sakes ? ' Or, if that is regarded as too
modern an explanation to be attributed to Paul, and if he
is to be viewed as teaching that the deliverance was
objective in its nature, and that it effected a real change in
the relations of God and Israel, in what way did Christ's
being made a curse accomplish such a change? Was it as
a substitutionary infliction on Him of the punishment which
the transgressors would otherwise have borne? or was it as
a moral equivalent for it? And if, as the passage shows,
it was to the law regarded as a personified power that this
homage was paid, in what relation does law on this view
stand to God ? And how is God to be conceived as
afifected by the surrender of His Son to the curse of the
law? These are questions that are left unanswered, and
till we have a satisfactory answer to them a dogmatic
conclusion from the passage is unwarranted.
Nor have I been able to convince myself of the truth of
^ This is the view advocated by Schweizer in the searching examin
ation of this passage in his article in the Studien u. Kritiken, on " Paul's
Doctrineof the Redemptive Death of Christ in Gal. iii. 13, 14" (1858, iii.).
Dr. Fairbairn, in his Christ in Modern Theology, takes the same
view, p. 481. "The law that thus judged Him condemned itself: by
cursing Him, it became accursed." The explanation commends itself
by its naturalness, substituting an historical for a dogmatic understand
ing ofthe words. But there is a doubt whether it is the explanation
intended by the apostle.

84 ST. Paul's conception of christ
the view which is at present popular amongst expounders of
Paulinism, that the idea of sacrifice, as elaborated in the legal
system of the Jews, furnishes the key to the understanding
of the apostle's references to the connection between the
death of Christ and the forgiveness of sins. His allusions
to the Levitical cultus are exceedingly scanty. That he
should borrow sacrificial language in speaking of the
death of Christ is indeed what might be expected. Sacri
fice among the Jews, and, indeed, in all religious systems of
antiquity, was the means of reconciliation; a special
virtue was ascribed to the blood of victims as the ap
pointed means of making atonement for sin ; and it was
natural, when he spoke of the death of Christ in con
nection with our reconciliation to God, that he should make
use of language that belonged to that system that made
provision for the Israelites' legal approach to God. The
frequent references to the " blood of Christ " may thus be
accounted for ; and it is to be noticed that it is not any
one kind of sacrifice, such as the sin-offering, that is
suggested in the use of the term " blood," but the sacri
ficial system generally, in which blood denoted cleansing
and the impartation of new life as well as atonement.
Paul is careful not to associate forgiveness of sin dis
tinctly or exclusively with the type of the sin-offering.
The nearest approach to this application of sacrificial
language is in Rom. iii. 25, where we are told of Christ
that " God hath set Him forth to be a propitiation through
faith in His blood." The word propitiation (IXacTTijpiov) is
one in regard to which a great deal of discussion has
taken place; but, without entering at all on the different
explanations of it, it must suffice to say that a very large
consensus of opinion is in favour of its being taken as a
verbal adjective. In conformity with the general usage of
similar words ending in Tijpto?, the word would then be
rendered " that which serves the purpose of propitiation '' :

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 85
and the meaning would be, God has set Him forth as a
means of propitiation, available for those who put their
trust in His death. In other words, God appointed Christ
to die in order that all who place their confidence in Him
might have, in His death, that which possesses the virtue of
an expiation of sin, that which ensures the forgiveness of
their sins and their admission to His fellowship.
The language, certainly, is borrowed from that cere
monial cultus that prescribed animal sacrifice as a means of
propitiation ; but in what way the death of Christ served
this end, or possessed this efficacy, is not taught here, and
is not to be inferred from the use of the word. We have
no theory of sacrifice in the Bible, no explanation of the
ceremonial value attached to it. And, even if we had, it
would be unwarrantable to apply it to the death of Christ,
for we degrade His offering by regarding it as a sacrifice of
that sort. The Sacrifice of Christ was the offering of
Himself to God, the sublime expression of His love to men,
and was an entirely different thing from the legal sacrifices.
It may throw light on them, being the very truth which
they dimly shadowed forth ; and the legal system of
sacrifice may be interpreted by means of it. But the
interpretation of the Sacrifice of Christ itself must be
derived from another source. As illustrations of Gospel
truth, sacrificial terms may be useful, but it is an abuse to
view them as teaching or conveying that truth. The
Sacrifice of Christ must be interpreted by the light which
itself supplies, being the spiritual reality prefigured by the
ceremonial cultus, it can reflect light on the system of
animal sacrifices but can receive none from it.^
The real clue to the apostle's thought on this subject is
to be found, as it seems to me, in the single passage where
there is ariything like a formal discussion or explanation of
1 See Note B on Sacrificial Language in Paul's Epistles.

86 ST. Paul's conception of christ
it, where he treats it as a problem that had been con
sciously present to his mind. I refer to the latter half of
the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, in which we
have the famous parallel and contrast between the two
Adams — the two representatives of the human race whose
acts have determined the religious histories of all severally
descended from them. The human race is there conceived
of as a moral unity that possesses a coHective life of its
own. Humanity is not an aggregate of atoms ; it rather
resembles a tree whose leaves are distinct, while, at the
same time, they partake of the common life and the
qualities of the stem with which they are organically
connected. Without ceasing to be personally responsible,
we are so related to the race as a whole that its sin lives in
us, and involves us in consequences that are not the result
of our individual actions. Not through the personal sin of
each, but through the sin of one man, has death come into
the world. All were included in that one ; and in idea, or
potentially, sinned and died in his act. " The judgment of
all men was by one man to condemnation,"^ and through
the organic unity of the race, sin, thus originating, worked
' itself out in the actual sinning and dying of all the
individual members of mankind. But Adam in this
respect was a Type of the Man to come, i.e. of Christ.^
In Him humanity came to possess a Second Adam, or
Representative, who summed up in Himself and reaHsed
perfectly its capacities for the higher life; and in His
actings He became the proper organ of the race. In His
holy and sinless Person humanity was born again, as it
were, abandoned its revolt against God, and returned to its
proper allegiance to Him, overcame evil and lived the
perfect life well pleasing to God. Christ thus begins a
new period in the moral history of mankind, imparting a
new element to our collective being ; and for that relation
^ Rom. V. 1 6. 2 Rom. v. 14.

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 87
of " all " to Adam, which makes them, through their organic
connection with him, partakers of his sin and death, there
is substituted now a new relation of " all " to Christ, the
Second Adam, that makes them partakers of His righteous
ness and life, a relation which in its ideal truth holds of
mankind as a whole, and becomes a reality in those who
connect themselves with Him by their personal faith, and
with the new Humanity of which He is the Head.
Now our attention is specially called to the fact that it
is in virtue of His death that our Second Adam has power
to bring mankind into that new relation to God which is
realised in His Person; and, further, that His death pos
sesses this efficacy because of its moral value, because it
was a supreme j^ct of obedience to the will of God, — "as
by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners,
so by the obedience of one shall the many be made
righteous." ^ As the disobedience of the first Adam
brought condemnation on all, a countervailing obedience on
the part of Christ secures the removal of condemnation, and
establishes mankind in a relation of life and reconciliation
to God. It is as a sublime act of obedience to the Divine i
will that the death of Christ is declared to be the ground
or cause of the new footing on which we stand with God.^
^ Rom. V. 19. When he speaks ofthe " obedience of Christ" and the
"one righteous act," StKaico/ia (ver. 18) Paul refers doubtless tothe Death
of Christ, in which His obedience to the Will of God was consum
mated. But it would be wrong to separate the Death from the Life
of Christ, and this is not intended. For inasmuch as His whole Life
was animated by the Spirit of obedience, and involved submission to
elements of suffering and sorrow of the same nature with those that fell
to Him in an aggravated form at the close, it was most truly a Sacrifice
as well as His Death, and possessed the same worth in relation to the
forgiveness of sins that belongs to His obedience on the Cross. In
reference to Christ's obedience, " which reached its highest expression
and purest form in His death," RitschI says it is " the concrete repre
sentation of the Will of God in a man " {Die Altkath. Kirehe, p. 91).
2 See Note C on the additional light on this subject furnished by
2 Cor. V. 21.

88 ST. Paul's conception of christ
The further question may be asked, why was Christ's
obedience to death necessary to this result? It may be
doubted whether Paul has given us a definite answer to
this question, or one at least that we can identify with any
of the later theories of theology that profess to answer it.
It does not seem to have occurred to him that there was
needed an answer to the question why the Second Adam
had to render an obedience to the Will of God, carried to the
extent of dying, in order that communion between God and
man might be restored. The necessity for this seemed to
him axiomatic. Conceiving of God as not only loving and
gracious, but as holy, and in His very nature opposed to
sin, it seemed to him a self-evident condition of forgiveness
that the death which expressed the Divine judgment upon
its evil, should be borne in a spirit of obedience to the
Divine Will, and that God's holiness should be thereby
manifested in the very event that revealed His love.'- And
the wonderfulness of God's grace was beheld in that
arrangement under which humanity, in the Person of its
one perfect Member, in whom the moral life of the race
was concentrated, rendered that obedience, and was thus in
Him restored, in a way consistent with holiness, to the
favour and fellowship of God.^
' See Note D on Rom. iii. 23-26, where the Death of Christ is repre
sented as manifesting the Righteousness of God.
2 Paul's view of the death of Christ in relation to Atonement and
Forgiveness rests on the position that death in the world is the conse
quence and penalty of sin, a judicial infliction by God. But, it may be
objected, was not death in the world before sin ? Is it not simply a law
of physical nature, destitute of moral significance ? Christianity is not
committed to the position that sin first introduced death into the world.
Great Christian teachers {e.g. Augustine, Athanasius, Theodore of
Mopsuestia) have held that, as being animal, man is by nature mortal.
But the higher spiritual nature in man, we may conjecture, would, had
his powers been developed in a normal way, have prevented the actual
inroad of death. By withdrawing the higher nature from communion
with God, sin deprived the physical of those spiritual forces that would
have rendered it immortal, so that death followed ; and, following in con
sequence of this withdrawal, it may justly be regarded as the penalty of

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 89
And Paul has carried with him the convictions of
believers in all ages. Men have felt that there must be
Holiness as well as Grace in the Divine Provision by which
a new relation was to be established between God and
sinners ; and they have based their confidence in forgive
ness on the death of Christ because they believed that it
made this provision, and revealed His condemnation of sin
as well as His love for sinners and His desire to reconcile
them to Himself. Theology, formulating the convictions of
faith on this subject, has adopted now one mould of doctrine
now another. Since the revival of Pauline doctrine at
the Reformation, it has been customary to speak of
the death of Christ as a vicarious punishment inflicted
upon Him, instead of upon us, by the Father, in order to
satisfy His justice in remitting our sins. Theologians have
magnified the significance of His death as a Divine inflic
tion by representing it as designed to take the place of the
death that would otherwise have been visited by God on
sinners themselves. But the difficulty about this explana
tion, in its only intelligible form, is that the intended effect
has not followed; for men, believers and non believers
alike, do in point of fact die still, and Christ's death has not
exhausted God's judgment upon sin, has not relieved any
from death as the punishment of it in their own persons.^
Others, with what appears to me to be a truer insight into
the necessities of the case, have emphasised the spirit in
which Christ submitted to death as containing in it
sin. In this light it is viewed by the moral consciousness of humanity.
If all this is disputed, and death is held to be a natural event and
nothing more, it is of importance to observe that the value of the death
of Christ to faith remains. It was due, indeed, not to nature but to the
violence of men, submitted to in patient love, and its significance will
then lie in its being the supreme revelation both of human sin and of
Divine love. But the specific Pauline interpretation must then be given
up. ^ On the alternative, whether Christ suffered spiritual death, see
Note E,

go ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
elements of moral value in which we are to find its real
efficacy to expiate sin.^ For if God is glorified not by a
simple endurance of the punishment of sin, but by a sub
mission to it that recognises the righteousness of its inflic
tion, then Christ has truly met our case if He has borne
our death in the spirit in which we ought to bear it, if He
has, by His holy sorrow for the sins of His brethren. His
confession of it and willing submission to its penalty, by
His meek acceptance of all its consequences, rendered to
God in our name that obedience to His will which we had
no power in ourselves to render. Later writers dwell
especially on such elements as these in Christ's obedience
as what constituted His offering of Himself well pleasing to
God and fitted in the nature of things to expiate or atone
for sin. And doubtless much light has been shed on the
mystery of the Cross by theologians of this class, who, by
placing the emphasis on Christ's dealing with sin in His
Passion and Death as our Representative, have emphasised
the Mind and Spirit in which He bore the burden of our
sins — a Mind and Spirit such as only a sinless Being, one
with us in His subjection to all evil consequent on our
sin, one also with God in His holy love for man, could
manifest.^ 1 Among older theologians who have brought out this aspect of the
death of Christ may be mentioned the Puritan, John Owen. I have
given extracts from his work on the Holy Spirit to this effect in Note F.
^ Of writers to whom we are specially indebted in this connection
may be mentioned J. M'Leod Campbell, in his well-known work on
the " Nature of Atonement " ; Gess {Christi Person u. Werk, iii. pp.
64-145) ; and T. Haring, in his Das Bleibende im Glauben an Christus,
and his recent Zur Vers'ohnungslehre, 1893. Haring insists that forgive
ness cannot be received unless in us there be present the consciousness
of guilt, and that a Divine provision to communicate forgiveness will
be of a sort to awaken at the same time the sense of demerit. In this
way he works round to what is very much the position of Mr. Camp
bell. " We may regard Christ's deed " (in dying for men), he says,
" in so far as it is the one sufficient foundation of our consciousness of
guilt, as the sorrowful recognition of the guilt of humanity, its great

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 9 1
There is, indeed, in all this no proper answer to the
question as to the precise connection between the death of
Christ and our forgiveness. We can understand that it
was such moral elements as have been mentioned entering
into the act of Christ in dying for us that gave that act
infinite worth in the sight of God ; we can understand that
it was because Christ's love and holiness in submitting to
death so faithfully reflected the very mind of God towards
sinners and sin that His death was so well-pleasing to Him,
was, to use the language of theology, " a satisfaction " to
the Divine Nature. But the real question is, how, having
this worth for God, does Christ's death avail to our for
giveness ? What is there in the fact that it possessed this
moral glory to bring it about, that because of it and of what
Christ is, God restores us to fellowship with Himself, and
treats us, although guilty, as if we deserved His love ?
That the death of Christ had this Godward aspect, that it
did something to effect a change, not indeed of the heart or
mind of God, but of His relation to men, that it was
operative, in some real sense, in reconciling God to
us as well as in reconciling us to God, we believe.'
The language of Scripture seems to point to this. The
sense of guilt craves a forgiveness that is based on this
confession of sin by the Head of our Race, the Lord of the Church,
who thereby furnishes the condition of Divine forgiveness" {Zur Ver
s'ohnungslehre, p. 88), See Note G.
' We must beware of pressing this thought of God's needing to be
reconciled to us, otherwise we will fall into the error of regarding Him
as a vindictive God whose wrath has to be appeased before He can look
with favour on the human race. We mean by such language that sin
separates God from man as well as man from God, that the active
manifestation of God's goodwill is withheld till the conditions necessary
to its full expression are furnished. Caution must be observed in
regard to all the figures of speech in which the effect of Christ's work is
described. Pressing the metaphors and extracting from them dogmatic
conclusions is a fruitful source of error. Religious language describing
what Christ is in the experience of the believer must be used very
guardedly when we try to deduce from it truth that lies outside experience.

92 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
objective reference of the work of Christ. It is another matter
whether we can explain how Christ's work operates in this
way. We seem here to have come to an ultimate fact beyond
which we cannot get, which we may be able to illustrate by
reference to human analogies, but the full rationale of which
we cannot fathom. If, then, one or two remarks are added,
their purpose is not to attempt an explanation, but to set
this fact in a light that may commend it to our acceptance. ;l_
It is to be observed, then, that Christ's accomplish
ment in placing sinners in a new and gracious relation to
God by His death is in analogy with facts of life and God's
moral government that strikingly illustrate the reign of
grace in the world. It is a familiar fact that one who has
deserved well of a friend, may, through this circumstance, be
the medium of blessing to those who have by their personal
conduct deserved punishment at the hands of that friend.
We naturally give a portion of the affection that we feel
for one who is very dear to us to those who have in them
selves nothing to draw forth our love if they are dear to
him. We take them into our favour because of what they
are to him ; we do them good for his sake. This is the
basis of intercession, which we know is a real power with
God. He is moved (to speak humanly) by the prayers of
His saints to bless with Flis best gifts those who have
themselves done nothing to deserve His favour. Their
being loved by those who stand high in His esteem is the
ground on which they are dealt with apart from regard to
their own personal acts. And the gracious relation into
which mankind has been brought by Christ's act in dying
for us is, as far as we can judge, the supreme instance of
this principle. We can see no reason why God should deal
with us so differently from what our sin deserves beyond this,
that Christ, our Head, is the perfect revelation of God's love
and holiness in humanity, and infinitely dear to Him, and
that being so He brings blessing to the race to which He

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 93
belongs, resulting in its being placed in a new relation of
acceptance with God. We are restored to fellowship with
Him for Christ's sake. This formula, " for Christ's sake,"
is what our theologisings come to. It expresses in the
simplest and most accurate form the thought that is present
in all our theories without being open to the objections
which can so easily be brought against one and all of them.
Two questions naturally suggest themselves when we
follow this line of thought a step further. First, how are
we to think of God as influenced in our favour by what
Christ has done? What is the precise effect Godward of
His work as our Representative? And here, I repeat, we
must dismiss all notions of Christ's work having wrought
any change on the mind or disposition of God toward us,
or having moved God to love us. Rather are we to think
of Him as having furnished, by what He did, the conditions
that had in the nature of things to be present before the
eternal love of God could be seen to be what it is, or could
be believed in aright by us. If Christ, by the revelation
He has given in His death of God's holy love, brings us
into that relation to God in which He can have fellowship
with us, then He has on that account abiding worth with
God. And God loves and forgives us for His sake because,
dying in obedience to the Divine Will, Christ has perfectly
revealed the love and holiness of the Father and supplied
the conditions, self-imposed by the very nature of Divine
love, to its being seen to be what it is, and to its operating,
according to its nature, on human hearts.
The other question is, how are we to think of benefit
coming to us because of what our Representative has done
on our behalf? How can God extend to us, who are
unworthy, the favour that rests on His Son, who is all-
worthy? Evidently there must be presupposed on our
part a connection with Christ that consists in faith and
penitence. There can be no mechanical transference of

94 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
merit here. God can bless us for Christ's sake only
because, Christ being seen by us to be the revelation of
God's holy love, there is awakened trust in God and
penetential sorrow for sin. The condition of our sharing
in the Divine favour, of which Christ is the supreme object,
is our incorporation with Christ, our attachment to Him by
a living faith that reconciles us to God.
While, therefore, the personal obedience of Christ is
the objective ground of the reconciliation of the human
race to God, and men are dealt with for Christ's sake as if
they had themselves rendered that obedience, this is so far
only an ideal reconciliation ; and in order that it may issue
in the actual reconciliation of sinners they must receive the
revelation of God's Holy love conveyed in the death of
Christ and so share in that vicarious act of His. " One
died for all," says the apostle, "therefore all died" (2 Cor.
V. 15); but this death of "all" was in idea or intention merely.
It is to be realised by each in a faith that enters into
the spirit in which the One died, before we can pass into
the personal enjoyment of the reconciliation. Faith has, in
the teaching of the apostle, this profound significance. It
is a religious moral act in which, moved by the love of God,
the man consents to the Divine judgment against his sin as
expressed in the death of Christ, affirms its righteousness,
and accepts what has been done for him by his Representa
tive ; and on the ground of this identification of himself with
Christ, and penitent trust in the love of God manifested on
the Cross, the sinner is forgiven and restored to fellowship
with the Father. The work of Christ, then, can take effect
in us only when its revelation of Divine love and holiness
evokes our trust and the sorrowful sense of our demerit
I before God. And for the completion of what Christ has
done there is needed the Gospel proclamation of what God's
will in Christ is, and our consent of mind and heart to its
requirement. God was in Christ reconciling the ivorld to

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 95
Himself not imputing to men their trespasses, that is, not
treating them as guilty, for (and now the apostle states the
Divine arrangement which is the ground of this gracious
treatment of the guilty) He has made the sinless One to be
sin for us in order that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. And then follows the entreaty of the
Gospel, by compliance with which the intended result will
take place, now, therefore, we beseech you in Chrisfs name be
ye reconciled to God}
The teaching of Paul has been charged with destroying
the simplicity of the Gospel idea of faith, and substituting
belief in a series of doctrines regarding the way of salvation
for the simple acceptance of the message of forgiveness and
personal trust in the Saviour. But while undoubtedly the
Gospel is presented to us by Paul as a Divine arrangement,
whereby, through the death of our Second Adam, forgive
ness is conveyed to us in a way illustrative of the wisdom
and love and holiness of God, — while there is a doctrine of
the Cross that appeals to the intelligence, yet the object of
the faith that saves is the Risen Christ, apprehended as the
human embodiment of the free grace of God to sinners, as
the Divine gift conveying life and righteousness to all who
accept Him.^
There is one objection, however, that may be taken to
this entire scheme of thought by which the apostle inter-
^ 2 Cor. V. 19-21.
^ It is when the question arises as to the reception by individuals of
the benefit secured by the Death of Christ for the race as a whole, that
the importance of the Resurrection in its bearing on the completeness of
His work appears. It is as Risen and Living, and appealing to men on
the ground of His love, that Christ makes efficacious to individuals that
work of reconciliation that has respect to all. The bearing of Christ's
resurrection on our justification is referred to in Rom. iv. 25, x. g. That
the faith that justifies has for its object the Risen Saviour, the Personal
revelation of God's gracious love, has been illustrated with great fulness
by Schader in his Die Bedeutung des lebendigen Christus fiir die Recht
fertigung nach Paulus, 1893.

96 ST. Paul's conception of christ
prets the saving significance of the death of Christ. It may
be said that the analogy on which he proceeds is a mistaken
one, that the existence and perpetuation of sin and death
through our connection with Adam is a theory borrowed by
him from the Rabbinical theology of his time ; and, further,
that it is disproved by science, which requires us to view the
narrative of Gen. iii. not as history but as symbolic truth,
as describing the way in which man first realised the con
sciousness of sin. But if sin, as the evolutionist says, is
not strictly an innovation, but the survival of animal
appetites that ruled without check during an earlier stage
in the history of humanity, and that became sin when the
new faculty of conscience had been developed, by which we
recognise what is " right " as distinct from what is pleasant
— what then becomes of the analogy between the first
Adam and the Second ? and what becomes of the apostolic
interpretation of the obedience of the Second Adam, who is
said to bring life and righteousness to the human race, after
the same manner in which the disobedience of the first
Adam inflicted sin and death upon them ? In reference to
all this, it is admitted that possibly Paul did proceed on
ideas that can be traced to Jewish schools of theology. In
Jewish literature ascribed to that age we find the theory of
the Fall stated as he states it.^ And the question may be
raised, supposing that he derived it thence, is it a valid reason
for our accepting it as true that Paul takes its truth for
granted, and uses it to illustrate the Gospel method of
salvation ? a question that runs up into the further one,
whether all the arguments Paul makes use of to illustrate
the truth of revelation are to be accepted as equally authori
tative with the truth itself^ To attempt to answer these
^ See Note H on the Doctrine ofthe Fall in Jewish Literature.
^ " In order to do justice to Paul's theology, we must avoid confusing
his principles (which are permanent and universal) with his arguments
and illustrations (which in many cases are peculiar to his time or to
himself)" (Abbott, The Spirit on the Waters, p. 310). It does not

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 97
questions satisfactorily would lead us too far afield ; assum
ing, however, the uncertainty or baselessness on scientific
grounds of the analogy which the apostle employs, I ask,
would this invalidate the interpretation put by him on the
work of Christ? Must we regard as simply a bit of
religious speculation this whole idea of Christ as a Second
Adam, who has by His death lifted mankind into a new
relation to God, calling now for our personal concurrence in
it in order that life and righteousness may come to us ?
The conclusion does not, in my opinion, follow at all. For
the solidarity of mankind is a fact, whether or not it is
rightly accounted for by the theory of our connection with
an individual head of the race whose fall involved that of
all the rest. Sin is common to the race. Death is the
common doom of the race. This is fact, whatever account
of it we may give. As a believer, Paul was conscious of
facts that meant that this law of solidarity held also in
redemption. The righteousness that was the ground of his
confidence before God was not his own ; it was common to
all men ; it was the free gift of One who had obtained it
for all. It was the result of Christ's dying, for it was in the
appropriation and spiritual apprehension of Christ's death
that Paul and his fellow-Christians realised their forgiveness
and fellowship with God. Connecting his religious life thus
directly with Christ and His death, he could well think of
Him as a Second Adam, divinely appointed to be the author
of a new race of men who should owe to Him their
gracious standing before God and eternal life. He is that.
He is a Second Adam, although it were proved that the
progenitors of the natural humanity were not one but many.
follow that the conclusion is false because the apostle's premises are
irrelevant. His quotations may not always bear the weight he puts upon
them. What he regards as history may be better understood as parable.
But the facts to which he appeals, the conclusions to which he comes,
are true all the same, and are borne witness to by the universal con
sciousness of men.
7

98 ST. Paul's conception of christ
To Him and to His work for them men have ever delighted
to ascribe their forgiveness by God, and all those blessings
that flow from forgiveness. The truth of Paul's representa
tion turns on the question whether Christ's death has really
that all-determining influence on the religious state of man
which faith attributes to it ; for if this be so, the idea of the
solidarity of men with Christ, — the idea, that is, that an
action of His has had so supreme an influence on the
human race as to carry with it the actual salvation of all
who trust in Him, — is an eminently reasonable conception,
and agreeable to what we otherwise know of the moral
government of God.^ Ill
But the death of Christ is represented not only as the
basis of the forgiveness of sin, as the ground of our religious
confidence, but also as the cause of our moral renewal and our
deliverance from the power and dominion of sin. He not
only died for sin, and in order to expiate it, but He died to
sin, thereby bringing to an end its rule in human nature.
This aspect of the death of Christ, its bearing on the de
struction of sin, has a larger place assigned to it in the
writings of the apostle than the aspect which we have con
sidered ; and it is still more characteristic of his interpreta
tion of the saving significance of the event on the Cross.
Weizacker and others maintain that it is in what he says
on this subject that we are to recognise the distinctiveness of
the teaching of Paul on the death of Christ, and that he is
alone and original among the teachers of apostolic Chris
tianity in the emphasis he lays on that event as a death to
sin, containing in it the potentiality of our death to it, and
our entire deliverance in this way from its power.^ As a
1 See Dale's Christian Doctrine, pp. 325-356 ; also T. C. Edwards,
The God-Man, p. 76.
2 Das Apostolische Zeitalter, p. 142. R, Schmidt, in his Paulinsche

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY 99
believer, Paul was conscious of an emancipation from the
passions and lusts of the flesh of so complete a character
that he could truly speak of himself as " dead '' to that old
self-life that had been ruled by the flesh. And this he
describes as a universal effect of believing in Christ, " they
that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections
thereof." ^ Union with Christ meant a union with Him in
the death He died on the Cross, in virtue of which they had
died or had been crucified with Him to the old nature.
This is the teaching in particular of Rom. vi., where the
very idea of a man continuing in sin who had been saved
by the grace of God is repudiated as inconsistent with the
fact of his position as a believer, for " baptized unto Christ
he is baptized unto a fellowship with Christ in His death,"
and in that death the " old man was crucified that the body
of sin might be destroyed," ^ that is, that it might for us be
brought to an end. But how is this to be understood ?
The death of Christ was physical, while the death in us
that follows as its effect is a moral process, is an inward
separation from sin. In what way can a death that is of
the body bring about in us a death that is ethical in its
character, a dying to sin? This is one of the debatable
questions in the theology of Paul. The portions of his
Epistle to the Romans that refer to it are among the most
difficult in his writings. It has been thought by some that
we are not to seek for any intelligible connection between
the two things, that while Paul relates them closely to
gether, he probably had no idea in his mind of there being
any ethical element in the act of Christ's dying analogous
to the moral act of dying to sin to which it gives rise in us.^
I am reluctant to accept this conclusion. The language of
Christologie, makes this the ruling thought in Paul's doctrine of the
Death of Christ to the exclusion of every other.
1 Gal. V. 24. ^ Rom- "^i- 3- 6.
^ Bruce's Conception of Christianity, p. 1 80.

TOO ST. Paul's conception of christ
the apostle seems to imply that there was something in the
mind of Christ in dying for us that was the moral equivalent
to that death to sin which takes place in us when we believe
in Him, something in its very nature fitted to produce that
change in us. " In that He died," we read, " He died unto
sin once." ' Not as if sin had had in Him a life that was
brought thereby to an end ; but He came " in the likeness
of the flesh of sin." ^ He partook of our flesh, in which sin
has certainly its seat ; and His dying in that flesh, in so
far as there was an element of will, of personal activity in
the act, was the supreme instance of holy obedience. It was
in its very nature a death inflicted on the principle of sin
that characterises the flesh of ordinary human nature, a
slaying of it in its very principle of self-will, a bringing to
an end its ascendency over the flesh of man. The power
of His death to mortify sin in the flesh of all who identify
themselves with Him is derived from the fact that it was in
some true sense a dying unto sin in the flesh. He is the
Second Adam, in whose flesh that of all mankind received
a mortal blow that deprived it once for all of its ascendency
over human nature. As the Representative of the whole
human race He submitted to the law that conditions our
entering on our true life. He was the first to surrender will
ingly the life of the flesh that He might become the First
born of the Resurrection, and was thereby the Ideal and
Example of all who were to follow Him hereafter. Heir in
His own Person to the weakness of the flesh and its
temptations, Christ found this dying to it an essential
element of holiness, and in so far as His death on the Cross
was the final triumph of His holiness over all those desires
of the flesh that furnish to man unregenerate the motive
power of his life, it possesses a moral efficacy that consti
tutes Him the leader of all His brethren in their entering on
the inheritance of their true life. And so Paul could speak
1 Korn. vi. jo ^ Rom, viii. 3.

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY lOI
of himself and his fellow Christians, "as always bear
ing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that
the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our
body." 1
But in accounting for the stress laid by the apostle on
the death of Christ as the cause of our death to sin and of
our moral renewal, we must take along with us the place he
assigns to the Resurrection of Christ in this connection, for
in his doctrinal system the Resurrection is inseparably con
nected with the Death, and is a factor of prime importance
in his conception of salvation. As the dying of Christ
includes in it our death to sin, so His rising again includes
in it our moral resurrection, our reviving to a life of holiness,
and is the Power by which that mighty change is effected
in human experience. And if the same question that met
us before in reference to the moral change attributed to the
death of Christ recurs here, in what way can a change so
spiritual in its character as the awakening of the soul to a
life of holiness be attributed to an event apparently so
physical in its nature as Christ's rising from the dead ? — the
answer is to be found in the higher significance which
attached to the latter event in Paul's view ; for Christ's
emerging from the grave, according to the apostle, was
coincident with His entrance on a grander form of being,
that gave Him access to the souls of men as Spirit ; and it
is in virtue of their being subjects of the energy of His
Holy Spirit that His people undergo that moral resurrection
which is a fact of their consciousness. United to the
Risen One by His Spirit, they are said to be " planted in
the likeness of the Resurrection," and to rise with Him, par
takers of the life that He now lives, and that is eternal as
1 2 Cor. iv. IO. Paul's teaching here is the development of Christ's,
who represented the inward change necessary to salvation as analogous
to death, to the experience of the Cross, Matt. xvi. 25, " Whosoever
will save his life shall lose it : and whosoever shall lose his life for
My sake shall find it."

102 ST. Paul's conception of christ
He is, " for in that He died. He died unto sin once : but in
that He liveth. He liveth unto God." ^ The efficacy inherent
in the Resurrection of Christ to effect our moral renewal
flows in reality from the Holy Spirit who comes forth from
the Risen One, and to this Agent also is to be referred
that participation in the death of Christ in which we are
said to die with Him unto sin. In the sixth chapter,
doubtless, the " new life " of which the Spirit is the author
is regarded as preceded by our death to sin, as if the
Spirit's work were limited to what follows death, to our
being quickened to newness of life. The logical order,
doubtless, is so ; first, death to the old, and then birth into
the life that is new. But the real order is the opposite.
Death to the lower life can be accomplished only by the
powers of the higher life already working on the soul, and
the death to sin is as certainly the effect of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus as is our moral quickening. Through the
energy of His Spirit the Death and Resurrection of Christ
are, in accordance with the law of solidarity, repeated in
the experience of His people.
At the same time, Paul is careful to show that this
work of moral renewal does not take place as a necessary
inference. Still less does he give any encouragement to
the idea that the virtue of the Death and Resurrection of
Christ is dependent on sacramental acts.^ It is a moral
process, conformed to the laws of mind. If in a sense we
are already " dead " in Christ, we are nevertheless to
" reckon ourselves " to be dead, to cultivate insensibility to
^ Rom. vi. lo.
^ Those who take high views of the Sacrament of Baptism make
much of Romans vi., where this rite is brought into relation to the Death
of Christ, and spiritual results are spoken of as accompanying it. It
must be remembered, however, that the Holy Spirit, the essence of the
Christian Good, is nowhere said by Paul to be given at baptism, but to
faith and the "hearing of faith." This is brought out by RitschI
{Die Altkatholische Kirehe, second ed. p. 93), who shows that Titus iii. 5
is no exception to this rule. In all cases where spiritual effects seem to

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF THE NEW HUMANITY IO3
the desires and ambitions of the old life. We are to
crucify the desire of the flesh, to live to God, to walk in
the spirit of the new life. The imperative mood is used as
well as the indicative. We are personally to become what
in Christ we already are. We must make our own personal
possession that freedom from sin and the flesh which
was made good for all humanity when Christ died to sin,
and that spirituality of Divine Life which was secured for
all when Christ rose from the dead. And here we are to
observe Paul's method as a moralist, as one who has
found in Christ the secret of a victorious moral life, the key
to the attainment of the moral Ideal. He does not say.
Act as Christ acted in this and that detail of His earthly
Hfe. He does not dwell on separate features of the character
of the historic Jesus, or bid us imitate Him in these. He
sets the Risen Christ before us as our Model, and bids us
follow Him who is as the embodiment of our true Hfe, and
contains in Himself the potentiality of all grace and holiness
of character. Only die with Christ to the flesh and rise with
Him to live the life of the Spirit, and all goodness will grow
out of that root ; concern yourselves with the principle,
details will follow. It has been said, " Take care of the little
things of life and the great ones will take care of them
selves," is the maxim of the trader which is sometimes,
and with a certain degree of truth, applied to the service of
God. But much more true is it that in reHgion we should
take care of the great things, and the trifles of Hfe will take
care of themselves. Christianity is not acquired as an art
by long practice; it does not carve and polish human
be attributed to baptism, faith, if not mentioned (as it is in Gal. iii. 26, 27)
must be presupposed. Baptism is introduced in Romans vi. merely as
an illustration. The parallelism between the rite and the Death of
Christ has no dogmatic significance. Karl {Beitrcige, etc., p. 108) speaks
of the thought of Paul in this passage as " nichts als eine Art .\ugen-
blicksgedanke." If the apostle had shared the Sacramentarian view he
could not have spoken of this rite as he does in i Cor. i. 13-17-

I04 ST. Paul's conception of christ
nature with a graving tool ; it makes the whole man ; first
pouring out his soul before God, and ' then casting him in a
mould.' " 1 It was thus that Paul apprehended and applied
Christianity as an ethic. Setting the once Crucified but
now Risen Christ before his readers as the embodiment of
the principle of the true life, he bids them die with Him,
and the Spirit of His life will do the rest. This is his
doctrine of the Imitatio Christi?- And if the question is
asked, how may this be ? how can we so identify ourselves
with Christ as to die with Him to the law of the flesh and live
with Him to the law of the mind and spirit ? Granted that
it is all the doing of His Spirit in us, how does that Spirit
become ours ? how does it operate ? The answer is to be
found in Paul's doctrine of faith. With Paul faith is the
act of the heart ; it is the flower of sympathy and love, it
draws us out of ourselves, and makes us one with Him who
has now our trust and devotion. The man who loves Christ
is a man who " enters into His feelings and lives with His
life ; he is a new creature ; he can do, and he does, what
Christ did."^ As Christ died to self and the impulse of
selfishness, the man who believes in Him and loves Him,
can out of his sympathy and love die to them too, and can
live in the spirit in which Christ lived. This, of course, is
the language of affection, that delights in being, and that
can be, all that its object is ; and, as the language of
affection, it is intelligible only to those who love Christ
and have experienced the moral changes that are brought
about by the power of His love. But that language
describes a fact, the most momentous of the Christian life,
in which its victorious power is disclosed. It is in the fire
of love to Christ that the soul of man is separated from sin
a^ thoroughly as though it were dead to it, and made alive
^ Jowett, Epistles of St. Paul, vol. Dissertations (ed. 1894), p. 117.
^ See Note I on Paul and the Imitatio Ch^risti.
^ M. Arnold's Paul and Protestantism, p. 52.

CHRIST THE FOUNDER OF TPIE NEW HUMANITY IO5
to God and righteousness in the power of a supernatural
life, of which the Risen Christ is the Source and Pattern.
It may, indeed, be said, all this is ideal and too much
in the clouds. Paul speaks as if our death to sin and
life to righteousness and God through our union with the
Second Adam were results as natural and necessary as is
our inheritance of sin and death through our connection
with the first Adam. But how different is the fact !
Sin is not, as a matter of experience thus dead in believers ;
neither is their new life such a glorious reality as it is
represented to be when it is spoken of as a participation
of Christ's Risen Hfe. Is Paul not utterly regardless of
the facts of life in his whole estimate of the matter?
Now it is plain the apostle's eyes were open to the facts that
militated against his idealism. His letters are directed
to the correction of the sins of Christians in the Churches
which he founded. But these facts did not breed in his
mind any suspicion of the failure of Christ to accomplish
in the actual experience of men, so mighty a work of
moral regeneration as is implied in their dying to sin and
Hving to holiness. He held by the omnipotence of the
Ideal in spite of facts ; he could not contemplate the
possibility of sin having any lasting significance for those
who had entered on the new life in Christ. He trans
ferred to all believers his own experience of the trans
forming effects of the love of Christ, and insisted that
men have only to realise what Christ is to them, and what
they are in Christ, in order to exemplify by their character
and conduct that God has indeed made Christ to be a
Power of real death to sin and of actual holy living.
According to his great conception, then, the death and
resurrection of Christ mark a new epoch, a fresh point of
departure in the evolution of the spiritual history of man ;
for they bring to an end the former relation of God to

io6 ST. Paul's conception of christ
men and of men to God, with the reign of death and sin
which characterised it, and inaugurate a fresh period in
which man collectively, in the Person of his Representative,
has attained to a new standing before God, and started
with fresh powers for the realisation of his high destiny
to manifest under material conditions the moral image of
his Maker. In His Death, sin, both in itself and in its
physical consequences, has been destroyed; and in His
Resurrection a new order of beings, spiritual and immortal,
has been founded. In Him, as its Second Adam, man
kind is at once reconciled to God and regenerated in all
its powers. Thus is He become the Founder and Head
of a new humanity with which He remains united as the
permanent source of its life and the pledge of its perfection
in glory. And all this in the view of the apostle was an
arrangement for the salvation of man, originating in, and
revealing throughout, the wonderful grace of God, as well
as communicating that grace in a way that constitutes it
a power to which no limit can be set, either in respect of
its intensity or the range of its operation. Words seem
to fail the apostle in the effort to express his profound
conviction of the all-sufficient provision for human need
there is in the gracious love of God that reaches man
kind through its Second Head, and of the far-reaching
effects destined to be wrought out by it for the human
race. None knew better than he who lived in that
ancient world, and was a witness to its wickedness, what
a power sin is in human nature and society, how disastrous
the effects of its reign are in the world. But he saw, in
the grace of God which had begun to work on the world
through the Person of the Risen Christ, a mightier power
far than that of sin, and one destined to make its
sovereignty recognised in the universal reign of righteous
ness and life. " Where sin abounded grace has super-

CHRIST the founder OF THE NEW HUMANITY 107
abounded." ^ Paul's Christianity was characterised by this
triumphant faith in the invincible and inexhaustible efficacy
of Christ, and of the Divine powers emanating from Him
on the nature of man, — by this boundless confidence in the
might of the Second Adam to reverse all the effects of the
first, and to subdue under Him every form of evil that
springs from our fallen human nature. It may be alleged,
indeed, that Paul was over sanguine, that the event has
shown that he was mistaken in the belief he entertained
that the old world was so soon to be replaced by a new
in which righteousness and life were to be supreme. We
may well believe that it would have been incredible to him
had he been told that after so many centuries the world
would still be ruled, to so large an extent as we see it to be,
by the forces of evil. But were he present with us to-day,
a witness to all the crime and wrong that retard the pro
gress of the Kingdom of God and that dishearten those who
labour for the well-being of the race, he would not, we may
be confident, attribute the failure of Christianity to regenerate
the world to any insufficiency in Christ, or to any defect in the
moral and spiritual powers that emanate from Him, but to
the fault of those who will not receive it, and the pusillanimity
of those who receive it in appearance but who will not apply
it as it asks to be applied. The world's deepest need now,
as in Paul's age, is the need of religion ; and the religion of
redemption, which Christ administers, is the only one that
has proved equal to the necessities of the case. And as for
the long - delayed hour of His triumph, who will deny
that the Church would have had a brighter story to tell
of the prowess of its Master over human souls, had it
possessed a little more of the ideaHsm of this Christ-
intoxicated man, a little more of his unconquerable faith in
its Second Head as the power of God unto salvation ?
^ Rom V. 20.

IV

CHRIST THE LIFE AND THE LORD
OF THE NEW HUMANITY

109

LECTURE IV
Christ the Life and the Lord of the
New Humanity
We have been occupied in unfolding the contents of the
conception under which Christ presented Himself to the
faith of the apostle as the Second Adam. I have dwelt
in the preceding lectures on two of the leading truths that
enter into that conception : the first being, that, as Risen
and Exalted, Christ is personally the Ideal or Archetypal
Man, the Type of human perfection ; the second, that, in
His historic life on earth. He acted as the Representative
of man, having by His obedience unto death redeemed the
human race from sin and its consequences, and become the
Founder of a new humanity. We pass on now to consider
the Activity on which He entered when He rose from the
dead, by which He communicates to and perpetuates in
His people the virtue of His Person and work, and so
completes His function as the Second Adam of man-
kind.i This continued Activity is exercised, on the one
hand, by His Spirit, and on the other hand by His
1 There would be no proper parallelism between the first and Second
Adam if Christ were no more than an example, for Adam is a power of
evil in us, and Christ must be in us a power of good in order to be the
counterpart of the other. As William Law puts it, in a striking passage
in The Spirit of Prayer : " If Adam was only an outward person, if his
whole nature was not our nature, born in us, and derived from him into
us, it would be nonsense to say that his fall is our fall. So in like
manner, if Christ, our Second Adam, was only an outward Person, if He
entered not as deeply into our nature as the first Adam does, if we
have not as really from Him a new inward spiritual man as we have
outward flesh and blood from Adam, what ground could there be to say
that our righteousness is from Him, as our sin is from Adam .'"'
Ul

112 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
auUiority as Lord. As Spirit, or in the power of His
Spirit, which is the Spirit of God, He has incorporated
Himself, as it were, into the very life of the race, in order
to distribute in the members of it His own perfected life ;
while as Lord, He is related to them as their Supreme
Authority, representing God to us and receiving from us
the obedience we owe to God. Christ as the INDWELLING
SPIRIT and LIFE of His people, and Christ their LORD, — this
is the distinctive glory of the Exalted One. The change
from death to resurrection, we are taught to believe,
brought to Him an accession of personal endowment that
qualified Him to exert His influence as a principle of new
Hfe in men, and it meant also His investiture with supreme
power as the Lord of human life and destiny. Accord
ingly, in the record of Paul's experience in the Epistles, He
is recognised both as an energy of Divine life in believers,
working towards their renewal and moral transformation,
and also as Lord and Sovereign ruling them by the autho
rity of His truth and goodness. In other words, Christ is
at once IMMANENT as the Spirit of God in men, and TRANS
CENDENT over them as their Divinely constituted Lord.
Both aspects of His Person enter into the apprehension of
His unique greatness as the Second Adam. Fully to
understand His work in this capacity, we must view Him
not only as the embodied type of all that a spiritual man
should be, not only as having acted on God's behalf and
man's, and by His work in relation to sin restored us to
fellowship with God, — we must view Him also as living
to reproduce and perpetuate in us by His Spirit His
own perfection, and as exercising over us the authority of
God Himself. It is, as we shall see in this connection,
because He works in us with an energy of love and
holiness that is identified with the Spirit of God, and
commands our obedience with an absoluteness that is
identical with the authority of God, that we are to recog-

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY I 1 3
nise Christ as truly Divine, and to acknowledge the
presence in Him of powers of Godhead that constitute Him
the object of our faith and worship. I
First, then, Christ is IMMANENT in men. According to
the teaching of Paul, the Exalted Christ is the medium by
whom the Holy Spirit of God is given, He is the source of
an energy on human nature that is recognised as the
energy of God. The man Christ Jesus, in other words, is
the organ of the activity of God's Holy Spirit in the hearts
and lives of men, and dwells in them as the Power of a
new Humanity that embodies the same principle as that
which was realised in Him, and that lives by the same life.
Paul's doctrine of the Spirit is a subject eminently
worthy of special investigation. This cannot be under
taken now ; but two or three of the more distinctive
features of his teaching must be noticed ; for if it be true, as
a thoughtful writer ^ has remarked, " that the apostle's
entire thinking stands under the influence of his estimate
of the Spirit," we may expect that his conception of the
Person of Christ will be modified by this estimate. While,
therefore, it may be convenient for the dogmatic theologian
to keep the Pauline Pneumatology and Christology apart,
we cannot follow this course except at the risk of muti
lating the living thought of the apostle; for in his religious
experience, as we shall see, he recognised no hard and fast
line between what he owed to Christ and what he owed to '
the Spirit of God ; and to do justice to his intuition of
truth we must look at the experience with which it is
indissolubly connected.
The bestowal on men of God's Spirit was, according to
1 Gloel, in his Der Heilige Geist in der Heiltverkiindigung des
Paulus.

114 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
prophecy, to be the accompaniment of the Messianic era, —
or rather, it was viewed as an essential part of the salvation
that the Messianic era was to usher in. And the sign to
the apostolic Church that the new age had indeed come,
that Jesus was the Messiah, and that the promised salva
tion was the actual possession of men, was the fact to
which observation and experience bore witness, wherever the
Gospel was preached, that the Spirit was given. It is an
indisputable fact that certain extraordinary effects followed
wherever men believed the glad tidings. A new energy,
producing remarkable phenomena, took possession of them,
an energy that was spoken of by them as that of the
Spirit of God, thereby intimating their belief that these
phenomena proceeded from a cause that was Supernatural
and Divine. The phenomena themselves were of the most
varied character, being physical, intellectual, moral and
religious. They were all different manifestations of one
and the same Divine power that had taken up its abode in
human nature, and that testified by these extraordinary
effects to the truth of the Gospel and to the advent of a
new age in the history of religion. Paul shared to the full
the belief of the primitive Church on this subject. He-
himself enjoyed a measure of the common gift of the
Spirit that was greater, it would seem, than that which fell
to any other, uniting in himself in a singular degree the
various endowments that were conferred on believers by
this new power.^ He was in the most entire agreement
with his fellow Christians as to the superhuman origin of
the gift and as to its paramount value for the religious
life. His own experience of the Divine life, so full and so
vivid, gave him the most exalted impression of the might
of this supernatural energy and its manifold working within
the sphere of the Church. So far, Paul stood on ground
common to the whole primitive Church. But now it is to
1 See I Cor, iii. 5 ; Gal. i. I ; 2 Cor. xiii. 3 ; Rom, xv. 18-29,

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY I 1 5
be noticed that there were .several directions in which he,
through the depth of his experience, struck out lines of
teaching for himself, that not only bore witness to the
originality of his view, but contained truth of the highest
importance for a proper understanding of the religious
Hfe. I. He distinguishes between such phenomena as were
called gifts (x"-picrfiaTa) of the Spirit and those that are
termed the graces of the Christian life.i The tendency
of the primitive Church was to exalt the extraordinary
gifts {-xapiafjiaTa) that pointed to a state of ecstasy, and
to regard all who possessed such gifts as spiritual in a
pre-eminent sense. Paul, on the other hand, emphasised
the surpassing worth of the moral and religious effects of
the Spirit's working in the renewal of character. He held
up the Christian life itself, in the normal exercise of the
graces of love, humility, meekness, etc., as being in a
special sense the product of the Spirit. " If," says Gunkel,
in his admirable little book on this subject, " his fellov/ be
lievers regarded the extraordinary elements in the Christian
life as spiritual, Paul regarded the usual and ordinary ones as
being such. They had respect to what was peculiar to the
individual, he to what was common to all ; they to what
stept forth suddenly, he to what was regular. They singled
out separate things in the Christian life ; the value they
attributed to wonderful gifts he placed on the Christian
life itself" ^ This marked a great advance on the thought
of his age ; and by his teaching on this point, as has been
well said, " Paul inaugurated that decisive change of view
by which Christianity made the transition from the miracu
lous world of ecstatic feeling and apocalyptic phantasy into
the true spiritual world of religious and moral personal life,
' I Cor. xii. 31, xiii. i, etc., xiv. i.
2 Gunkel, Die Wirkungen des Heiligcn Geistes in der Lehre des
Paulus, p. 82,

ii6 ST. Paul's conception of christ
and by which it could become the regenerating leaven of
the history of mankind." ^ In accentuating the moral and
religious elements in the Christian life, Paul does not make
less of the Divine energy to which they are due. In
saying that moral goodness is the best result of the Spirit's
working, he holds as strongly as any that only the Spirit
of God can produce that goodness. By referring the entire
Christian life to the authorship of the Divine Spirit, he
taught, in the most explicit way, that there entered into
the very conception of Christianity a passion and energy
of ethical life, an enthusiasm for God and for man, a power
of holiness which was not in man himself and which the
Divine Spirit in man alone could awaken and sustain.
The fact that the ordinary graces of Christian character
were ascribed by him to the Spirit of God, is of itself a
testimony to the superhuman worth and Divine origin that
were felt to belong to true and noble character in apostolic
times. 2. Paul identified the Spirit of God, bestowed on
believers under the Gospel, with the Spirit of Christ.
Effects that ^re referred by him in some passages to the
Divine Spirit, are in others attributed to Christ's Spirit,
the two being evidently in his view one and the same
power.2 There was an historical justification for this; for
the Spirit of the historic Jesus, that was stamped on all He
said and did, was recognised as the Spirit of God Himself
It was the holiness and graciousness and truth of the living
God that were expressed in the acts and words of Jesus
on earth. Accordingly, when, as Risen and Glorified, He
entered on His perfected fellowship with God, the Spirit
proceeding from Him, by which He continues to live and
energise in the hearts of men, is in the most real sense
the very Spirit of God ; and the experiences of the life
1 Pfleiderer, Hibbert Lectures, p. 82,
2 Rom. viii. 9, 14 ; Gal, iv. 6,

CHRIST THE LIEE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY II 7
of faith are referred both to the Spirit of Christ and to
the Spirit of God. Here, too, we mark an advance on
the primitive doctrine, for while it was the original belief
that the Divine Spirit is given to men through Christ, it
does not seem to have been held, till Paul taught it, that
this Divine Gift is itself the Spirit of Christ, the active
principle of His Personality. And we can understand
the significance and value of the contribution the apostle
thereby made to a true understanding of the Gift of the
Spirit. As long as the connection in men's minds between
the Person of Christ and the Gift of God's Spirit was loose
and uncertain, manifestations of mere enthusiasm, origin
ating in unsanctified human nature, might be declared to
be the outcome of that Spirit which was the peculiar
endowment of the Church. But by drawing close the
bond between the Gift and the Person, and identifying
the Spirit of God with the energy of the Personal life
of Jesus, Paul furnished a test by which phenomena really
due to the Divine Spirit might be discriminated from
others that did not proceed from that source. For what
comes from the Spirit of God must authenticate itself as
such by its being in harmony with the Spirit of Christ,
the Spirit exhibited in the character and deeds of Jesus
of Nazareth. 3. But Paul not only identifies the Spirit of God with
that of Christ, he identifies both with the very Person of
Christ. " The Lord is the Spirit," ^ we read ; and, again,
"we are changed into the same image by the Lord, the Spirit."^
The intention of the apostle in this passage is evidently
to bring out the fact, that He whom Christians acknow
ledged to be the Lord was not such an one as the Jews,
with their worldly ideas of the Messiah, believed in, — a
Messiah distinguished by outward prerogatives, but one
^ 2 Cor. iii. 17.
2 2 Cor iii. iS. Compare also i Cor. xv. 45 with vi. 17.

iiB ST. Paul's conception op christ
who was Spirit, ruling men by a Divine power at the
centre of their lives. Being " in Christ " and " being in
the Spirit " are the same thing ; and in the thought of
the apostle, "Christ," the "Spirit of Christ," and "the
Spirit of God " are practically synonymous. At the
Resurrection Christ became a Life-giving Spirit to man
kind, and by the heightening of the powers of Plis Person
ality that then took place. He was so made one with the
very life of God as to be constituted a perfect medium
through whom the Spirit of God could act upon us ; and
His Personal Influence and Working being, to the entire
exclusion of every lower element, the influence and working
of the Holy Spirit, He, Himself Personally, might be
spoken of as the Lord, the Spirit.
Theologians of a certain school find, in this language
regarding Christ, evidence that here again Paul was in
fluenced by ideas derived from outside sources. They
point us to the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom, a work
which Paul seems to have been familiar with, where we
find a striking passage in which Wisdom is identified with
the Spirit of God, and is described as the author of opera
tions which are likewise referred by the apostle to the
latter source.-' His familiarity with such-like passages has
led him, it is said, to identify the Exalted Christ (or
Wisdom of God) with the All-present and Omnipotent
Divine Spirit, and thereby to introduce a metaphysical
^ The passage referred to occurs in Book of Wisdom vii. 22-25 :
"There is a Spirit, quick of understanding, holy," etc. A very fair
account of the traces in Paul's .Epistles of his acquaintance with the
Book of Wisdom will be found in E. Grafe's Essay on the subject in
the vol. dedicated to Weizacker, entitled, Theologische Abhandlungen.
Grafe regards it as highly probable that Paul had read this Apocryphal
Book, but holds that his dependence upon it is "formal rather than
material." "A man of life, with a keen eye for practical needs, Paul
borrowed the good wherever it was to be found ; and he borrows
from the Book of Wisdom a fulness of words, ideas and images, and
applies them to express thoughts and convictions which he got from
another source altogether.''

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 119
element into his idea of the Person of Christ ; that element,
it is added, is the real germ of the later ecclesiastical
dogma that has resulted in so glaring an inconsistency
between the Christology of the schools and the original
picture of the historic Christ.^ Now the fallacy of this
argument lies in the notion that Paul's doctrine of the
Spirit was of the nature of a speculation akin to other
teachings then current of a quasi-speculative sort ; whereas
nothing is more certain than that his whole conception of
the Spirit was religious, and had its root in his experience
of the fruits of the Spirit in his inner life. His idea of
the work of the Spirit of God in man has scarcely any
thing in common with the speculations contained in the
Book of Wisdom ; ^ and in speaking of Christ as one with
that Divine Spirit that was so operative in his personal
life, he is not to be understood as setting up any theory
of the Person of Christ. He is simply thinking of Him
as the unique fountain of that energy of supernatural
holiness and grace that was the deepest fact of his own
experience. That intensely spiritual influence upon him
self could only come from one who was the Personal
Embodiment, as well as instrument, of the Spirit of God,
and who, in consequence, might with truth be spoken of
not only as having but as being the Spirit, " the Divine
Spirit," as Sabatier puts it, " in the form of human in
dividuality." ^
The identification of Christ with the Spirit of God does
"^ Weiss advocates this view in his Die Nachfolge Christi, p. 94.
2 On the Difference between Paul's Doctrine of the Spirit and that of
the Book of Wisdom, see Note A.
' " The doctrine of the Spirit in Judaism and in the Jewish Christian
primitive Church undergoes a transformation by Paul in his doctrine
of the Pneumatic Christ ; the thought of the d-Kvpws-To-nvf'ifj.a is the
¦ specifically Pauline consciousness of the Pneuma, and goes far beyond
the representation of his age," Deissmann, Die N. T. Eormel in Christo
Jesu, p. 90. Compare what P. W. Schmiedel says {Hand Commentar zum
N. T., II. i. p. 192).

I20 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
not then warrant any dogmatic inferences bearing on the
Person of our Lord ; neither are we to attach any
speculative significance to it. We are not to infer from it
that Paul held that God's Spirit is restricted to the Person
of Christ, — that the sphere of the influence of the former
is defined by the limits within which the latter is known.
The apostle has nothing to say on that subject, though
we can scarcely doubt, I think, that he would have
recognised the presence and operation of the Divine
Spirit beyond the limits within which the historic Christ
is known and believed in. It is a mistake to treat the
occasional utterances of Paul on this subject as if they
were intended to convey to us an exhaustive doctrine of
the Spirit.1 What we learn from his utterances is, that, to
the Christian consciousness, Christ and the Spirit of God
are one and the same that the influence of the Personal
Christ upon us is equivalent, as regards its moral and
religious effects, to the energy of the Divine Spirit, and
that it is only through our connection with His Person
and our faith in Him that we experience that specific
working of God's Spirit that was exempHfied supremely
in His life.^ And nothing could give us a deeper .
impression at once of the Personal pre - eminence of
1 When Paul speaks of the " Spirit of God," it is His operation
under the Gospel that he has in view, that "enthusiasm," with its
manifold gifts and potencies, that followed faith in Christ.
^ It is to be recognised, indeed, that Christ's Spirit, if we are to judge
from the presence of Christ-like dispositions, is found in some who have
no conscious connection with Christ Himself. He works even where
He is not acknowledged ; but in such cases faith in Him cannot fail
to follow as soon as He is seen in His real nature. Although His Spirit
may be present where He is as yet unknown and unacknowledged, it is,
as a rule, faith in Him, and in the revelation of Divine love conveyed in
His Person, that is the channel of His gift to men. The attempt to
separate the Spirit of God from Christ, to cultivate the higher life
without faith in the historical Christ, results in failure. The Life of
the Spirit cannot maintain itself unless it is fed from the fountains of
spiritual passion that flow from the Person of Christ.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 121
Christ, and the intimacy of the relation in which He
stands to God, as well as of the saving significance of
His Person to the human race, than this, that He acts on
men's souls with the power of God's Holy Spirit, and
that His influence conveys to us what is proper to the
very life of God.
This practical identity of Christ and the Spirit of God
is the ground or reason of that union between Christ and
His people that is so characteristic a feature of the
experience of the Christian life described in the Epistles
of Paul, and that sets his thought of Christ in so original
a light. Inasmuch as His Spirit is in them, and is the
source of their life, and His Person is in a true sense
one with the Spirit, He Himself is said to be and to
live in them, and they in like manner are said to be and
to live in Him. Everyone is aware of the frequency
with which the phrase " in Christ " is used by the apostle
in reference to the inner life of the believer.-' It points to a
union with Him as Spirit or Pneuma, in virtue of which He
is the very principle of their lives, so one with all that
is most deeply personal in them that He moulds and
determines their activities, and reproduces in them what
is most deeply personal to Himself Quickened at the
centre of their being by the very Spirit of God that
formed the principle of His Personal life, and having
Christ thus dwelling in them, believers are enabled to
live His life over again ; or, rather, they are the agents by
and in whom He lives over again His own life, reincar- '
^ It is to be observed that where this union of the believer with
Christ is referred to, it is the phrase iv rca XpicrrcS or Kvpico that is
invariably used, never iv ra "Iijo-oC. The latter term describes the Man
Jesus in His historical appearing, and is never employed to describe
the spiritual fellowship of believers with the Son of God who sends the
Spirit. This has been pointed out by Harless {Commentar zttr Epheser
Brief, p. 411). The term "Christ" when conjoined with ^^ fesus" in the
Epistles always points to the religious significance Jesus has for
behevers. On recent literature on this phrase iv 'Xpiara, see Note B.

122 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
nating Himself, as it were, ever anew in the flesh of His
people. The historic Jesus has, with the apostle, passed
into the Spiritual and Mystical Christ, who lives in, and
reveals Himself through, believers ; and we cease to
wonder that the past circumstances of the earthly life
of Jesus have comparatively little interest for Paul, now
that as Exalted, Christ has entered on a present activity
in the hearts of men, in which He re-enacts in their
experience what was most vital in His historical career,
and repeats in them all that was most distinctive of
His own Divine life. The poet represents the apostle as
longing that he had lived in the days when Jesus was
seen of men —
" Oh to have watched Thee through the vineyards wander.
Pluck the ripe ears, and into evening roam !
Followed, and known that in the twilight yonder
Legions of angels shone about thy Home ! " ^
There is, however, no trace of this feeling in the
apostle's recorded words. Why should he or his fellow-
believers go back to the past, or dwell with fondness
on the recollections of Jesus' earthly life, on what He
did and said in Galilee and Jerusalem ? Had they not
Christ living and working in them here and now ? Was
he not himself conscious sometimes of the " shock of His
possession thrilling and touching " him ? Whence that
passion for souls that burned in the apostle's heart ? Was
it not from the conta-ct of Christ's mighty heart with his
own ? Did not Christ walk the streets of Corinth and
Rome and Ephesus to-day as He had done in the cities
and towns of Syria ? Was He not found in the homes
and workshops of men, audible still in the words of grace
and truth that came from the lips of His followers, visible
to the eye of men in the gentle, pure, devoted lives of
1 From " Saint Paul," by F. W. H. Myers.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 23
those who loved Him ? ^ Where they are. He is, living
Himself out from them, embodying His holy wih in the
actions of their lives. It is this Christ, dwelling in His
people, filling them with new experiences, manifesting
Himself in and through them to the world, that was the
real Christ to Paul, and made the Christ to him no mer^
dogma, but a personal presence and an immediate life.
The locus classicus for this view is Gal. ii. 10,
where we have the record of his deepest experience as a
Christian. After the remarkable words, " I am crucified
with Christ," that express the completeness of his deliver
ance from the old life of self, he goes on to say, " It is
no more I who live, but Christ who liveth in me." It is
difficult to translate this into common language. The
words at least point to a new moral and religious con
sciousness formed by his connection with Christ, — a
consciousness of what had entered into the inner life of
Christ, of Divine Sonship and power over the fiesh,
power to love and to do the will of God. In this
consciousness, indeed, the apostle realised his own proper
life, and exercised the functions of spiritual manhood, but
its source was not in himself, but in the Spirit of Christ
that occupied the place of self, and by the rush of Divine
life that pulsed through his soul annihilated almost the
sense of his own selfliood. " Not I, but Christ liveth in
me." Christ became the true self of the apostle, and
what he lost in individuality by the substitution of Christ,
the Living Principle of love, for self limited and particular,
he gained in personality, for in passing out of his old self
into Christ he found his real self and realised his true
life in God. The supremacy of this new Principle
in his experience was absolute. To the Christ within
1 It was a quaint saying of the great German Reformer, " Should
anyone knock at my breast and say, ' Who lives here ? ' I should reply,
' Not Martin Luther, but the Lord Jesus'" {Table Talk).

1 24 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
he attributed all that he did and experienced as a
believing man. It was as one who was " in Christ,"
and was the subject of the activity of His Spirit
that he accomplished his life - work,^ that he formed
judgments and came to conclusions,^ that he followed
the courses and modes of conduct that characterised his
Christian profession,^ that he cherished confidence in
others,* that he suffered,* that he rejoiced.® He recognised
himself to be but an organ for the activity of Christ, a
" vessel of earthenware " containing the " treasure " of
His light and truth.'' Christ dwelt in him, Christ in the
fulness of His personal life, so that the very love with
which Christ loved men impelled Paul to a similar Hfe of
unselfish love ; ^ and Christ's longing and pity filled the
apostle's heart with the same emotions,® and Christ's
truth and sincerity spoke in the words of truth and
sincerity which the apostle spoke,^", and the will of
Christ empowered his own will to do what it had no
strength in itself to do,^^ and Christ's mind was his
inmost possession, inspiring in him the thoughts and
dispositions of His Lord,^^ and Christ's sufferings were
repeated in those that fell to him as His servant.^^ It
was as if the very personality of Christ had entered into
the apostle and used him as the organ of its expression.
To describe at length the specific experience formed in
the apostle by the introduction into his inner life of this
sinless principle, the Spirit of Christ, would carry us
too far afield. It is evident, however, that the result in
his experience was the practical solution of the moral
problem of his life. Holiness became an actual attainment.
The inward contradiction between the higher and lower
' Phil. iv. 13. 2 rqj.|^_ j(.i.^,_ j^
' I Cor. iv. 17 ; 2 Cor. ii. 12-14. * Gal. v. 10.
* 2 Cor. xiii. 4. « Phil. iv. 10. ' 2 Cor. iv. 7.
8 2 Cor. V. 14. " Phil. i. 8. " 2 Cor. xi. 10 ; Rom. ix. i.
" Phil. iv. 13. 12 I Cor. ii. 16. is 3 Cor. iv. 10 ; comp. Col. i. 24.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 25
elements of his life which had torn him in twain ceased.-'
We are startled by the language in which he speaks of
himself as a Christian — a pneumatic jnan. He has no
hesitation in appealing to his own character and conduct in
proof of his moral integrity." Again and again he describes
himself an example in respect of Christian discipleship, and
bids others follow him.^ He does not indeed claim to be
sinless. He has not yet reached the ideal, but is always
pressing on toward it.* _ The flesh still lusts after what is
condemned by the Spirit,* and he has to keep it in
subjection.® But his moral state is now one of harmony
with the will of God. He is freed from the " law of sin
and death." "^ He is done with the old life, and has entered
on a new life characterised in its aim and normal attain
ment by sinlessness.^ The one serious hindrance to the
perfection of his state is the sufferings of this present life,
the mortality of the body, the vanity and perishableness of
existence ; but this feature is destined soon to pass away,
when, with the second coming of the Lord, the full glory of
the new age (a'lav /jteWtov) shall dawn upon the world.®
^I regard Rom. vii. 21-25 as referring to Paul's state while still
unregenerate ; his normal state as a Christain man is described in
Rom. viii. 1-5. To this, the view held by all the Greek Fathers, first
departed from by Augustine in his later writings, most modern com
mentators have now returned.
2 I Cor. iv. 2-5, ix. 15 ; 2 Cor. i. 12, iv. II, vi. 3, x. 7, etc.
^ I Thess. i. 6, ii. 1-12 ; 2 Thess. iii. 7, 8 ; i Cor. iv. 16, xi. i.
'' Phil. iii. 13. * Gal. v. 17. " i Cor. ix. 27.
' Rom. viii. 2. ^ Rom. vi. 1-14.
" Rom. viii. 18-25. RitschI has called attention to the consciousness
of moral integrity that characterises Paul's Christian experience. After
enumerating passages, he goes on to say : " Diese Zusammenstellung
beweist, dass neben der Ueberzengung von der Rechtfertigung durch
den Glauben ein Bewusstein personlicher sitthcher VoUkommenheit,
insbesondere vollkommener Treue im Beruf moglich ist, welches durch
keine Gewissensriige getrubt ist, aber auch nicht den Grundsatz
verlezt dass man sich Gottes riihmen soil, welches endlich von der
Gewissheit eines besonderen gottlichen Lohnes gemass dem von
Gott verliehenen Erfolge der anstrengungen in seinem Dienste
begleitet ist " {Rechtfertigung u. Vers'ohnung, ii. p. 370).

126 ST. Paul's conception of christ
Now this indwelling of Christ is asserted as true of all
believers. To secure an entrance for Him into the inner
life of men was the very object of the apostle's ministry.
To the Galatians, hesitating between the flesh and the
Spirit as the principle of their lives, he writes, in that
strange mother-cry, " my little children with whom I
travail in birth till Christ be formed within you." ^
Nothing less would satisfy him than Christ's taking
shape and form within them so as to be the all-controlling
power of their lives. Believers were certified to be God's
children by their willingly allowing themselves to be led
by the Spirit within.^ By the Spirit they have power to
crucify the flesh and its affections,^ to mortify the deeds of
the body,* to rise superior to the law of sin and death.*
Being " in the Spirit " constitutes believers Trvev/MariKOi ;
and apart from the possession of the Spirit, they have no
claim to be ranked as Christians at all." As irvevfiaTLKoi,
they are distinguished from others who are mere " men." ^
This indwelling of Christ, and participation by His
people of His Spirit as the principle of their lives, abolishes
all separateness of life or function in them. If individuality
can be said to remain, it is only as the sphere in which that
One life, of which Christ is the source, is to be embodied in
a distinctive form. " He that is joined to the Lord is one
Spirit ; " ^ he loses that selfhood or separateness of being
in which self, as long as it is the principle of life, is in
trenched ; and his life is henceforth merged in a Higher than
his own, in the life of love and goodness that animates all
in whom Christ dwells. The place and function of the
individual is to be a member of Christ, one by whom a
portion of the common life is exercised and manifested.
And the collective society of believers is constituted the
' Gal. iv. 19. 2 Gal. v. 18. s Gal. v. 24.
^ Rom. viii. 13. ° Rom. viii. 2. s Rom. viii. 9.
' I Cor, iii. I, 4- ' I Cor. vi. 17.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 27
Bo^ of Christ, the living organism united to Him as the
body is to the soul ; and as His natural body in the days of
His flesh was the means by which He had intercourse with
the worid, the medium by which His Personal life expressed
itself and accomplished its purposes, as well as the vehicle by
which He conveyed His gifts of healing and blessing to men,
— so His Church, or the Society of believers, is His Mystical
Body in which He reappears on earth. It is the instrument
by which now He effects His purposes in the world, reveals
Himself and transmits His saving energy.^ Its function is
to interpret and represent Him, to be the " Epistle " of Him,
declaratory of His Mind and Will,^ to be the Mirror "reflect
ing " the glory of His Face,^ the " Body " that through its
various members does His Will,* the " Temple " or " Shrine "
that is to be kept holy from all coarseness so as to let
His Divine Presence shine through it.* The language in
which the Indwelling of Christ in His people is described
excludes the idea of there being any save One principle of
personal life in them. Each, indeed, is but a part of the one
supreme Personality of Christ who lives in them all, absorb
ing into His own their individual lives ; and they, on their
part, reach their perfection in the measure in which their
own separate Hves are lost in the common One that flows
1 " The Church," says Gore, " is the extension and perpetuation of
the Incarnation in the world." And again, " This visible human society
exists to receive, to embody, and to communicate a spiritual life. And
this life is none other than the life of the Incarnate. The Church exists
to perpetuate in every age the life of Jesus, the union of Godhead with
manhood" (Bampton Lecture, p. 219). This exalted conception of the
Church is too much lost sight of. We are grateful to the school to which
Canon Gore belongs for the prominence it receives in their teaching.
But we must differ from them in the use they make of this conception
to support the theory of sacramental grace. Surely it is to the influence
of the sanctified personalities that make up the Body of Christ we must
look for the conveyance of the blessing of the Spirit of God that resides
in His Church, and not to the handling of material things.
2 2 Cor. iii. 3. ^ 2 Cor. iii. 18.
* I Cor. xii. 12, ' I Cor. vi. 19.

128 ST. Paul's conception of chrIst
from the all-inclusive personality of Christ, — " ye are all
one man in Jesus Christ." ^
This mystical Body is the New Humanity, which, in
accordance with the eternal purpose of God, Christ came
into the world to create. And it is in thus entering into
the very springs of our being by the energy of the Spirit,
in order to make us alive toward God and victorious over
sin and death, and to mould us inwardly and outwardly
into His own likeness, that He discharges His function as
the Second Adam of the human race. The language in
which the union between Christ and His people is described
is not to be understood in a metaphysical sense, as if the
supremacy of His life in us and our union with Him in
volved the literal absorption of all personaHties into His
own ; it is the language of religious feeling and experience,
and is not to be taken as psychological truth.^ It expresses
the feeling that in the relation that subsists between Christ
and His people there is no room for self as a principle of
moral action, and that the Spirit of Christ, of love and of
holiness, is the all-controlling principle of the personal life
of each. It indicates, too, that this supernatural element
made itself felt in the experience of the believer as an over
mastering impulse, operating almost after the manner of a
natural force of a lofty order, manifesting itself not so much
in works which a man did as in dispositions and affections
which he experienced.^ At the same time, the language
that speaks in this wise of the Spirit alternates with
language that is of a different sort, and that suggests that
in the consciousness of the believer the Spirit was an
1 Gal. iii. 28.
2 " This possession by the Spirit is a fact for the explanation of
which we will seek in vain in the categories of our psychological systems,
but it is none the less real on that account. We are led to it by the
simple analysis of the Pauline consciousness, and there will come again
a time when it will be better understood than it is to-day" (Paret).
^ Gal. V. 22.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 29
exalted form of the nous or inner man himself, a new
faculty or exercise of will due to the influence at the
roots of our personality of the Personal Christ ; for we
are enjoined to "walk in the Spirit," and to "sow to the
Spirit " and not " to the flesh," as if this new force left us
still masters of our own destiny and laid on us the duty of
acting in accordance with its movements.^ It is plain that
along with Christ's dwelling in us, and His possession, as it
were, of the seat of our life, there may coexist independent
action on our part, that proceeds from the old self-life
and shows that our own personal being is not wholly one
with the Higher Principle. Paul recognised this ; he was
not blind to the sins into which Christians fell. We can
see that it was a perplexity to him how they who had
Christ dwelling in them could sin ; but he does not allow
himself to deny, on that account, that they had Christ
dwelling in them. " He bates no jot of his ideal
Gospel."^ He rather impresses upon them more strongly
than ever the fact with which their conduct was in such
flagrant contradiction. " Know ye not," he exclaims (recall
ing to them what they were as members of Christ), " that
the Holy Spirit is in you, that ye are the temple of God ? "^
It was the remembrance of what they were " in Christ " and
of His indwelling in them that alone could give the impulse
to conduct that was in keeping with it. Whatever difficulty
this great idealist might have in reconciling the actual facts
of the Christian life with the operative presence of Christ
living out His own Divine' life in Christians, whatever account
he might give to himself of the discrepancy in believers
1 Gal. V. 16, vi. 8.
' " It was beyond all doubt a wonderful faith that, in spite of
appearances to the contrary, held fast to the reality of these gifts of
God, and that could in patience wait till it manifested itself also to the
senses, a faith that was supported by the near approach of the
Parousia " (Wernle, Der Christ u. die Siinde bei Paulus, p. 60).
^ I Cor. vi. 19.
9

130 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
between the Ideal and the Real, he saw that the true remedy
and the secret of the approximation of the latter to the former
lay in their realising more constantly this Divine Presence.
Thus only would they be enabled to act in a manner worthy
of their real selves, and true to their deepest life.
This doctrine of the mystical Christ is an essential part
of the Pauline conception. The power of Christ to dwell in
His people and to communicate His own spiritual life to
them was an aspect of His Glory that the apostle could not
make enough of; it was everything to him. The presence'
of Christ within was the summum bonum of man, it was the
very essence of the Christian Good ; if he rejoiced in being
a child of God, it was because he was one with the Exalted
Christ who is the Son. It was the fountain of moral inspira
tion and strength, for he was one with the mighty Spirit of
God. It was, moreover, the ground of his hope of immor
tality. We can see from the Epistles that Paul deeply
desiderated for himself a well-grounded assurance that death
would not be the end.^ And it was a welcome thought to
him that, through fellowship with the Spiritual Christ, he
was partaker of a principle of life that had in the Person of
the Risen One already proved its imperishableness, and that
could not fail to impart immortality to all who had it from
that source. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because
of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness ; if the
Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in
you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall also
quicken your mortal bodies through the Spirit that dwelleth
in you." ^
1 A recent writer (Teichmann, Die Paul. Vorstellungen von Aufer
stehung, p. i) says, "The Pauline faith in Christ is at bottom a faith
in the Power of the Christ to rescue man from the perishableness of
time and to confer upon him the imperishableness of life eternal." This
is perhaps an exaggeration. But there can be no doubt about Paul's
deep personal interest in a Christ who had overcome death and could
fulfil the destiny of man as created for immortality.
" Rom. viii. 10, 11.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY I3I
This truth of Christ's immanence has always been a
most influential one in the life of the Church. It is
true, indeed, as T. H. Green reminds us, " that in a
generation or two the intuition of the present Christ, which
Paul even seems to have been unable to convey to others
as it was to himself, had faded away, and that in its stead
came the belief in past events or in present mysteries,
transactions external to the man which had to be stated in
a creed." ^ But it is also true that the intuition has been
recovered again and again in the course of the Church's
history ; ^ and that in times especiaUy when the religious
life has been crushed under the weight of tradition and
ecclesiastical observance, this truth of the Spiritual Presence
of Christ has come home with wonderful power to devout
souls who sought God in secret, restoring to their hearts
that Gracious Figure that had become a tradition of the
past or a mere formula of theology. Wearied with the arid
notions and verbal definitions of scholastic theology, men
have turned to the revelation of the Indwelling Christ as
the traveller turns to a well of water in the desert, finding
themselves brought thereby into direct communion with the
living God for whom their souls thirsted, and made glad by
the contact of their hearts with the realities of the spiritual
world.^ It is a truth very congenial, especially to all forms
of Mystical Piety ; and some of the most precious works
on heart religion that have come from the school of the
^ The Witness of God, p. 27.
2 In speaking of this doctrine of the inward Christ, Gore says,
" Mystical as it is, and transcending, as it does, our faculties of intellec
tual analysis, it has been ridiculed as fit only for enthusiasts in a
rationalistic age such as the last century ; but every revival of vital
Christianity brings it to the front again, and roots it anew in the
consciousness of serious and devout Christians, though they be ' plain
men' and unimpassioned " (Bampton Lecture, p. 221).
3 The intensity that characterised the religious life and experience of
the late General Gordon was due to his vivid realisation of the Indwell
ing Christ, He often refers to it in his Letters to his Sister. He speaks

132 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
Mystics owe their power to move us as they do to the experi
ences they contain of communion with the Christ within.
There are certain dangers indeed that accompany the one
sided cultivation ofa religious life in which this truth is aH in all.
And these may be mentioned if only to point out how Paul,
the first evangelical Mystic and the greatest of them all, escaped
the dangers of mysticism, and what further view of Christ's
Exalted Activity it was that saved him from the exaggeration
and error into which many of his successors have fallen.
It is doubtless true that with those who make much of
the Mystical Christ and of communion with Him, the
picture of the historic Jesus is apt to fall into the back
ground. Their impressions of Him come to be determined
by what they are too ready to accept as private communica
tions made to their souls by the Exalted Christ, more than
by the truth that is conveyed through the facts of the
historic life ; and the abiding value of Christ's historic work
suffers in other ways when the Indwelling of the Spirit of
God is emphasised. The mediatorial office of Christ comes
to be dispensed with, and the individual is tempted to feel
that being in a sense an incarnation ofthe Spirit of Christ he
is also a Christ to himself, and to say, with a certain Quaker
of old, " I too am Christ." It is inevitable, also, that the
habit of dwelling exclusively on the Spirit's presence should
tend to dissolve the connection that ought to subsist in our
minds between the Spirit and the historic Christ. Depend
ence on a vague impersonal Spirit or principle of life, in
minds predisposed to pantheistic exaggeration of the
Divine side of our nature, comes to take the place of trust
in the living Personal Saviour. There is nothing of aH
of our " realising our identity with and absorption in Christ," of " the
Holy Spirit being incarnated in us," of " the power and peace that flows
from the truth that God dwells in us." It is to be remembered, too, that
this type of religious experience was associated in his case with extra
ordinary efficiency in the practical affairs of life and in the management
of men.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 33
this, however, it must be noticed, in the thought of the
apostle. His conscious possession of the Spirit of God
never broke down in his mind the sense of his absolute
dependence on the historic Christ for that Divine Gift ; nor
does he ever use language that betrays the faintest conscious
ness that he stood on a level with his Master because
possessing a measure of the same Spirit of God. He
could indeed say to his converts, " Be ye followers of
me," ^ because he was conscious that his own life, being
an interpretation of Christ's and inspired by His Spirit,
was an example to them ; but he hastened to add the
words, " as I am of Christ," recognising the supremacy of
his Master and of His example for all alike. Now, what
saved the apostle from any exaggeration to which the view
of Christ as the Immanent principle of life in His people
might have led, was his equally vivid apprehension of His «
Transcendent relation to His people as their Lord. It
belongs to Paul's greatness as an interpreter of Christ that
he set forth His relation to men as being not only of the
nature ofa mystical union, but also as a practical fellowship
based on a community of aim and purpose that calls into
exercise their independent energy as moral beings, — a
fellowship in which He is Lord or Master and they are
servants. This truth of Christ's Lordship has a large place
in the thought of Paul. He was a mystic indeed ; he was
conscious of a oneness with the Exalted Christ that finds
expression in words that are startling to us who lag so far
behind him in religious feeling and intuition. But he was
also a practical teacher ; he never forgot for a moment that he
was a servant or a " slave " of Christ, as he delighted to call
himself, recognising thereby the separateness of Christ from
His people, their mystic union with Him notwithstanding,
and His Lordship over them giving Him a supreme claim"
on their obedience and service. ^ I Cor. xi. I,

134 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST

II
We pass on then to consider the teaching of Paul on the
TRANSCENDENCE or LORDSHiP (Kv/JioT?;?) of Christ. The
term " Lord " occurs hundreds of times in the Epistles, and
/ expresses the conviction of the Supremacy of Christ which the
/ apostle shared with the entire primitive Church. From the
moment they received the evidence which was furnished by
the gift of the Spirit that Jesus was Risen and Exalted,
He was to them Lord. Supremacy, universal dominion,
entered into the very conception of the Christ or Messiah ;
and to believe in the Lordship of Jesus was to confess
Him to be the Christ. " This Jesus whom ye crucified,"
was Peter's solemn declaration to the people, enforcing the
message of the resurrection, " God hath made Lord and
Christ." ^ The terms were synonymous, and the wider
currency which " Lord " obtained was due to the influence
of Paul, who made large use of it, not only because it
was more acceptable to Gentile believers, for whom the
term " Christ " had a Jewish-national significance, but
because it so well expressed the authority of Christ and
the relation of believers to Him as His servants (SoOXot).
Paul's conception of the Lordship of Christ did not
differ from that of his fellow-believers, but it was a
larger and fuller one, as was to be expected from his
richer experience of Christian truth ; and at a later stage
it was characterised by a breadth and comprehensiveness
that went far beyond the content of the original faith.
His conjunction of God and Christ in his stated greetings
to the Churches indicated his belief that a co-partnership
of Divine power and honour was included in the exaltation
of Christ to be Lord. And that there was nothing
accidental in this conjunction we infer from the express
1 Acts ii. 36.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 35
statement in which he contrasts the polytheism and
idolatry of the heathen world with the pure religious faith
of the Christian : " Though there be that are called gods,
whether in heaven or on earth ; as there are gods many
and lords many ; yet to us there is one God, the Father,
of whom are all things, and we unto Him ; and one Lord
Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through
Him." ^ In the Christian religion there is one Father =
God, to whom the term ©eo? in its integrity is applied, and
One who possesses the nature and measure of Divinity that
Kvpto^ describes.'^ In the nomenclature of the apostle the
Father is o ©eo?, Christ is Kvpio<;.^
This name, as well as the dignity and authority denoted I
by it, belong to Christ as Exalted. He is not spoken of
as Lord absolutely, or on the ground of the authority of
His teaching as the historic Christ. At the same time. His j
Lordship is the appropriate result of the entire life-work of -
Jesus on earth, and is the Divine recognition of its Worth.
It was the intended issue of all that He underwent in the
flesh. " He died and rose again that He might be Lord
both of the living and the dead."* The confession that
He is Lord is regarded as inspired by faith in the
almighty power of God who raised Him up from the dead ; *
1 I Cor. viii. 5, 6. Weizacker's translation brings out the sense
better than our R.V. Gibt es fiir uns nur Einen Gott, den Vater, den
Schopfer aller Dinge, der unser Ziel ist, und Einen Herrn Jesus
Christus, den Mittler aller Dinge, der auch unser Mittler ist.
2 The Christian conception of God as related to us contains, as this
passage shows, two elements — Fatherhood and Lordship. They con
stitute one God (ver. 4), but 0 Qsog is applied to the Person of the Father ;
6 Kvpioi to the Person of the Exalted Christ.
3 The term " Lord," except where he quotes from the O. T, (in which
case Kvpio; is used of God, being the Septuagint tr.anslation), uniformly
denotes Christ in Paul's Epistles. That he regards it as Christ's proper
designation we see from the above passage, also from Eph. iv. 5 ;
I Cor. xii. 5. Wherever "Lord" occurs we are to understand him as
referring to Christ, i Cor. iv. 19, iii. 5, vii. 17 ; Rom. xiv. 4, which
Weiss adduces as exceptions, are so only in appearance.
* Rom. xiv. 9. ¦' Rom. x. 9.

136 ST. Paul's conception of christ
and in Phil. ii. 7-10 we are told that He received the
Name of " Lord," conferring the right to universal worship,
as the reward of His voluntary self-abasement in the
assumption of our nature. The dignity and power to which
He was thus raised are declared to continue to belong to
Him till He has accomplished the work of our salvation
and all His enemies have been subdued. The " Lordship "
shall then be laid aside, and the delegated Supremacy over
all that has respect to the salvation of man shall be
surrendered to the Father again.^
The Lordship of Christ, which belongs to Him as
Exalted, stands, therefore, in the closest connection with
His earthly life-work, and is its natural consummation. It
meant an enlargement of power and endowment such as
was needed to make His supremacy operative and in
fluential in the world of humanity, but all this as the
outgrowth of His historic life, as carrying to its final
issue, as well as setting in its true light the glory that
existed in Him in a concealed form before, and was dis
coverable in the days of His flesh by all who had eyes to
see. Paul never forgets that He who is now Lord, and is
so much more and greater than He was when on earth, is
essentially the same with Him who had suffered and died,
and that His present exaltation is, in its deepest meaning,
simply the recognition of the Divine Worth that belonged
to Him even in the days of His flesh. Witness the
beautiful combination that occurs in the epistles, " the Lord
Jesus," as if he clung to the thought that He who is now
Supreme is one and the same with Him who had made
Himself known and loved by His pure, unselfish life.
Jesus was Lord ; that meant that He, whose goodness had
1 I Cor. XV. 24-28. In reference to this passage Mr. Gladstone in
his paper, " Proem to Genesis," makes the suggestive remark : " It may
be we shall find that Christianity itself is in some sort a scaffolding, and
that the final building is a pure and perfect theism ; when the kingdom
shall be delivered up to God, that God may be all in all,"

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 37
so little impressed the world at large, had now been acknow
ledged as the Supreme and Final manifestation of God ; that
the gracious love to sinners and the lowly spirit of service
that had shone forth from the life and death of Jesus were
declared and authenticated to be the strongest and Divinest
things in the universe, and to have represented the very
mind and heart of God ; that He was victorious over the
powers of sin and death that appeared at the Cross to have
triumphed over Him, and that He was now the Pledge of
His people's supremacy over these forces and of their final
deliverance from present subjection to them. We do not
wonder at the importance assigned by the apostle to the
confession that Jesus is Lord, or that he should have
referred it to the enlightenment of the Divine Spirit.^
" The acknowledgment of the Christ without is evidence of
inspiration from the Christ within." The world worships
the supremacy of power ;^ but the Lordship of Jesus means
the Supremacy of Love and HoHness, and the confession of
it signifies the bowing down in heart before the Greatness
of the God whom Jesus has made known, and before the
personal Ideal that His life embodied, an act of homage of
which only he is capable who has been taught of God.
The Lordship of Christ is in Paul's teaching no empty
title, no inoperative prerogative ; it is exercised actively on
His people's behalf, and is, for one thing, their security against
all evil that may threaten their well-being. Under the in
spiring influence of the thought that Jesus lives and reigns,
the apostle bursts into the splendid song of confidence at
the close of Rom. viii. that concludes with the words, " I am
^ I Cor. xii. 3.
2 The Antichrist that Paul has in his eye in 2 Thessalonians is
power used for merely selfish and sensual ends. Paul saw this power
impersonated in the frivolous sensuality of the Emperor Nero. But
Antichrist is incarnate in all who use power for selfish and degrading
ends in contrast with Him whose supremacy is that of love and self-
sacrifice.

138 ST. Paul's conception of christ
persuaded that nothing shall separate us from the love of
God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord," the Exaltation of
Christ binding believers to His love and care with a bond
that is indissoluble.-'
But more is secured than their protection from evil by
Christ's Lordship over His people. As Lord He has
proprietary rights over them purchased by what He has
done on their behalf, and He has that interest in them, and
in their becoming all that He desires them to be, which
one cannot help taking in those who are one's own. They
are the objects of His gracious regard, and He is engaged
in the business of their sanctification and is actively
carrying on the work of grace in their souls. He causes
them " to increase and abound in love." ^ He strengthens
them in good works, and establishes them.^ Judicial
functions are also ascribed to Him, and the exercise of
these will fitly close His activity as the Exalted Lord.
On the " Day of the Lord " He will descend from heaven
and appear as Judge on earth;* and before His judgment-
seat all shall stand,* " bond and free," ® the living and the
dead, that " each may receive the things done in the body
according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad."'
This truth of Christ's Lordship imparts to the
Christian life its distinctive character, makes it at once
a life that is devoted to Him and to the advancement of
His Glory, and that issues in our conformity to His Image.
The believing response to it is expressed in such utter-
1 It is said of Luther that in times of depression he wrote for himself
the words, Dominus Vivit, Vivit, on the table, door, and walls of his
room to serve for the encouragement of his faith.
2 I Thess. iii. 12. ^2 Thess. iii. 3. * i Cor. iv. 5.
" 2 Cor. V. 10. " Eph. vi. 8.
' 2 Cor. V. 10 ; I Thess. iv. 16 ; 2 Thess. i. 9. The apostolic picture
of Christ coming in judgment (i Thess. iv. 16 ; 2 Thess. i. 7, etc.) has
not a little in common with the descriptions of the Messiah found in
the apocalyptic literature of that age. On this, see Teichmann's Die
Paul. Vorstel. in Auferstehung u. Gesicht., 1896, p. 24, etc.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 39
ances as these, — " to me to live is Christ " ; 1 " whether we
live we' live unto the Lord, whether we die we die unto the
Lord." ^ To " glease tjie Lord " is represented as the
supreme aim of the disciple ; ^ to " glory " in the Lord his
one legitimate boast ; * "to do the will " of the Lord his
chief business, for the Lord's will is the highest standard of
conduct, even as the Lord Himself is the Supreme Ex
ample.* The perfection that is to crown His people's
effort consists in the "glory of the Lord,"® that is, in perfect
likeness to Him who is victorious over sin and death, who
is " Lord." The process of transformation is being carried
on now by the Risen Christ who reproduces Himself in the
inner life of believers; "reflecting the glory of the Lord,
we are changed into His image from glory to glory." ^ The
power that belongs to Christ as Lord is, we learn from all
this, a power that is exercised on His people's behalf; the
effect of His working is their complete salvation, the
gradual lessening of the distance that still separates them
from Him, and the communication to them by successive
stages of His own distinguishing " glory." He is the " First
born " of many brethren, and is constituted Lord over them,
in order that, by what He is able to do for and in them. He
may impart His own superiority to all evil.^ This is the
end or purpose of His Exaltation to be Lord. Its object is
the carrying on of His mediatorial work, and when it is
accomplished in their complete redemption from evil, and
in their participation of that mastery over all hostile forces
that is as yet His exclusive possession. His Lordship will
cease, and the Son shall also be subjected to Him that did
subject all things unto Him, that God may be aU in all.^
' Phil. i. 21. 2 Rom. xiv. 8. '' Col. i. 10.
" I Cor. i. 31. '^ I Cor. xi. i. " 2 Thess. ii. 14.
^ 2 Cor. iii. 18. ' Rom. viii. 29-30.
9 I Cor. XV. 28. While the immediate sphere, according to the
above, of the active exercise of Christ's Lordship is the community of
believers. His Sovereignty itself embraces all men, and extends to every

140 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
But the further question remains, how does He who is
related to us as Kvpio<i, or Supreme, stand to God ? He
to whom we are subject, answers the apostle, is Himself
subject to God, as the Son is to the Father ; this subjection
is at the same time consistent with an equality with God,
inasmuch as in mind and heart and will the Son is
absolutely one with the Father. The subordination is
expressly stated. In all the Epistles God is spoken of as
the " God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." ^ " The
head of every man," we read, " is Christ, and the head of
Christ is God " ; ^ while " all things are ours, and we are
Christ's, Christ is God's " ; ^ and as the passage already
quoted states. He who now rules by God's authority will
' by and by return His trust, that all may be subject to the
Father as Supreme.
On the other hand, inasmuch as the very basis of His
" Lordship " is His perfection as the Son of God, His fuH
participation of the very life of God qualifying Him to
human interest. To suppose that His Dominion is not coextensive
with that ofthe Father, that His Spirit is not to rule over the entire life
of man, would be to introduce a dualism into our thought of the world
that is intolerable to the mind. But His Lordship over the world at
large is made effectual through the instrumentality of His people and
through the universal application of the principles of His kingdom, which
it is their business to make. He is Lord over them that they may in
tum subject all to the authority of His Love and righteousness, and so
illustrate the supremacy of His Rule and the world-subduing Power of
His Spirit. They who speak of the failure of Christianity point to the
feeble influence Christ has exerted upon national and social life ; and
what truth there is in this assertion is due to the fact that Christians
have not testified as they ought to have done to the universal validity
of those principles of love and self-sacrifice by which Christ reigns.
That Christ's Lordship over all, with the corresponding duty of
believers to assert His supremacy in every sphere of life, does not hold
so large a place in Paul's teaching as we might have expected, is no
doubt to be accounted for by his belief in the near approach ofthe end
of the world, and the setting up of an Ideal order of things by the
exercise of Omnipotence.
' E.g. Rom. XV. 6 ; 2 Cor. i. 3 ; Col. i. 3 ; Eph. i. 3.
^ I Cor. xi. 3. ' I Cor. iii. 23.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 14I
represent the Father and to be the instrument of the
Father's saving will, He is one with God. And while the
Father and the Lord Christ are spoken of as two, they are
also spoken of as to the religious consciousness one.
What the One does, the Other is said also to do.^ Some
times it is the " Lord " who is represented as bestowing
upon us the blessings of redem'ption, " calling us into His
Kingdom," " establishing us in grace " ; ^ in other passages, it
is the Father who does for us these same things.^ Now, it
is the " grace of the Lord Jesus," that Paul prays his con
verts may receive;* again, it is "the grace of God," the
Father.* The identity is also implied when the action of
the historic Christ is viewed as the equivalent of the action
of God, as in Romans v. 8, " God commendeth His love to
us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us " ;
also, where Christ's present activity is spoken of as the
instrument by which God is carrying out His Saving
Purpose. It is the Lord through whom we now receive
from God " grace and apostleship." « " Being justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ." ' " Who shall deliver us from this body of death ?
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord ; " * " thanks be
unto God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ;"^ "obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus
Christ."" Sometimes the preposition "in" instead of
"through" is used, — "the gift of God is eternal life in^
our Lord Jesus Christ " ; " the only difference being that in
these passages, instead of the instrument through whom God
1 E.g. God is declared to be our Judge (Rom. ii. 16) ; and in another
place -we are told we must all appear before the Judgment-seat of
Christ (2 Cor. v. 10). ^ i Cor. vii. 17 ; i Thess. iii. 13.
3 I Thess. ii. 12 ; i Cor. i. 9. * Rom. xvi. 20.
s I Cor. i. 4. As a rule, " the grace of God and of the Lord Jesus
Christ" are conjoined (i Cor. i. 3 ; 2 Cor. i. 2 ; Gah i. 3).
0 Rom. i. 5. ' Rom V. I. " Rom. vii. 25.
» I Cor. XV. 57- ^° I Thess. v. 9.

142 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
blesses us, Christ is viewed as the Man in fellowship with
whom the Divine blessing is received.
The idea we gather from these passages is that, as Lord,
Christ discharges a jgediatorial function. It is through Him
" that all things are,"^ that communications between God and
men take place. In relation to us, He is God's Vicegerent,
who is at the same time subject to God, as one who repre
sents another and dispenses the favour of that other, is subject
to him whom he represents and whose kindness he dispenses.
But as God's Vicegerent and Representative He is to us as
God. He is not separate in our minds from God, but one with
Him. In what He does for and in us, God is active. It is
always in and through the exercise of the Will of Christ that
God accomplishes His Will. Christ and God seem to form in
I Paul's mind one image, and he passes naturally from the one
V to the other when the same form of activity is referred to.^
The authority of Christ is indistinguishable from that of God,
for it is the authority of righteousness and love. His power
working in our hearts and lives is the power of God accom
plishing for us what only the Divine energy can accomplish.
If our highest thought of God is that of the sum-mum bonum,
then Christ answers to that thought, for in Him, Exalted
and Lord, all moral and religious good is found, the forgive
ness of sins, the participation of life everlasting, power to
live as children, a supreme moral ideal and authority; all
this, answering to our highest conception ofthe Divine, makes
Him one with God in our thoughts and regards.^
We have found in the first part of this lecture that
as Immanent in His people, Christ is spoken of by the
1 I Cor. viii. 6. -
2 E.g. I Thess. iii. 11, 12, where a prayer is directed to God and the
" Lord," and continuing it, the apostle contents himself with naming the
"Lord" only, although God is as truly concerned in the answering of
the second part of the prayer as in the first. Although he understands
by the " Lord" Christ, it is evident he does not think of Him as separate
or distinct from God (comp. 2 Tim. i. 18).
3 The doctrine of Christ's intercession (so prominent in the Ep. to

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 43
apostle not only as the Giver of the Spirit of God, but
also as Himself that Spirit, so identified in his experience
was the influence of fhe Personal Christ with the energy
of the Spirit of God. And we are prepared to find,
similarly, that in speaking of Him in His transcendent
relation as Lord, Paul should call Him expresslj- God, for,
as we have seen, the same activities are spoken of indiffer
ently as the activities of God and of the " Lord." But it
is ver)' doubtful whether Paul so designates Christ. There is
only one passage that can be adduced in this connection,'
and that one is not conclusi\e, since it depends on the
punctuation, whether the words " who is over all, God blessed
for ever " are to be taken as a doxology to the Father, or
as an integral part of the preceding statement about Christ ;
and there is apparently little prospect of unanimity among
scholcirs on this point. Paul does not elsewhere use the
word ©609 of Christ, and although there is nothing in his
thought that could prevent him doing so, it seems hazardous
on the strength of this one passage, that is of doubtful
interpretation, to conclude that he has actually called
Christ God.2 But the fact that he habitually applies to
Christ the term Lord (Kupeo?), a term that in the Septuagint
is practically equivalent to God (©eo?), and is the rendering
Hebrews), suggesting the idea, not of God accomplishing His Will
through Christ's activity, but of Christ's activity as moving that of God
in accordance therewith, is foreign to the theology of Paul. The inter
cession of Christ in heaven is only once referred to in his writings
(Rom. %-iii. 34), and there the word describes the activity of His Love
generally, at the Right Hand of God, in befriending and taking the part
of His people against ever>thing that threatens their well-being. Their
having been justified by God (ver. 34) seems to exclude the idea of God
needing to be interceded with on their behalf.
^ Rom. ix. 5.
2 In Sanday and Headlam's Commentar)' on Romans a long and
careful note will be found on this text, which, as thev say, has been
probably discussed at greater length than any other verse ofthe N. T.
Their conclusion is that the "balance of probability is in favour of
referring the expressions 0io-- and i^i ^a:rrM» to Christ." In Ritschl's
view there is no doubt of the truth of this interpretation {Altkatholische

144 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
of the most solemn name of Jehovah in the Old Testament,
shows that in his regard He was entitled to the worship
and obedience that are due to God.' To such an extent is
He the object of religious worship that Christians are
spoken of as those who " call on the name of Jesus Christ
our Lord," this invocation of Christ being referred to as
the common mark by which they are distinguished,^ — a
striking testimony to the supremacy of Christ in the faith
of His followers, and of the practical identification of Him
with God in their religious feelings.* If further proof were
Kirehe, p. 29). It must be admitted, however, that it is against his usage
for Paul to call Christ ©eo'f, a term reserved by him for the Father
alone ; and the additional epithet Iti -Tcanuv, equivalent to the idea of
Ki/^/of, would, if viewed as descriptive of Christ, make the apostle speak
of the latter as the " Lord God," a combination that goes beyond the
thought of the apostle regarding his Master as expressed in his writings.
' See Note C on the use of the term KiJ^j/oj in the Septuagint.
2 I Cor. i. 2 ; Rom. x. 13.
^ We find, accordingly, that prayer is directed to Christ. Paul
specifies an occasion when he prayed to the " Lord " (2 Cor. xii. 8), and
" the calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ," which he attributes
to believers, includes prayer besides other exercises of worship. Some
who pray in Christ's name, recognising the revelation of God that Christ
has given as the ground of their expectation of being heard, shrink from
direct prayer to Christ. Their minds cling to the image of the earthly
Jesus, who was Himself a Man of prayer, and they think it is derogatory
to God, the Source of all Blessing, to ask Christ to give what He must
Himself first receive from the Father. But by His exaltation Christ has
become so one with the Father and with the Spirit that it is natural for
us to think of Him as not only the Medium of blessing to His people,
but the Dispenser of it ; and since it is God in Christ we appeal to, we
feel it to be in no wise inconsistent with what is due to God to direct
our prayer to Christ. At the same time it is to be noticed that, as a
rule, in his Epistles God the Father is spoken of as the Source of all
good, to whom we are to look for what we need and to whom we are to
pray, while Christ is the instrument by whom it is given. And nothing
could be more contrary to Paul's thought than the notion that lurks in
the minds of some whose habit it is to pray to Christ, that He is more
accessible to men than the Father is. The ease and naturalness with
which Paul passes from the thought of God to that of Christ shows that
he knew of no other God save the God who was one with Christ and Christ
with Him, that in turning in faith and prayer to Christ he was conscious
he was drawing near to God in the truest way, and that in calling on
God he was calling on Christ in whom alone God is accessible to men.

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 45
wanted of the Divinity claimed by Paul for his Master, it is
found in the words of the benediction, " The Grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion
of the Holy Ghost be with you all." ' Our ears are so
accustomed to the words of the formula that we are apt to
miss the force of the testimony they furnish to the extra
ordinary impression of Divine glory made by the Risen
Saviour on the hearts of His followers. The fact that He
is mentioned in the same breath with the Eternal God and
the Life-giving Spirit — in a way, too, that betrays no con
sciousness whatever that the juxtaposition of Christ with
God and the Spirit will be thought by any to savour of
extravagance or an exaggerated sense of what is due to
Him — is surely a remarkable proof of the exalted place He
held in their regards.
The confession of Christ's Lordship is the confession of
His Divinity. There is no doubt that to Paul and the
mass of believers the Man Christ Jesus, Risen and Exalted,
stood in the place of God, and was the object of worship.
In Him thay saw God manifested in a human form. In
His influence upon them they perceived the influence of the
Spirit of God. Of His Divine power they had the most
convincing evidence in the consciousness of the new life,
with the moral strength it imparted, which He had
quickened within them. In contact with Him, and in the
experience of His gracious love forgiving their sins, they
were in communion with God in the riches of His love, and
were conscious of changes of thought and feeling and purpose
which could only be ascribed to the Will of God. They
were not withheld from the worship of Christ . because He
was Divinity in a human form. The only knowledge of
God that can inspire religious worship is that which comes
to us through a human manifestation of Him. Religious
worship is impossible without reverence and love; and in
' 2 Cor. xiii. 14.
10

146 ST. Paul's conception of christ
order to command these feelings God must reveal Himself
through human qualities that express our highest concep
tions of worth in character, and through the medium of
acts that satisfy our highest expectations of what may be
experienced from the energy of the Divine Will. And
Christ is the proper object of worship, because in Him God
comes to us, appeals to us, works upon us in these ways.
How Paul's monotheism is to be reconciled with this
practical acknowledgment of Christ as Divine, — for mono-
theist he remained, as we see from the distinction he
observed in speaking of the Father as God and Christ as
Lord, — -is a matter on which we expect some light to be
thrown by those passages in his Epistles that suggest a
transcendent relation of Christ to God over and above that
in which He stood to Him as the Man exalted to be, in
the faith of His people. One with the Father and with the
Spirit. The passages referred to will fall to be considered
as we proceed in our inquiry. Meanwhile, it is to be
repeated that the Divinity in Christ on which Paul based
his faith in Him as Lord was a truth to which his own
conscious experience of Christ, and of the effects of His
working on his inner life, bore witness. And we learn
from this that in order to know Him to be the Son of God,
and to justify our faith in Him as truly Divine, we do not
need more than the evidence of experience which flows
from the practical acknowledgment of Him as Supreme.
I conclude with the words of the late Dr. Dale, which seem
to me fairly to represent the Pauline view : " It may be
that some of you who have constructed for yourselves
imposing conceptions of God as the Creator of all things,
the Infinite, the Absolute, the Almighty, the Unchangeable,
the Omnipresent, the Omniscient, a God of your own mak
ing, an hypothesis to render the universe, intelligible, may be
perplexed and confounded when you attempt to find this
God in Christ, But if you have found in Christ the

CHRIST THE LIFE AND LORD OF NEW HUMANITY 1 47
supreme and ultimate authority over your moral and
religious Hfe, you have found God in Him. If you have
found in Christ the Infinite Mercy through which your sins
are forgiven, you have found God in Him. If you have
found in Christ the Giver and Source and perpetual support
and defence of that Divine life which renders righteous
ness and saintliness possible in this world, and is the
beginning of immortal power, you have found God in Him.
Even if your lips falter when you are asked to confess that
He is God, He is of a truth God to you. These realms of
moral and spiritual truth, in which for you Christ is
supreme, lie far above the realm of material things. He
who is supreme in the spiritual order cannot hold any
secondary place in the physical ; you have already con
fessed, even if you meant it not, that Christ is eternally one
with the Highest." ' u
' Christian Doctrine, pp. 120, 121. It is well known with what
emphasis Luther insisted on the truth that the Man Jesus is the proper
revelation of God, and that all speculations are unprofitable that relate
to the Divine nature outside of Him. " See to it," he says in his Table
Talk, " that thou know of no God and pay homage to no God except the
Man Jesus Christ, but lay hold of Him alone, and continue hanging with
thy whole heart on Him, and let all thoughts and speculations about the
Majesty go their own way ! In this business look straight at the Man
alone, who presents Himself to us as Mediator, and says, ' Come to Me
all ye that are weary and heavy laden.' "

V

LATER DEVELOPMENTS: CHRIST THE
FULNESS OF GOD, THE HEAD OF
THE CHURCH AND OF ALL PRIN
CIPALITIES AND POWERS

149

LECTURE V
Later Developments : Christ the Fulness of God,
THE Head of the Church and of all Princi
palities AND Powers
The subject of the present lecture is the development in
the later Epistles of Paul, the so-called Epistles of the
Imprisonment, of that doctrine of Christ which in its main
features we have now considered. And I shall confine
myself at this time to the Epistles to the Ephesians and
Colossians, reserving the teaching of Philippians for the
lecture to follow, where its special contribution to our
subject will find its proper place. No one can fail to be
struck by the contrast these two Epistles present to those
from which we have hitherto drawn our material for this
study. They evidently belong ^o a much later period in^
the history of the planting of the Church. That to the
Ephesians marks the close of the epoch with which the
earlier Epistles deal. We hear only the echoes of the
controversy that rages so loudly in the letters that were
penned by the apostle under the strain of the conflict
which he had carried on with the Jewish section of the
Church. The battle had been won when the letter to the
Ephesians was written. The ideal of a new society, of
which believing Jews and Gentiles were members on equal
terms, — that ideal of which Paul had been so powerful an
advocate, — is now an accomplished fact. This splendid
achievement of the Christian faith gives him occasion to
expatiate on God's eternal purpose to reconcile to one
151

152 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
another in Christ all sections of the human race.^ And if
this Epistle is manifestly an eirenikon, marking the peace
ful settlement of the controversy which the announcement
of the free grace of the Gospel had provoked and en
countered in the first days of the Church's history, that
to the Colossians as plainly marks the beginning of a new
era ; for it places us in the thick of a second controversy, —
this time not with national but with intellectual exclusive
ness, — a controversy that grew in intensity as time went on,
and that was destined to reach dimensions and to involve
in it issues that made it one of the most memorable in
which the Church was ever engaged.
And the point of interest for us is that both Epistles
are remarkable for the fresh points of view from which the
Person and Work of Christ are regarded in them, and for
the impressiveness both of the ideas and of the language
in which these are couched, in reference to the Supremacy
of Christ. New terms are applied to His Person ; signifi
cant hints crop up as to the bearing of His Work and
Influence on superhuman intelligences. Such is the
wealth of language called forth by the contemplation
of the Exalted Son of God, that we seem to lose sight of
the historic Jesus in the blaze of glory that surrounds
the throne. This advance of thought in reference to the
Divine Pre-eminence of Christ, has been represented as so
pronounced as to amount to a change of view that is in
consistent not only with the Pauline authorship of these
^ Eph. i. lo-ii, ii. 13-18. "The Christian doctrine," says Principal
Rainy, " rests upon and rises out of the Christian facts, — the persons,
the transactions, the events." And again, " Christian doctrine is the
light that illuminates for us the transactions of a divine history"
{Development and Delivery of Christian Doctrine, pp. 100- 101). The
doctrine of the Epistle to the Ephesians is a case in point. The
reconciliation of Jew and Gentile had been wrought out and had
become a fact of history. The theology of the Epistle is the Divine
interpretation of that fact, and of the work of Christ in its bearing
upon it.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS I 53
Epistles, but with their having been written in the apostolic
age. With regard to the Epistle to the Colossians in
particular, with which we have chiefly to do in this connec
tion, it is alleged that the use in it of terms that were
current in later speculative discussions points to its having
been written in the middle of the second century, and
suggests the propriety of regarding it as a monument of
the great conflict with heathen systems of thought through
which the Church then passed. It has, however, as it
seems to me, been conclusively shown, both by Lightfoot
and Klopper in their splendid contributions to the elucida
tion of this Epistle, that there is nothing in it that requires
us to refer its composition to sub-apostolic times, and that
the entire course of thought becomes luminous when we
regard it as directed against a system of error that was
Jewish in its origin, and was certainly influential in
apostoHc times in circles liable to be affected by it. We
know comparatively little of the Jewish sect of the Essenes,
but we are sure that the mediation and worship of angels
were prominent features of their religious system, and that
the Ideal of life which they practised was modelled on the
spirituality of angelic intelligences. And once assume that
a leaven of that sort had invaded the Churches on the
Lycus through their Jewish adherents, we shall then have a
sufficient background of historic fact for the understanding
of the Epistle, and a sufficient explanation of the emphasis
placed on the higher aspects of Christ's Person and Work.^
It is another and distinct question whether it came
from Paul's pen, and whether we are warranted in drawing
from it material for our reconstruction of his thought. The
^ RitschI infers from the mention of those who abstained from flesh
and wine in Rom. xiv. 21, that there was in the Church of Rome also a
leaven ofthe doctrine of the Essenes. He accounts for the presence of
Jews in Rome and Colosse by the dispersion through the cities of the
empire of the Jews whom Pompey had carried off from their native land
as prisoners of war {Altkath. Kirehe, 233).

1 54 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
answer will depend on the estimate we form of its teaching,
and whether we regard the ideas it contains as a develop
ment of truth found in germ in the undisputed writings of
the apostle, or whether we must view them as a fresh
departure pointing to another mind. The more we consider
the matter, the more does the former view commend itself
A mind like Paul's, ever in Hving contact with the truth,
might well be stimulated to make an advance in the
apprehension of his Master's Greatness by the crisis that
arose when men attempted to engraft the ideas of that
Jewish sect on the Christian faith.
The inevitable tendency of these outside ideas was to
lower Christ in the esteem of believers, to exalt other beings
to a share of the worship that belonged exclusively to Him,
and to encourage the ascetic treatment of the body rather
than communion with the Risen Lord. Paul must have
felt that the truth of the Christian Religion itself was at
stake when the question was raised, Where is Christ in the
universe of being, what rank does He hold in relation to
other intelligences and to God ? He knew he could give,
out of the consciousness of the New Life in Christ, an
answer to these questions that met the wants that had
given birth to them, and that overcame the error into
which men fell when they tried to answer them by specula
tions of their own ; and he hastened to give the answer.
( He was not afraid to use the terms that were current in
) these speculations, because he could fill them with ideas
that made them express the very truth of the Christian
\ faith. We need not wonder that in its advocacy of
the universal Supremacy of Christ, his teaching bears the
impress of the system of thought he opposed. It is the
same truth that we find in the Epistles of an earlier period,
but unfolded and applied to meet new circumstances, cast
into the mould of the theological thought of the time. If
we assume Paul to be the writer, his procedure is a fine

LATER DEVELOPMENTS I 55
instance of wisdom in the performance of the task by
which the Christian theologian is confronted in ages of
intellectual movement and spiritual unrest, — the task of
adapting the eternal truths of religion to the wants of the
new age by seizing on the thoughts that set forth its
aspirations and gropings after certainty, in order to point
men to the revelation of God in Christ for the satisfaction
of every craving that is rooted in our religious nature.
We find, then, in these Epistles a doctrine of the
Exalted Christ that undoubtedly exhibits an enhanced sense
of the Greatness of His Person ; and the progress of state
ment in this direction is along the various lines of truth
that set forth the thought of the apostle in the earlier
letters. And I proceed to indicate as briefly as I can the
development of the original elements of the Pauline
Christology under each of the three heads of the pre
ceding lectures, the interpretation of the Person of Christ
we find here, as well as of His work, and of His present
relations to mankind.

I
With regard to the interpretation oi the Person of
Christ that is characteristic of the Epistles now under
review, it is to be observed, on the one hand, that while
a new terminology is used, the idea of His Archetypal
Significance is still plainly the master-thought, and, on theS
other, that the terms employed emphasise more strongly the '
qualitative as well as quantitative distinction between Christ
and other men. The new terms applied to Christ are
" the fulness of God," ^ and " the Image of the Invisible
God."^ These correspond with the designation of Him
as the " Spiritual man " and " Son of God," but they give us
a grander view of His Pre-eminence over the human race.
1 Col. ii. 9, i. 19. ^ Col. i. 15.

156 ST. Paul's conception of christ
I. The term FULNESS OF GOD is evidently a theolo
gical one, and is borrowed from a vocabulary familiar to
those to whom the Epistle was written. When we ask what
precisely it signified on their Hps, we are left to a certain
extent to conjecture. We know what it meant in the later
system of the Gnostics, in which it played an important
part. But we are dealing with a period antecedent to that
heresy, a period when ideas that afterwards attained to a
full-blown activity were as yet in germ only. And while
the intellectual forces that were then shaping men's
thoughts, whether from Jewish, Greek, or Oriental sources,
all tended in one direction, and imparted a certain similarity
to the religious speculations of thinking men of all schools,
— it is not so much to the influence of Greek thought that
we are to look for the explanation of this term that was
in use among the churches at Colosse, as to the ideas that
; had grown up under the later Judaism on the soil of the
I Hebrew religion. The Essenes shared the view of God that
we find in the Old Testament Scriptures, where He is repre
sented as a Being possessed of a fulness of life that is
manifested in the innumerable forms of created being that
stand around the throne to fulfil the behests of Jehovah.
But later Judaism, speculating on the Infinitude of God, —
influenced, doubtless, also by the feeling that has its roots
in the rehgious consciousness, of the distance between God
and man, and the difficulty of direct access to the Almighty,
— had concentrated its regards exclusively on the complex
of forces and beings that issued from God, and that con
stituted His " Fulness." The Divine Being Himself was
contemplated as inaccessible except through the beings
/ that filled up the gulf between the Infinite and the Finite,
into whom He poured forth the fulness of His life and
energy : only in communion with them, and by following
the Ideal of the spiritual life, unfettered by the flesh, which
they presented, could men have communion with God, or

LATER DEVELOPMENTS I 57
become partakers of His Life. We can understand what
an immense stimulus such views would give to the cultus
of angels, which was practised by those whose errors this
Epistle was written to combat, and which we know from
other sources was a feature of Jewish worship at that
time.^ We do not know what precisely was the place assigned
to Christ by those who had engrafted this speculation on
their faith, but He could be only one of this multitude
of intermediate beings, possessing but a fraction of the
" Fulness " of God that was distributed among them all.
And very soon He would be lost sight of altogether amid
the hierarchy of Celestial Beings. All this was directly
subversive of the Christian faith, and was contradicted by
the consciousness of the life of God, and of direct fellow
ship with Him, which the believer owed to Christ. The per
fection of our religious state and standing was incompatible
with any place other than that of supremacy being assigned
to its Author — with any endowment of Him by the Spirit
that fell short of the very Fulness of God. Hence Paul ,
proclaims that that " Fulness " of the Divine life, which false
teachers had said was distributed among the Many, was
concentrated and had its home in One, " in Christ," " in
whom it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell." ^
In a passage further on ^ he repeats the expression, adding
the words " in a bodily form," claiming for the perfect
' "The worship of angels was assuredly a widely spread Jewish
habit of mind at this time : the Epistle to the Hebrews shows how preva
lent it was where there is no sign of what we should call a philosophy"
{}ior\., Judaistic Christianity, p. 122). Baldensperger has some striking
remarks on this feature of the religious thinking of that age, on the pry
ing curiosity of devout people into the secrets of the spiritual world,
which grew as men felt the mystery that surrounded the Divine Exist
ence. "Is it not," he exclaims, "as if, in the measure in which God
withdrew behind the thick clouds, the Heavenly world for a moment dis
closed itself to the longing heart of man, and made known to them its
secrets?" {Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, p. 51).
gol. i. 19. ^ Col, ii. 9.

158 ST. Paul's conception of christ
Humanity of Christ a participation in the Divine Fulness,
and a fitness to receive from God, and to communicate to
us, all of God and of His Life that can be communicated
and received.^ And this in opposition to those who
exalted the angelic nature above the human as the proper
organ of Divinity.
The term then, in its origin, or as used by the theoso-
phists of Colosse, may be metaphysical or not ; in the
mouth of the apostle it expresses a religious truth, a
truth of reflection based on religious experience, the truth
learnt in communion with the Risen Lord, that in Him
there is a full endowment of life by the Spirit of God that
answers to all the religious needs of human nature. It is
as the embodied organ oj^ the Spirit ^f God that He is
called His " Fulness " ; and the apostle is here putting into
fresh language, language borrowed from speculations then
in vogue, the conception of Christ as the " Life-giving
Spirit," that from the beginning was so fundamental with
him. The most cursory reader of the Epistle to the
Colossians must have been struck by the fact that there is
scarcely any mention in iJ of the Spirit of God/ a fact that
seems unaccountable in a writing which professes to be
Paul's. But the explanation is that other terms are em
ployed to express the idea ; and this term " Fulness of God "
is one of them. The simple word " Spirit " would have
failed to set forth what the apostle meant now to teach :
that there is in Christ that totality or manifoldness of
Divine energies and spiritual qualities which false teachers
said had been distributed among a host of created intelli-
' In Eph. iii. 19 we learn that Christ is the "Fulness" ofthe Divine
life to us, in so far as He is Love, and makes us partakers of the love of
God "that ye may know the love of Christ, and might be filled with all
the fulness of God." This idea of Christ being the plentitude of the
moral attributes of God, especially of Love, distinguished Paul's con
ception of the " Divine Fulness " from that of the false teachers,
^ It occurs only once, i. 8,

LATER DEVELOPMENTS I 59
gences. What required to be insisted upon was, not only \
that Christ was the organ of the Spirit of God, but the S
organ of the Spirit in the manifoldness of His gifts, powers,
operations, — the perfect type of humanity in whom converges
every grace and function that is needed for the purpose
of His coming, which is the complete redemption of man.
In magnifying the endowment of the Servant of the Lord
for his office, the prophet Isaiah had said, " the Spirit of the
Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and under
standing, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of
knowledge, and the fear of the Lord " (Isa. xi. 2). It is
this all-inclusive endowment of spiritual gift and Divine
qualities in relation to the wants of men that the apostle
ascribes to Christ when he speaks of Him as the " Fulness
of God " ; and the expression certainly conveys to us a
profound impression of His inexhaustible value for the
religious life of men.-'
2. He is also designated in this Epistle, the IMAGE OF
THE Invisible God {elKwv rod &eov tov aopdrov, i. 15).
The phrase is found in Philo's writings, and is applied by
him to the Logos, — the principle of self-manifestation and
self-communication in the Godhead. But although a philo
sophical term, it is used by the apostle not to teach any-1
thing about the metaphysical nature of Deity, but to set '
forth a religious truth regarding the Exalted Christ. It is
evident from the context that in speaking of Jesus, the Son
of God's love, " as the Image of the Invisible God," he is
not predicating anything of His Preincarnate Being. He
means to differentiate Him from others who may be spoken
of in a secondary sense as sons of God, in so far as they
exhibit a certain degree of resemblance to God, or separate
1 The vision of Christ in the Apocalypse as having the Seven Spirits
of God (Rev. iii. i), conveys much the same idea as the apprehension
of Him as the " Fulness of God," and brings Christ before us as the Giver
ofthe Spirit in the sevenfold perfectness of His operations.

1 6a, ST. Paul's conception of christ
features of likeness to Him. Christ is the Son, because He
is the Image or perfect embodiment, the complete revela
tion, of the hidden nature of God. This holds, in the abso
lute sense, only of Him as Exalted. Only in Christ thus
perfected and glorified do we behold the very Image of
God, the perlect expression in a form apprehensible by our
faculties of the Divine nature, which must otherwise have
remained hid from us. This truth is also taught, as we
have seen, by Paul in 2 Cor, iv. 4, where Christ's glory is
said to consist in His being the Image of God ; but occur
ring in the Epistle to the Colossians, where the characteristic
description of Christ is that He is the Fulness of God, it
receives additional meaning, and points more unmistakably
to a something in Him that raises Him above all others.
There is nothing indeed in these expressions, as applied
to Christ, that is inconsistent with His Archetypal relation
to mankind, for the peculiarity of His Person which they
set forth is declared to be transferable in measure to His
people. If He is the Son and Image of the Invisible God,
we also are sons, and are called to imitate the perfections
of our Heavenly Father ; if He is the " Fulness of God,"
His believing people are also spoken of as the " Fulness of
God." In connection, however, with this transference to
His people of what is distinctive of Christ, there are two
things to be remembered. On the one hand, what they
have in common with Him is derived from Him, and is
theirs only through their organic connection with Him.
It is through their union with Him who is the " Son " and
" Image" of God, that they are sons and share in God's
image. It is because they are in the first instance so
related to Christ as to be in a true sense His " Fulness,"
that they in their turn are called the " Fulness of God."
And on the other hand, this participation by His people of
Christ's distinctive Being is only a partial participation of
that which He possesses in its integrity. No individual

LATER DEVELOPMENTS l6l
believer is said to be the " Image of God " ; that is His
prerogative. He alone answers to the idea of perfect
resemblance to God. The most that can be said of us
is that we partake of His Image: we are fragmentary
resemblances. This realisation in Christ of the Divine
idea in its completeness, in contrast with its incomplete
realisation in His people, is strikingly illustrated in what
is said of the " Fulness of God." While believers share
this distinction with Him, and are also called the " Fulness
of God,"_it is to the body of believers that this term is
applied, never to the individual ; the truth conveyed being,
that only the Church as a whole can appropriate that
fulness of spiritual life which, found in Christ personally,
entitles Him to be called the " Fulness of God." It is the
body of believers that is destined through the ministry of
the various agencies given for this end, to attain " to the
Perfect Man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ." 1 No individual, however closely he may resemble
his Master, can reveal all that is in Christ. A body, a /
society of men, is the only adequate receptacle for His /
fulness. The truth suggests the inexhaustible energy of
the Spirit of Christ and His adaptation to the manifold
varieties of type in the human race. While, then, it gives
us an idea of the Greatness of His Personality that goes l
beyond anything that we find in the early Epistles, it is (
yet altogether in keeping with the position that is there
assigned to Him as the Second Adam. For as the
successive generations of men are simply the unfolding of
the possibilities of natural life contained in the First Man,
so that not until the race is exhausted can we form any
proper conception of the power and faculty that lay in him
at the first in germ, — we are warranted in saying of
Christ, the Second Adam, or Spiritual Head of Mankind,
that no adequate representation can be furnished of the
' Eph. iv. 13.

1 62 ST. Paul's conception of christ
possibilities of spiritual manhood and likeness to God ofwhich
He is the Germinant Principle and the Pledge, till Humanity
as a whole has been brought into living union with Him,
and every variety of human nature and culture has come
under the influence of His Spirit.^ The " Fulness " of Christ
\ can be contained in and expressed by a Redeemed Human-
) ity only, which will then become the counterpart of Christ
in sharing with Him the glory of being the " Fulness of God."
This magnificent conception of the Church or Redeemed
i Humanity as being the " Fulness of God " is expounded in
s the Epistle to the Ephesians. The theme of that Epistle is
the Grandeur of the Church, that new Brotherhood, in
which men of every nationality and of the most diverse
religious training were bound together by the one Spirit.
To the imposing spectacle of this Body in living fellowship
with God and with one another, the apostle directs the
attention of his readers, who at the time were being
enamoured of that idea which false teachers were holding
before them of an invisible host of angels mediating
between God and men. Not to that world of angelic
intelHgences were they to look ; not from it would they
learn what the " Pleroma " of God was, but from the
Church of Christ, the new Brotherhood of men, filled with
love and holiness, the true recipient, through the presence
and working of its Divine Head, of the Fulness of " Him
who filleth all in all." ^
l/ 1 Canon Gore in his Bampton Lecture (p. 170) insists that only a
really Catholic society can be "the fulness of Him that filleth 'all in
all.'" He adds these words, which I gladly indorse : " Thus we doubt
not that when the day comes which shall see the existence of really
national churches in India and China and Japan, the tranquillity and
inwardness of the Hindu, the pertinacity and patience of the Chinaman,
the brightness and amiability of the Japanese, will each in turn receive
their fresh consecration in Christ, and bring out new and unsuspected
aspects of the Christian life ; finding fresh resources in Him in ' whom
is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, barbarian, Scythian,
bond nor free, but Christ all in all'" (Gal. iii. 28 ; Col. iii. 11).
^ Eph. i. 23, iii. 19.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS I 63

II

This leads us to the second point, the account we have
in these Epistles of the Work of Christ as compared with
that which the earlier Epistles contain. We find, then, that
here, as there, supreme importance is attached to the Death
of Christ, both in relation to the forgiveness of sin and to
deliverance from i^s power. It is set forth as the means of
reconciliation to God, and as the Power of our dying to sin
itself, as well as of our being quickened to a new moral life.^
But besides what they have in common with the teaching of
the early Epistles, they contain two new points of view from
which the Cross is regarded, that are most instructive as
opening up fresh fields of thought.
In the Epistle to the Ephesians the dominant idea is the
RECONCILIATION effected by the Gospel BETWEEN MAN AND
MAN, the removal of the old antagonism between Jew and
Gentile, and the union of both in one brotherhood or family.
At the time it was written Christianity was showing itself
to be a great social power. The groups of Christians that
sprang up in every place to which the Gospel came were com
munities in which all alienations of race and religion were
forgotten in the enthusiasm of a new love. The Church was
presenting itself in this light. It was drawing to itself the
wonder and admiration of the world because of this striking
feature of its life ; and in his letter Paul dwells on it, and
points out that the reconciliation of man to man, the unifi
cation of the different sections of the human race that had
been effected, was the result of Christ's Death, and the in-
'^ Reconciliation — Col. i. 14, 19-20, ii. 13-14; Eph. ii. 13; Q,uicke7i-
ing — Eph. ii. 5 ; Col. ii. 11, 12, 20, iii. 3. The enlarged conception ofthe
Person of Christ in these Epistles is observed in the fact that He is
spoken of as the Agent in certain Divine acts in which the earlier Epistles
speak ofthe Father as the Agent. Compare 2 Cor. v. 18 f. with Eph. ii.
16. The subordination ofthe Son to the Father is implied in i. 17 (" The
God of our Lord Jesus Christ ").

164 ST. Paul's conception of christ
tended result of it. " He is our peace, who made both one,
and brake down the middle wall of partition, having abolished
in His Flesh {i.e. His body offered in death) the enmity,
even the law of commandments contained in ordinances ;
that He might create in Himself of the twain one new man,
so making peace ; and might reconcile both in one body
{J.e. the mystical body of believers) unto God through the
Cross, having slain the enmity thereby." ^ Formerly Paul
had dwelt on the efficacy of the death of Christ in removing
the dualism between man and God, as well as that in human
nature itself, between the higher and lower elements of our
being, — a dualism which in both cases he showed had been
intensified by the law working on a nature opposed to it.
This dualism had been taken away by the Cross, and by the
removal of the law that had been effected by the Cross.
And now we find it is still this same effect of the death of
Christ, the abolition of the law, that is insisted on, only it is
followed by a new effect, by the removal not only of the dual
ism between God and man, but also of that between man
and his brother man. For the law had created a breach
between the Jew who had it and the Gentile who was with
out it, fostering a pride in the former that was resented
with contempt on the part of the latter. But the Cross
" broke down the middle wall of partition between the two,"
removed the law, liberated men from the obligation of ordi
nances affecting the flesh, and restored them to a fellowship
of love with one another. It is an instructive fact that we
have an entire Epistle devoted to the exhibition of Christ as
the Reconciler of rnen to one another, and to emphasise the
intention of His death to sweep away all customs and ordi
nances, however sacred, that divided man from man. Most
instructive is it, also, to observe that His Church is held up
to our admiration as the Society in which has been reaHsed
this ideal of a new Brotherhood, where all differences are
1 Eph. ii. 14-16.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS 1 65
merged in the consciousness of one faith and one love.
Subsequent history shows that the Church has often proved
a Divider rather than a Reconciler, falling sadly short of the
apostolic ideal. This Epistle is an abiding witness to the
Catholicity of the Church ; it is a perpetual protest against
those who exalt ordinances and dogmas to a place of suprem
acy, only to produce discord and division thereby. Ritual
and sacrament and formularies of belief are matters of second
ary importance, and are mischievous when they alienate us
from our fellow-men, and hinder the realisation of the New
Testament ideal of a Church, in which love and brotherhood,
based on equality of religious privilege, is everything. Wci
need to catch anew this vision of Christ as the Breaker of j
all the bonds of creed, ritual, caste that mar human fellow- /
ship, as the " Opener of men's hearts to one another, /
the well-spring, never to be dry, of a new humanity." ^
The Epistle to the Colossians goes still further in its
account of the consequences of the death of Christ, for it attri
butes to it an efficacy in removing theDUALiSM BETWEEN MAN
AND ANGELIC INTELLIGENCES, and, it would seem, between
these angelic intelligences and God Himself In chap. i. 1 9
we read, " it pleased the Father that in Christ should all the
fulness dwell ; and through Him to reconcile all things to
Himself, having made peace through the blood ot His Cross ;
through Him, I say, whether they be things on the earth or
things in heaven." Here the reconciling power of the Cross
is extended so as to embrace the intelligences of the unseen
world who were hostile to man, and who, till the effects of
the Cross reached them, had stood outside the harmony that
was to prevail among God's creatures. A further light is
shed on the matter in chap. ii. 13-15, where we read that
God has forgiven all our trespasses, " having blotted out the
bond written in ordinances that was against us which was
contrary to us ; and He hath taken it out of the way, nailing
^ Dean Church.

1 66 ST. Paul's conception of christ
it to the Cross ; having put off" from Himself {i.e. as one
divests himself of a garment) the principalities and the
powers. He made a show of them openly, triumphing over
them in it." Two errors characterised the religion of these
Colossians : they worshipped angelic powers,^ and they
practised a ritual designed to liberate them from the flesh
and to conform them to an angelic spirituality.^ Their
angelic worship and their law-observance were very closely
connected. Underlying both was the belief that they were
subject to the angels, and that the authority of the angels
over them was declared in those legal enactments about
meats and drinks that they observed so scrupulously. The
belief of Judaism in regard to angels, which has left its stamp
especially in the later Epistles of Paul, is a subject requiring
more thorough investigation than has been given to it, before
this passage and its significance for the first readers of it can
be fully appreciated.^ But evidently the aim of the writer
is to show that Christ has freed men from their real or fancied
subjection to the angels, inasmuch as in His death He has
abolished the law. By releasing men from the law and its
obligations, Christ had broken the authority of the angels
over men, for its unfulfilled obligations had been the hold
that these angelic powers had upon them, — a hold which the
Colossians acknowledged by the law-observance that entered
into their religious life. The apostle would point out to
them, that the abolition of the law accomplished by Christ
in His death was in its effects equivalent to the subjection
of the angels to a power greater than their own, and involved
the freedom of men who had formerly been in bondage to
J them. A view of Christ's death in its relation to law that is
strange to us whose minds are so Httle exercised with ques
tions about angels, but a view that had a profound signifi
cance for those to whom angels were a power to be reckoned
I Col. ii. i8. 2 Col. ii. i6, 20-23.
^ See note A on The Angelology of St Paul.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS 1 67
with in their religious life, as much so as sin and guilt are
to us. It is a view also very closely connected with the Head
ship of Christ over the angels which is emphasised here as
a distinctive Feature in the Picture of the Mediatorial Glory
of the Risen Lord. This Doctrine of the Headship we now
proceed to consider, as the third point in the marked develop
ment of the Doctrine of Christ that characterises these
Epistles. Ill
When we inquire, then, as to the account they give us of
the activity of the Exalted Christ, we are struck by one
feature of difference between it and the account in the
earlier Epistles ; and that is, the frequency with which the
term Head occurs in describing the relation of the Risen
Christ to men, and the insistence on the ideas which it
suggests. The Headship of Christ over man is indeed
implied in the idea of the function of the Second Adam as
that idea is worked out in Romans v. 12—19. But of this
Headship in relation to man, which certainly seems to follow
from His place and Function as the Progenitor of a spiritual
Race, we do not hear much in the Epistles under con
sideration. It is His relation, first, to the Church or Newv
Humanity, and, second, to the world of supernatural intelli-S
gences, that is emphasised in them. Of both He is said to
be the Head.
I. He is Head of the Church, the ecclesia, " which is
His Body." ^ Now, we do not find Him so designated till
we come to these Epistles. In the earlier, the apostle
spoke of Him as " Lord " and " Spirit," but not as " Head."
The idea of Christ as the IndweUing Spirit, which, as we
saw, is so supreme in the apostolic thought, is certainly
present in Ephesians and Colossians ; it underlies the whole
structure of the thought, and occasionally finds very definite
1 Col. i. 18; Eph..iv. 15.

1 68 ST. Paul's conception of christ
expression.^ But hjs language iji describing tlie IndweUing
£f Christ js new. It is not as Spirit that He is now con
ceived of as related to us. Indeed, as I have already
pointed out, the Spirit is only once mentioned in the
Epistle to the Colossians ; and the absence would be inex
plicable but for the fact that the term " Head," which is
used so often, includes in it the idea of Spirit, and has the
advantage of combining the two notions of Immanence and
Transcendence which, as we saw in last lecture, set
forth the relations to men of the Exalted Saviour as Spirit
and as Lord.
! Headship is a larger conception than Lordship : it im
plies not only authority over us, as the latter does, but
union with us. As Head, Christ is organically related to
His people, and one with them. They partake of His life.
As Head He is the noblest member of the organism. His
office is not only to direct the activities of the Body, but to
send fresh life into its members, so as to secure the health
and growth of them all. He also represents the body, and
takes the initiative in its movements, having first under
gone the experiences which His members now share with
Him. The term brings out, better than any other, both the
distinctiveness of^ Christ and Hjs community pf Life and
Spirit with His people ; for the Head and the members
have the same Life in them, the one originating and
directing its outflow, the others receiving and appropriating
it, that they may grow up in all things unto Him.
The germ of this fruitful idea is found both in Romans
and I Corinthians, where Christ is declared to be the Bond
or uniting element of the whole Body of believing men :
" We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally
members one of another " ^ ; and again, " As the body is one
and hath many members, and all the members are one
body, so also is Christ." ^ The truth in these passages is
1 Eph. iii. 17 ; Col. iii. 4. ^ Rom. xii. 4-5. s i Cor. xii. 12.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS 1 69
that Qhrist js the animating SpuJ or Spirit who dwells
in believers and makes them one Body ; while in the later
Epistles it is not as the Soul, but as the Head of the Body
of believers, that He is referred to. But evidently Head
and Spirit or Soul are congruous conceptions ; and the
same author might freely use the one term or the other,
according as he had in view the truth of the controlling
Authority to which Christians are subject, or the Ljfe they
share in common with dieir _Lord. In the early Epistles
it is the latter truth that is prominent ; hence we hear much
there of the Indwelling Spirit. But circumstances had
emerged by the time the later Epistles were written that
made it necessary for the apostle to shift the emphasis to
the other truth which Headship taught. Everywhere
scattered communities were appearing, each with its gifts,
its beginnings of organisation, its recognised and variously
endowed members contributing blessings on which the
Church's life and growth depended ; and it became neces
sary to enunciate the truth of the subjection of all to a
supreme Authority, in following whose inspiration and
direction the various communities would work together
towards the attainment of a common end. It is not sur
prising that we should hear much now of the Headship of
Christ and the recognition by the Churches of One all-con
trolling Authority. The term, as we have seen, combines
both ideas of supreme E)irectign and a comrnon Life, which
are the two aspects of the relation of the Exalted Christ to
His people. While the former idea, I think, is the more
prominent, we would certainly err were we to exclude the
latter idea of Life from Paul's use of the term in these
Epistles. The basis pf Christ's Headship over tjie ecclesia
is declared by him to be His vital relation to it He is the
Head of the Body, " who is the beginning, the First Born
from the Dead." ^ He is the First who has entered on a
iCol. i. 18.

170 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
Life that is in its own nature victorious over death ; and
being so. He is the "Beginning" or the living Principle of a
new creation, — a passage in which the notion of Head is
brought into very close connection with that of the Second
Adam, and where Headship is thought of, not only as the
Source of authority over, and of direction to. His Church,
but also and chiefly as the Source of its Divine and Super
natural Life.
2. But the most striking evidence that these Epistles
contain of progress in the estimate of the Greatness of the
Exalted Christ is furnished by the doctrine taught in them
(especially in the Epistle to the Colossians) ofthe HEADSHIP
OF Christ over all principalities and powers.^ Now,
it would be an entire mistake to suppose that in asserting
Christ's Sovereignty over the world of Celestial Beings, Paul
is teaching truth that had a merely speculative interest for
himself or for his readers. Nothing could be further from
the fact. The belief in angels — in their existence and
functions in the government of the world, and in the order
ing of everyday events — was an influential article of religious
faith at this period. The idea prevailed that God could
^ have no direct communication with the world, characterised
as it is by so much that is undivine. The interval between
' the Infinite and the Finite was, in the vulgar imagination,
I peopled with beings of various orders and gradations, all
(Concerned in the work of mediating between the Most
)High and His creatures on earth. The Judaism of Paul's
) day was dominated by this idea. The Gospel, by its revela-
/tion of a way of direct access to God in Christ, had eman-
/cipated Paul from all notions of the power and influence of
angels in the religious life ; but no doubt, before he was
converted, he shared the common belief of his countrymen
on the subject, and there are indications in the Epistles
that his mind sometimes went back to those early days
^ Col. ii. 10.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS 171
when he was under bondage to it. Witness the splendid
passage in which he exults in the confidence he can cherish
as a Christian man, and spurns the idea of inferior beings
having power to endanger his eternal security : " I am per
suaded that neither angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from
the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord." ^
The Colossian Christians, however, had not attained
to this confidence. They were entangled in a heresy that
accentuated in the strongest way the belief in principalities
and powers, and the subjection of men to them. Holding/
that angelic beings were permitted to exercise influence^
over the lives and destinies of men, they were withdrawing (
from Christ the worship and service of which He was the j
sole legitimate object, in order to bestow them on these inter
mediary intelligences. The belief in the mediation of
angels had resulted, as it must ever result, in the degradation
of Christ to an inferior place in faith and life, and in the
removal of the Father, who had graciously revealed Llim-
self in Christ, to a distance that made Him practically in
accessible. Against all this Paul lifted up his voice. He
will brook no rival to his Master in the affections of men.
Christ is the sole Mediator between God and the human race.
Angels and principalities have no power either to hinder or
to promote our fellowship with the Father in Him. All such
beings are under Christ. He is Lord and Head, not only of
the Church, but of all " principalities and powers," Supreme
in the Universe of Being. In Him Christians are complete : ^
in need of nothing that He cannot give them either for the
perfection of their religious state, or for the realisation in
them of the Divine Ideal, of life.
This pre-eminence of Christ over created intelligences
is traced back by the apostle to His Priority to them in
origin, in a passage where He is called the " First Born of
' Rom. viii. 38-39. ^ Col. ii. 10.

172 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
all creation.'' ^ But this reference to the Cosmical Signifi
cance of Christ is not meant to explain His Supremacy
over the angels, but simply to make it more credible.
The death of Christ is the true explanation. One effect
of the Cross, as we have seen, was to liberate man
from enslavement to supernatural powers. To use the
expressive language of chap. ii. 15, " God had on the
Cross stript Himself" of that vesture of created intelli
gences under which He had formerly appeared to men ;
and in token thereof Christ had been exalted over all
created beings. " Let no man," exclaims the apostle, " by
bringing you into subjection to angejs and the ascetic
practices that follow, rob you of your prize (the prize won
for you when God triumphed in the Cross), by a voluntary
humility and worshipping of angels, vainly puffed up in
his fleshly mind and not holding the Head." ^
It will be apparent, I trust, from what has been said,
that in all this teaching about the Headship of Christ over
unseen powers, Paul was setting forth an aspect of Christ's
Exalted Activity that had a profound religious significance
for those to whom he wrote. Christ could not be a Second
Adam to men unless He were Supreme over the angelic
world, to which they, as fallen under sin, had become
subject, and unless He were in this way the fulfilment of
Man's Destiny to be Sovereign over all things. This idea
is more fully worked out in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
constitutes one interesting point of connection between that
Epistle and the Pauline writings.^
But it may be asked. What is the worth or value of this
doctrine for us, who have no lively belief in angels, and are
not troubled by the thought of intermediate beings coming
between us and God ? Has not this truth of Christ's
supremacy over angelic intelligences lost significance for
1 Col. i. 15. 2 Col. ii. 15-18. 3 Heb. ii. 5-9.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS I 73
US, since we have lost all practical belief in that to which
it appeals ? The rehgious consciousness does not indeed
now conceive of the world as ancient thought conceived of
it, — a sphere in which unseen agents are continually at work,
producing the phenomena that make up what we call the
course of nature.^ Where the ancient mind saw spiritual
beings or angelic powers engaged in carrying out the will
of God, viewed as friendly or hostile according as the events
they were the instruments of bringing to pass affected the
weal or the woe of men, we see natural forces acting accord
ing to sequences that we term laws. Besides, the thinking
of the world at that time was ruled by the notion of the
intrinsic evil of matter : the belief in intermediate beings
rested on the supposition that matter could not have been
created by God Himself, but was the work of beings that
emanated from Him in an endless series, becoming less and
less perfect as they receded from the original source of
all. The scientific view of the world by which we are all
influenced nowadays makes it difficult for us to throw our
selves back into this ancient habit of mind. And yet
although we speak of the laws of nature where they spoke
of angels, the same problem faces us that faced them, and
we are not brought any nearer to a solution of it than they
were, by our altered conceptions. The existence of evil
and suffering in the world is a problem that baffles us, as it
baffled them. We encounter the same difficulty in rising
from the facts of nature to faith in God. The scientific
knowledge of the world does not help us ; it has rather
increased the difficulty, for it reveals to us the working
in nature, as the very law of its progress, of the principle
of evolution, which, through a selfish and ruthless struggle,
sanctions and perpetuates cruelty and wrong. We seem
to be removed farther from God than before by that
1 See lUingworth's interesting chapter on the " Development of the
Conception of Divine Personality " in his Bampton Lectures.

1 74 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
knowledge of the processes of nature, so relentless in
their operation, that we call science. The same fears are
suggested to our minds by the aspect of a world that has
so much to perplex and terrify us. A dread creeps over
us, as if we might find that God and nature were hopelessly
apart. And this feeling comes to affect our religious
experience, and tempts us to say, Christ may be indeed the
Lord of the inner life, the Saviour of the soul, the Head of
His believing people, but His rule reaches not beyond.
Nature rolls on in its course, governed by forces that
science can give account of, but whose action cannot be
related in any way to faith, or to the God of love and
righteousness whom faith embraces. Thus we slip back
into the error of the Colossians, who, while they gave
Christ a certain place in their thoughts, acknowledged the
angels to be the real influences on human affairs, and were
in bondage to them ; only in the place of angels we put,
what is their equivalent to us, the laws of nature and the
forces of the universe, that work out their results in reckless
disregard of human happiness.
Now, when Paul held up the Exalted Christ as the
" Head of all principalities and powers," he meant that the
love of God in Christ is Supreme over all the forces that
govern the world and bear on human happiness. These
forces were viewed by him, in accordance with the thought
of his age, as angelic agencies. But were he present with
us to-day, and to speak to us in the language appropriate
to our conceptions of things, would his message not be
substantially the same ? The Dominion of the Christ
(would he not say ?) is over all things visible and invisible.
There are no powers, however destructive they appear to be,
or however opposed to the moral life of man, that are not
under Him, that cannot be made to work out the perfection
of man by faith in His love. Misfortune, unfavourable
environment, maladjustment of circumstances, heredity.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS 175
perverse habit, and other forces hostile to our highest
good, that arise out of the physical system of things, are
subject to the spiritual power embodied in Jesus Christ.
They who have fellowship with Him in faith and love are
victorious over the evil that assails them from this lower
plane of existence, and can attain, in spite of them, to the
Perfect Life. And do not human experience and history
bear witness to the truth of Christ's Sovereignty over
nature in this sense ? Do they not bear witness to a
power at work in those who believe in Him, that is
stronger to lift them up and make them holy, than are
the forces of evil to drag them down ? Are we not taught
thereby that Christ's dominion is coextensive with the
world of nature and humanity, that He opposes a Divine
Power and All-Triumphant Love to all influences, from
whatever quarter they come, which retard or threaten to
make impossible the true progress of man ? The " Head of
all principalities and powers," He is clothed with ability to
subdue all things for those who believe in Him and are
ruled by His Spirit.
I can only in a sentence point out the bearing of this
view on the practical Ideals that are now to regulate human
life and conduct. As long as the Colossian Christians
thought that the authority of Christ was contested or
restricted by other powers in the world that shared
authority with Him, they cultivated a false spirituality.
Looking with fear and suspicion on the material world,
that was supposed to be under the government of spirits,
they practised asceticism, and strove to reach what seemed
to them the higher perfection that belonged to beings that
are immaterial. A dualistic way of thinking ever leads
to a false ideal of life, and, viewing the world as evil,
aims at a spirituality that is unreal, and leaves the nature
we have unsanctified. In insisting on the universal Head
ship of Christ, Paul warns us against the ascetic ideal under

176 ST. Paul's conception of christ
every form. He teaches that Perfection is reached not by
avoiding intercourse with the world, but by claiming the
world and all the interests of human life for Christ, and
in giving effect to the universal supremacy of His Love and
Righteousness. With our changed way of looking at the
world, indeed, the ascetic ideal has little charm for us. Nor
are we in danger of setting Christ aside from an anxiety to
attain to the spirituality of angelic beings. Our danger is
that we may become enslaved under that false ideal of
conduct that results from the exclusive study of natural
law, an ideal that has nothing moral in it, that exalts mere
strength and selfishness. As against this tendency we are
to hold up Christ, in Whom the supremacy of Love and
Goodness is manifested, in Whom we see the true idea of
Personality realised, and made triumphant over all hostile
powers. IV
What has been said of the Supremacy of Christ over
all will help us to understand the meaning of the apostle
in the claim he makes for Him in his Epistle to the
Colossians as the END or goal of creation itself,^ where
a still higher view of the Greatness of Christ is presented.
In Ephesians the God of redemption is said to have for
His aim in the work of Christ, " to sum up all things in
Him," ^ that is, to bring all things under Christ as their
Head ; where the truth darkly hinted at seems to be,
that He is the intended Bond or principle of universal
harmony in the universe, representing the law of life for
all moral beings, and revealing the one ground of health
and stability in the moral world, in subjection to Whom
all are united to God and one another. In Colossians a
different phrase is used to express much the same thought :
"it pleased God by Him to reconcile aH things in
1 Col. i. 16. 2 Eph. i. 10.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS I 77
heaven and earth." ^ Instead of " recapitulation," the idea
of " reconciliation " is chosen here in order to describe
the effect of Christ's work on the " all " of created exist
ence, because the Colossians imagined that the angels had
a part to play in reconciling them to God, which made
the cultus of them obligatory on believers ; and the apostle
would point out that so far was this from being the case,
that the angels owed to Christ their own standing in full
harmony with God, and that it lay in the Divine Plan
that He should be the instrument of a universal reconcilia
tion, that all might realise their perfect harmony with God
in their common subjection to His Son.
This, the apostle says, was a result of the work of
Christ that was intended frora the first. " All things were
created unto Hira,"^ that is, with a view to Him, to the
universal acknowledgment of His Supremacy and His claim
on the worship and obedience of created intelligences.
This doctrine, that Christ is the End or Final Cause of
creation itself, is criticised by some as extravagant, and
as un-Pauline in going beyond what the apostle has else
where said. But, as it seems to me, the mind welcomes
this conception as in keeping with the whole idea of Christ
in the Pauline writings, and as introducing a unity into
our thoughts of God's government. It means that
redemption is not an after-thought of the Divine mind
consequent on the Fall, but that the thought of it was
present in the very act of creation. It means that the
natural order does not stand alone, does not exist for its
own sake, but that from the very beginning it was intended
to be followed by that spiritual order which explains it,
and which has Christ for its Head. As the first Adam,
according to Paul's earlier teaching, looked to the Second,
and was the Type of " Him that was to come," so now we
find him advancing to the position that the creation of
1 Col. i. 20 2 Col. i. i6.
13

178 ST. Paul's conception of christ
the Kosmos itself looked to Him who was to be supreme,
and under whom all created intelligences were to rank
themselves. This grand view is in full harmony with the
trend of modern thought. Man, science tells us, must be
regarded as the object or end of creation — the culminating
point in the ascending series of forms of life, in whom is
explained all that went before. What is it but an
enlargement of this idea to regard Man in Christ, the
Risen and Exalted Man, as the end of the human
development that began with the appearance of the
first Adam on the scene? The Supremacy of Christ
then becomes the goal of the previous history of man
kind, and at the same time the instrument or agency
by which is reached the final end, which is the glory of
God. Thus are we to reconcile the apparent divergence of
view in this passage, which declares that Christ is the
" End " to whom creation and redemption had regard, from
the statement of Paul in an earlier Epistle,^ that the
universal sovereignty of God is the end, and that Christ's
mediatorial glory is but the means to its realisation.
From one point of view, and looking at the matter
from the close of the present dispensation of Grace,
the Glory of God is indeed the true end of Redemption,
and Christ's Supremacy is the means by which it is
advanced. While, from the point of view of the present
order, and remembering that Christ is God's Vicegerent,
and that all things are intended to advance the interests
committed to Him, we may say with equal truth that
His Supremacy is the object or end of all. In the passage
in I Cor. the apostle is speaking of the close or con
summation of all things. The issue is the Glory of God.
In Colossians he has before him the dispensation that is
running its course, whose object is to illustrate and extend
^ I Cor. XV. 24-29,

later developments 179
the present Sovereignty of Christ. The point of view is
different, but there is no discrepancy of thought.
From this account of the Christological doctrine which
these Epistles contain, it must be evident there is
ascribed to Christ by their author a greatness in the scale
of Being, a Dignity and Pre-eminence of position in the
universe of God, that surpasses all we find in the early
ones ; but it must also, I think, be evident that the loftier
views are but the full expression and development of truths
present to the apostle in the early stage of his spiritual
history, and that they, too, have their root in his experience
as a Christian man. It is often said, regarding the exalted
conceptions of Christ contained in these later writings of
Paul, that they are testimonies to the feelings of love and
admiration that he and his fellow-believers had for their
Master, and to the profound impression made upon their
minds by His Personality, but that they cannot be
regarded as objectively true. " They are but sallies of
love and admiration," says Emerson, " which in our
ecclesiastical theology have been petrified into official
titles that kill all generous sympathy and liking." ^ It
may be true that we do often empty the expressions that
bear on the superhuman Greatness of Christ, of the power
they possess to stir our affections, by our theological treat
ment of them. But, on the other hand, it is doing them
less than justice to view them simply as the language of
ardent love dwelling with a natural exaggeration on the
worth of its object. It is nearer the truth to say that in
such language we have the utterance of convictions regard
ing Christ's Divine Power and all-sufificiency that are
inseparably connected with the experience of the new
life He quickens in the soul. They have more than a
1 In his address delivered before the senior class in Divinity College,
Cambridge, 1883.

i8o ST. Paul's conception of christ
subjective value. They state what is true of Christ in
His relation to us ; and however lofty such statements may
be, and however inappropriate to any but Himself, they come
with the force and authority of truth to those who beHeve
in Him as Living and Supreme. Experience of what
Christ is to us decides what we believe to be true regard
ing Him. Our conceptions of Him will be exalted in the
measure in which He is realised by us as a Power in our
life of thought and action. The thoughts of others regard
ing Him may seem to us strange, and may be difficult to
make our own, but the reason of that may be explained by
the meagreness and poverty of our experience.^ It is not
too much to say that the representation of the Christ
contained in these Epistles has found an echo in the minds
of most who have attained to the largest discoveries of
His Redeeming Power, and who have been led by the
strength and light He has brought into their lives to rest
in Him as both the Wisdom and the Power of God, the
solution of the problem of the world as well as of the
contradictions of the human soul.
^ My revered teacher. Professor J. T. Beck of Tubingen, used to insist
on patience with ourselves in the study of Scripture, inasmuch as the
understanding of spiritual truth depends not on processes of logic, but
on processes of life ; and with the deepening of the higher life our
horizon of truth widens and things become plain that before we
doubted the reality of. I have given in the Appendix an extract from
one of his opening lectures to his students in which he enforces this
lesson. See Note B on Beck on Truth and Life,

VI
THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST

LECTURE VI
The Eternal Nature of Christ
The course of our inquiry into Paul's conception of Christ
has, up to this point, led us to dwell exclusively on those
elements of the conception that are derived from the
experience of the Christian life, and are verifiable by the
Christian consciousness. In Paul's view, the only Christ
ology that is of value is that which is Soteriological in its
character — is that, in other words, which is gathered from
the impressions of Christ's personal saving grace received
in the life of faith. We rise to the understanding of what
He is through the experience of what He proves Him
self to be, where the inner life is under the influence of
His Personality. There is, however, one aspect of his
Christology which is of a different character, and to that
our attention is now to be directed. There are in the
Epistles statements in which Christ is spoken of as existing
in a Preincarnate state. Affirmations are made regarding
a Life prior to that which He lived on earth, that belong to
an entirely different category from the affirmations that
constitute the great bulk of the apostle's teaching. The
latter concern Christ in His relation to us, and as the
Author of religious benefits that fall within our conscious
experience. The former concern Him as He is in Himself,
antecedent to that connection with the world into which
He entered when He became Incarnate. They are meta
physical in nature and um£erifiable_by_human experience,
A pecuHar difficulty must, of course, attach to the under
standing of statements of this sort ; and had a sense of

184 ST. Paul's conception of christ
this been more present to the minds of theologians, it
might have had a salutary effect in restraining the con
fidence with which these statements have been made use
of by them to explain the Person of Christ on its meta
physical side, and to form theories that have served only
to perplex, and to endanger one part or another of the
faith regarding Him. This difficulty has been more vividly
realised in modern times ; and, pressed by it, later theology,
in an influential section of its representatives, has rejected
the authority of these statements over the faith of the Church,
viewing them as belonging to the category of opinion in
theological matters, in contrast to what is to be regarded in
the light of essential truth. This attitude of mind is, no
doubt, a recoil from the excessive tendency of the theo
logians of the early Church to deal with those passages
that bear on the pre-existence of Christ as if they furnished
material for a dogmatic understanding of the Person of the
Lord of Glory. We are required, therefore, to consider in
this lecture not only the question of the objective value of
the statements that relate to the Premundane life of Christ,
but also the further question how far these statements
admit of being employed to construct theories that aim at
explaining the mystery lying at the root of His Person.
But before entering on these difficult and delicate inquiries,
let us see what Paul's teaching on the pre-existence of
Christ really is, and in what connection the references to it
occur. I
Paul is not alone among the writers of the New Testa
ment in asserting a Pre-INCARNATE life of Christ. John
and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews give this
doctrine a greater prominence than Paul gives it. They
set it forth in forms that are even more explicit. From
the almost incidental way in which it is mentioned we are

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 1 85
justified in concluding that it was a familiar representation
among the apostolic churches, a self-evident truth. What
ever account may be given by us of the origin of this belief,
it seemed to them in harmony with the profound impression
made upon them by the Personality of Jesus, and by the
contrast between the lowliness of His earthly life and the
Divine glory which He had reached, to believe that He who
was the subject of so wonderful a history, and had proved
Himself in their experience to be so great a Saviour, had
existed in heaven before He appeared on earth, had come
from a higher sphere into this world. The belief was
certainly prevalent, and the Epistles bear evidence of having
been written to those who did not need any proof of it.^
This is the character of most of the allusions in Paul's
Epistles, — at least in the earlier and undisputed ones, to
which we turn our attention in the first instance. The
references, then, to the Pre-existence of Christ in the four
leading Epistles are exceedingly scanty, and so incidental
as to suggest the inference that, while intimately related to
his own deepest convictions about Christ, this doctrine
formed no part of his formal teaching, until, at least, the
necessity for it arose in the special circumstances of the
Church at Colosse. We have the two great announcements
of the change effected on the religious destinies of men by
the mission of Christ : " God sent forth His Son, made of a
woman, made under the law, to redeem us," ^ and " God,
sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned
sin in the flesh." ^ The " sending forth " of the Son implies
that He existed before He was " made of a woman," and
came " under the law," before He appeared in the " like-
^ " What strikes us in these statements about pre-existence is, that
the apostle nowhere really establishes or teaches the pre-existence of
Christ, but, especially in his earlier Epistles, presupposes it as familiar
to his readers and disputed by no one" (Beyschlag, N. T. Theology,
vol. ii. p. 78, Eng. Trans.).
^ Gal. iv. 4. ' Rom. viii. 3.

1 86 ST. Paul's conception of christ
ness of sinful flesh," and that He existed in a form that
was contrasted with that of His historic Hfe, in its being
one of Sonship and Spirit, while that which followed was
one of subjection to law and participation of flesh. In
2 Cor. viii. 9 we learn positively that, in coming into the
world, Christ exchanged a state of riches for one of poverty :
" He who was rich for our sakes became poor." His
coming is here described as His own act, and not, as in
the previous case, the result of the decree of God — as an act
that revealed the generosity and self-sacrificing spirit of the
pre-incarnate One. It is instructive, as suggesting the
slight importance the apostle attached to the details of
Christ's early life, that, in order to exhibit the Lord as the
Pattern of Generosity, and to draw from His life and Person
motives for our practice of a similar spirit, he passes over
the many incidents of the Divine Life that could so well
have served his purpose, and appeals to the sublimest
exemplification of it that was furnished by the prehistoric
act of Christ in consenting to be born. " He who was rich
for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty
might be rich." In i Cor. xv. 47, where we read of " the
Second Man," who " is from heaven," the Exalted Christ is
referred to, for, as we have found, it is only as Exalted that
He is called the Second Man ; but it is implied that He
belonged to heaven as His home, and that He existed
before as a Heavenly Being. In i Cor. x. 4 the Pre
historic Christ is spoken of as accompanying Israel of old
in their wilderness journey and, ministering by His com
munications to their religious wants. " They drank of that
spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was
Christ." ^ And in chap. viii. 6 we have a significant hint
1 It maybe that the apostle had in his mind the Rabbinical tradition
that the rock smitten by Moses followed Israel through their wander
ings. Not that we can suppose that he believed this grotesque idea.
"The Rock that followed them" was Jehovah (Isa. xxx. 29), a
"spiritual" Rock, because the supernatural source of blessing to Israel.

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 1 87
bf the part He played in creation itself Contrasting the
faith of Christians with that of the heathen who have
" gods many and lords many,'' Paul says, " to us there
is one God the Father, of whom are all things, and we
in Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all
things, and we by Him " ; or, as Weizacker in his translation
has it, bringing out the sense more fully, " our Lord Jesus
Christ the Mediator of all things, who is also our Mediator."
The range of meaning to be given to " all things " is indeed
doubtful. Many of the best exegetes restrict it to the " all
things " of the Christian economy, and understand Paul as
here claiming for the Lord that mediatorial Function in
virtue of which He carries on, in the name of the Father,
the government of all things. On the other hand, the
words " we by Him," in which Christ is declared to be our
Mediator, by whom we reach the end of our being, seem to
point to a wider activity, and to base Christ's present
Mediatorship in regard to men on a prior Mediatorship in
regard to creation itself There seems at least to be a hint
of a prior relation on His part to " all things " corresponding
to, or a shadow of, the relation of Grace in which He now
stands to the human race as its Lord and Mediator.^
When he adds " this rock was Christ," we are not " to disgrace Paul,"
to quote Hofmann's words {Der Schriftbeweis, i. 171), "by making
him say that Christ, not yet Incarnate, followed the march of Israel in
the form of a rock." The reason why he says " Christ," and not
"Jehovah," is that his readers may make the apphcation to themselves.
" All activity bearing on the history of salvation on the part of the God
of whom the O. T. testifies was an activity of God coming into the
world, and an activity, so far, of the Christ whom the N. T. Church
acknowledges as its Lord. For, since He has been revealed, believers
know to distinguish between Him who came into the world, who is
God, and the God who sent Him into the world, while formerly the
distinction lay concealed in the one name of Jehovah" (Hofmann,
Der Heilige Schrift, ii. 2, p. 209).
1 Mr. Hutton has criticised Paul's Doctrine of the Pre-existent Life of
Christ as less full than that of John. " He held, doubtless, that the
Son of God had been the centre of Jewish unity and nationality
throughout the history ofthe Jewish nation (i Cor. x. 4). He held, too,

1 88 ST. Paul's conception of christ
When we turn now to the expressions on this subject
that occur in the Epistles of the captivity, we find that they
are equally rare, and that they are either to the same effect,
or expansions of the thought, in keeping with the undoubted
growth of the apostolic conception of the glory of the
Exalted Christ which characterises these Epistles. The
most noteworthy passage of aU is the familiar one in Phil.
5^ i^.,- 3-10, in trying to understand which one cannot take a
single step without being challenged by the voice of contro
versy. I can only state in the briefest way what appears
to me, after the fullest consideration I have been able to
give to them, to be the natural meaning of the words. The
Supreme Pattern of Christian conduct is the Exalted Christ,
to whom God has given a name " above every name in
heaven and on earth " ; and it is evidently the intention of
the apostle, in commending the grace of humility and the
duty of each looking to the things of others as well as to
his own, to exhibit the Exaltation of Christ as the grandest
instance of the recognition by God of the infinite worth of
a spirit of self-effacement for the good of others. He is
not content to dwell on the successive stages of the earthly
career of Christ as marking the steps of a course that was
marvellous for the spirit of self-denial it disclosed : " He
humbled Himself, and became obedient to death, even to
the death on the cross " (Phil. ii. 8). He goes back to what
antedated Christ's earthly experiences, to show that the
humble self-denying spirit that characterised the life of
that Christ was equally the centre and root of the social unity of the
Christian Church, that His life was in all its members, and the real
bond of its organisation, but I can see no trace that he had learnt to
extend the same truth to the whole world of heathen humanity, — that he
had grasped the fulness of St. John's teaching, — that He is the light
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world " {Essays, vol. t.
pp. 250 ff.). In the passage quoted in the text, however, as well as in
those to follow {e.g. Col. ii. 15-18), our apostle does seem to assert a
relation, antecedent to the manifestation in time, in which the Son of
God stands to every human being.

TIIE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 1 89
Jesus was the reproduction of the mind of the Eternal Pre-
existent One, and exhibited in detail the spirit that was
manifested in the very act of coming into the world in the
" form of a servant." He existed before in the " Form of
God." The phrase points to a state of being that is to
be regarded as implying at least the absence of the limita
tions, weakness, corruption, that belong to creaturely exist
ence. What more we are to understand by it will depend
on which of the two alternative meanings of the word,
translated " form " (fiop(f>7]), we adopt. The great majority
of modern commentators take it in the sense of " outward
appearance," — that which expressed the nature of Christ, but
was at the same time separable from that nature. And this
" form " or " appearance " of God they regard Him as having
laid aside, or " emptied Himself of," that He might assume
the " form of a servant." On this understanding, the " being
Equal with God," which " He did not cling to as a prey,"
will explain more fully what is meant by the " Form of God,"
will describe it as consisting in an Equality with God in
respect of rank and dominion. The chief difficulties in the
way of accepting this interpretation are these: first, "the
being Equal with God" is with more appropriateness, I think,
referred to that " Lordship over all" which, as we read in
VV. 9, I o, was conferred upon Christ at His resurrection, and
was not therefore His actual possession in His pre-incar
nate state ; and second, the word " Form " is a philosophical
term, and has a definite sense, meaning that " appearance "
of a thing or person that is inseparable from the person or
thing itself It is equivalent to " nature " ; and we cannot
conceive of Him who " was in the Form of God," under
stood in this sense, divesting Himself of it without His
ceasing thereby to be Divine. This is the view of the
Greek Fathers ; it is also the view, in modern times, of
Canon Lightfoot, and it has been advocated lately with
great force by Gifford in his masterly examination of this

I90 ST. Paul's conception of christ
passage.^ On this understanding, then, the " Form " of God
implies a relation to the life of God which signifies perfect
resemblance to Him ; and the term means much the same
thing as " Image of God " (et'/cwf), which is elsewhere used
of Christ (Col. i. I 5).
We are further to recognise in this relation of the Pre
incarnate Christ to God that which constituted His Fitness
to be raised to the " Equality with God " which, in actual
fact, became His only after He had finished His earthly
career, when God " highly exalted Him." The word is
" highly exalted " (v-K^pv-ifaiai). The idea conveyed is that the
Exaltation glory marked a certain advance on that which
belonged to His Eternal state when He was " in the Form of
God." We are to picture to ourselves a situation in which
the Pre-incarnate One had presented to Him the career by
which He was to realise the possibilities that lay wrapt up
in His being " in the Form of God." The course by which
the " Equality with God," or the Divine lordship of His
exaltation-state was to be reached, was conceivably one
that would have outwardly illustrated His superiority to all
others and His Personal Claims to Divine honour. But such
an assertion of His right to be worshipped as God would
have been the act of one who looked at " his own things,"
and not at " the things of others." And Christ did not
choose the way of self- exaltation to reach His present
position. He did not regard the " Being Equal with God "
as a thing to be grasped or clutched at in this way, as one
would a prey or booty ; He looked rather to the good of
men, and renounced His own things to enter on a course of
self-denying service of others, and of humble obedience to
the will of God. He " emptied Himself," and took upon
Him the " form of a servant." He preferred to receive from
the Father the sovereignty over all as the Divine recogni-
' The Incarnation, a Study of Philippians ii. 5-1 1, by G. H. Gifford,

the eternal nature of CHRIST I9I
tion of His self-effacement for others {i-)(apicTaro), rather than
obtain it by the assertion of His own right. The tempta
tion of Christ in the desert, where we see Him choosing the
path of self-humiliation in preference to that of self-glorifi
cation, in order to reach the Messianic supremacy, is perhaps
the best commentary we can have on these words.^ We
cannot fathom the depth of them. We cannot understand
that, act of "self-emptying"; we can only say that it was
the analogue, the eternal counterpart, of the spirit of self-
annihilation for the interests of His brethren, by which the
earthly life of Christ was distinguished, and which had its
reward in His exaltation to be supreme in the affections
and worship of men. And it seems to be the design of the
apostle to enhance our admiration of that spirit, by repre
senting it as the continued manifestation of an eternal act in
which the Pre-existent One of His own free will relinquished
a glory personal to Himself, in order to enter our state and
win the higher glory of being loved and honoured and
adored by all on the ground of service rendered to them.
A further insight into the pre-existent life of Christ is
afforded in the opening of the Epistle to the Colossians
(i. 15-18), where He is designated the First-born of Crea-
1 Luther, it is weU known, viewed, the passage in Phil. ii. as referring
to the historical Christ, and many others besides have so understood it.
Amongst later writers of this class may be mentioned Schenkel {Christus-
Bild der Apostel, p. 296), who thinks there is an intended contrast in the
words between Christ apd the first Adam. The latter, made in the
image or "form" of God, abused his original gift by seeking to reach
equality with God (" ye shall be as gods "), through eating the fruit of the
tree of knowledge, and fell under bondage to sin. The Second Adam
did not yield to the temptation to pride and self-assertion which His
possession ofthe "form" of God brought with it, but accomphshed His
Messianic task' by His humble obedience. Beyschlag, in his New Testa
ment Christology, also advocated Luther's view, but in his later work has
abandoned it, accepting the interpretation which finds most favour with
exegetes, according to which the Pre-incarnate Christ is the subject. But
it remains true that it is in the study ofthe Historical Christ and of His
earthly life that we learn what that spirit was that was exemplified in
the eternal act of self- emptying.

192 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
tion, " in whom all things were made, things in heaven and
things in earth, visible and invisible ; whether thrones or
principalities or powers, all things were made by Him, and
for Him and in Him all things consist." This passage may
be regarded as an expansion of i Cor. viii. 6, to which
allusion has been made, and which states that as Christ in
His present relation to us is the instrument by whom we reach
the end of our being, so He was related to creation itself in
a prior state of existence as the instrument by whom it came
into being. The object of Paul in amplifying this thought
in the striking terms of the passage in the Colossians, is to
assist us to understand that supremacy over all powers and
intelligences which he claims for Christ in this great Epistle.
That supremacy, as we have seen, belongs to Him as Risen
and Glorified, and is based on His historic work ; but it
goes back, he tells us here, to a relation of superiority to,
and primacy over all angelic powers that was prior to His in
carnation, and was the eternal counterpart of the Supremacy
which He now exercises. He is the " First Born of every
creature," and owes His Being to a mode of the Divine
Activity that places Him in a higher category of existence
than that to which others belong. They derived their being
from His agency, the Divine Power that called them
into existence travelling to its goal through Him. And
this constitutes Him at once the Ground of their Being and
the Ideal in whom they reach the completeness of their
powers. Words could not more emphatically proclaim the
truth, that while the relations in which Christ now stands
both to men and angels are of grace, flowing from His deed
of love on the Cross and conveying blessings that are entirely
gracious in their character, they at the same time go back
to relations that are of nature, and that are grounded in the
original constitution of Christ, making Him the Natural
Head of all, so that to believe in Him, to accept Him as
our Ideal, and find our life's end in doing His will, is to be

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 1 93
true to a relation that lies in creation itself, and that ex
presses the eternal law of our Being.^

II
We have thus hurriedly passed under review the pas
sages in which the Pre-incarnate life of Christ is spoken of
in the Epistles. And the first inquiry which is suggested,
and to which we must now address ourselves, is this. What
value is to be attached to these statements? Do they
express truth that is literal, or that is symbolic merely ?
Are we really to believe on their authority that Christ
existed before He appeared on earth ? and are we to take
as Hteral truth the things that are said of Him in that
prior life ? Or may we regard this language as simply ex
pressing, in the forms of theological thought natural to that
age, the profound sense Paul, in common with the other
writers of the New Testament, entertained of the Greatness
of their Master and His superiority to all others ? Can this
doctrine of His Pre-existence be adequately explained by
viewing it as the intellectual clothing of their faith in the
moral and spiritual supremacy of Christ ? If this account
of the matter be accepted, then the belief in His Pre-exist
ence must be viewed as an excrescence on the doctrine of
Christ, and as forming no part of the Christology which
the Church of all time recognises as the expression of its
^ I have not thought it necessary to discuss the question whether the
pre-existence asserted in Paul's Epistles is ideal (in the mind of God) or
personal, for most are now agreed that it is doing violence to the lan
guage of the apostle to understand it in anything else than a personal
sense. Beyschlag, who in his former work {Die Christologie des N. T,
1866), which gave such an impulse to the study of this subject, main
tained that the pre-existence predicated of Christ is ideal simply, has
in his recently published work on N. T. Theology abandoned that
opinion, and now explains the apostle's statements about the personal
being of Christ in a pre-incarnate condition as an imperfect mode of
setting forth the truth that the " temporal appearance of Christ must be
traced back to an Eternal Basis."
13

194 ST. Paul's conception of christ
faith regarding Him. This is the position of a certain
school of theologians of the present day ; and it is necessary
to consider the grounds on which it is defended, and the
intellectual tendencies which, in their judgment, account for
this belief.
Two sources of influence are mentioned in this con
nection. The one is the influence of Palestinian theology,
with which presumably Paul was familiar, and which
ascribed pre-existence in heaven to all objects and persons
connected with religion, by way of accounting for their
existence and the worth that belonged to them. Moses, the
temple, the Sabbath, the law itself, are all spoken of as
pre-existent in heaven. It would not surprise us to find
that the Messiah, while still an object of hope, is referred to
in the literature of the period as existent in heaven, and
waiting to be revealed. It is alleged that this is actually
the case, and that the notion of the Pre-existent Messiah
was a part of the ancient teaching of the synagogue. The
evidence of this is indeed not quite conclusive. Modern
research into the opinions prevalent among the Jews before
the Christian era has done something to clear up this
subject ; but more has to be done before we can form a
confident judgment; we cannot be sure that the passages
in the apocalyptic writings that contain this dogma are not
Christian interpolations.^ At the same time, it must be
admitted that the conditions were present for the springing
up of this idea. Daniel's vision of the Son of Man coming
in the clouds of glory suggested His pre-existence to those
^ The Christology of the Jewish Book of Enoch, which belongs in its
older portions to the century before Christ, is very striking. The
Messiah is spoken of as the Son of Man, who " is waiting in heaven " to be
revealed. The section, however, in which this occurs (called the Simili
tudes) is by many scholars referred to Christian times. See Stanton,
The Jewish and the Christian Messiah, page 153 ; The Jewish
Messiah, by Drummond, i. 4. Mr. Charles believes it to be pre-
Christian {Book of Enoch, pp. 29, 30, 107, 108).

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST I95
who understood it of a personal Messiah. The habit, to
which I have alluded, of attributing an existence in heaven
to objects and persons to which the religious hopes clung,
which arose, as Baldensberger says, " from the desire, in an
age that threatened general dissolution, to place the cherished
ideals of the soul beyond the crumbling hand of time, and
the changes incident to all things earthly " : ^ this predis
posed the Christian consciousness to believe that He who
was the fulfilment of the Messianic Hope had existed in
heaven before He came into this world. Thus, it is said,
we may fairly regard the belief as the product of the human
mind, borrowing from ideas then in vogue the conception in
which it expressed its conviction of the greatness of the
Master, translating its faith into language that was supplied
by the theological thought of the age.
A second intellectual influence, it is alleged, combined
with that just mentioned to bring about the same result, and
that was the prevalence even in Jewish circles of religious
ideas that were more congenial to Greek philosophy than to
the original spirit of the Hebrew religion. The Greek notion
of a transcendent Deity, separated from the world of matter,
necessitated the conception of an intermediate power, called
reason or logos, by which the Creator and the creature were
brought together, a conception which played a large part in
the system of the Alexandrine Philo. The later Judaism
felt the influence of the Greek notion of the absoluteness and
transcendence of God, and its theology betrayed the same
tendency to rest in some intermediate Being, corresponding
to the logos of Greek speculation, as a Bond of intercourse
between God and man. This it found in the Old Testa
ment ideas of the creative " Word " of God, and the
"Wisdom" of God, and the "Spirit," or Breath, of the
Almighty. In the books of that time we find a rehgious
philosophy that employs these terms no longer as express-
^ Das Selbstbewusstsein fesii, i. 3.

196 ST. Paul's conception of christ
ing different modes of the Divine activity and self-mani
festation, but as names for a separate hypostasis of the
Divine nature, with Divine attributes and functions towards
creation similar to those assigned to the logos in the cog
nate system of Philo. This idea of an intermediate Being,
who makes 'possible the transition from the uncreated to
the created, furnished the mould into which the Christian
consciousness of the Superlative Greatness of Christ would
pour itself To Him became transferred those conceptions
that had been associated hitherto with an object of religious
speculation. Thus there attached itself to the faith of
Jesus Christ the belief in His Pre-existence, and in His
possession in a pre-incarnate state of such Divine attributes
as are ascribed to Him specially in the later Epistles of
Paul. In this way the conclusion is reached that the
belief, originating in the speculative thought of the age, and
rendering a religious idea into language borrowed from
that thought, has no objective validity, and does not enter
into the doctrine that expresses what is true regarding
Christ for all time and for every age.
This view possesses great plausibility, and is attractive
to those who are wearied with the metaphysical subtilities
that surround the doctrine of the Person of Christ, and
long for a return to a simpler faith, to a faith that is confined
to what is historically true, and that can enforce its author-
itativeness before the bar of reason and conscience. The
facts mentioned prove, indeed, how prepared the soil was
for the reception of a doctrine of the superhuman origin
and pre-existent life of Christ, and may well account for
the infrequency with which it is alluded to ; for it was not
necessary for the writers of the New Testament to dilate
on an aspect of truth which was not called in question by
their readers, and which it was so easy for them to believe.
But the more we consider the matter, the more difficult is
it for us to accept as exhaustive an explanation of the

the eternal nature of Christ 197
doctrine that refers it to what was peculiar in the religious
thought of the age. The Christian consciousness has
acquiesced in this doctrine as not only consonant to its
convictions of the Divine Greatness of its Master, but as re
quired by those convictions to justify them to itself When
we reflect on what the exaltation of Christ means, on the
essential grandeur that must belong to a Being who receives
such recognition, and the power to rule human destiny that
is thereby conferred upon Him, we feel that it is reason
able to believe that He had an origin different from that of
all others ; and that, when Scripture refers to Him as pre-
existent and possessed of a nature and prerogatives that
are eternal, identifying Him in a peculiar way with the
eternal life of God, it presents Him under an aspect which,
however difficult to make plain to our minds, is one that
has in favour of its truth the antecedent probabilities of the
case. One who is so High in the universe of Being, who
has been and is so powerful an Agent in the moral and
religious renewal of the race, could not at His human birth
have begun to be — must have a history antecedent to that
which was wrought out on the platform of time. It is a
religious datum, or an implicate of our religious conscious
ness. It seems to originate in the very faith itself, or to
be necessitated by it.^
Those speculative systems that repudiate the claim of this
doctrine to a place in the creed of the Church acknowledge
the necessity of recognising, in one form or another, in the
true doctrine of Christ, His connection with a superhuman
order of events in the kingdom of God, in order that
1 Kahler puts the matter thus : " Christ has, with His Glorification,
entered on a state of Activity that embraces the world and penetrates
into the hearts of men. That fact points to an Independence of Being
in contrast with the ordinary life of Humanity such as cannot by any
magic belong to any mere child of man. Such a position can be held
only by the Eternal in His Majestic Independence in contrast with
creaturehood. His exaltation, therefore, finds its only explanation in
l^n^reated Being " {Die Wiss, der Christ. Lehre, p. 324).

198 ST. Paul's conception of christ
justice may be done to the consciousness of His supreme
religious significance. Proceeding to translate this con
sciousness into language more appropriate to modern modes
of thought, they say : This ascription of pre-existence to the
person of Christ comes of mixing up two things that
must be kept separate, a religious idea or principle — the
relation of sonship to God — and the Historic Person in whom
that idea or principle is embodied, Jesus Christ. The pre-
existence is to be ascribed to the principle or idea ; the
Person in whom it is embodied is a Man Hke any other
man, born under similar conditions, pre-incarnate only in
thought. He is but the temporal manifestion of the Eternal
idea of the sonship of man to God. This is the construction
of the Person that is offered by the speculative theology of
the school of Lipsius, Biederman, Pfleiderer, and others.
It is not pretended that it accords with the representations
of Scripture, which assert a real and personal pre-existence ;
but it is claimed for it that it does equal justice to the idea
of Christ's supernatural worth in which these representations
of Scripture originated, and that it conserves the religious
interest in a form more consonant to the modern conscious
ness. The difficulty, however, appears to me insuperable
of conceiving how one who is no more, by original constitu
tion, than a human individual, can possess so exclusive an
authority over the religious life of men, and an authority
which rests not simply on what He said, but on what He
personally was ; or how such an one could become the
recipient or embodiment of the idea in so absolute a sense
as to constitute Him the Creative power by whom it is
reproduced in others. The mind seems to me to demand
that One who is to stand in such a relation to others
should be in his own Person distinctive, should be more and
greater than they who are to benefit by their connection
with Him ; and the Scripture representation of Him as
eternally pre-existent, descending into a connection with

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 1 99
US from a higher life, best meets that postulate, and is most
in keeping with the religious conviction of His superhuman
greatness and supreme significance for the religious Life of
Man.i

III
But the further question remains, whether the language
of the apostle supplies us with the means of formulating a
doctrine of the Person of Christ on its metaphysical side ;
whether, in addition to the moral and spiritual understanding
of the contents of His Person, we can form any definite idea
of its original constitution, of His place and rank in the
system of Being ; whether, in short, we can know Him as
He is in Himself, apart from His relations to us which are
the proper matter of revelation. We are here called to con
sider the theories which theologians, on the authority ot
statements in Paul's Epistles, have formed of the Person
of Christ, and by which they have attempted to solve the
problem of who and what He is in Himself And, in
approaching these theories, two things are to be kept before
us as canons of judgment by which we may test their claim
to be based on the teaching of the apostle and to represent
his thought. On the one hand, it is to be noticed that it is 1
always of one and the same subject that Paul speaks in his
references to the different stages of the Being of Christ.
However contrasted these states may be with one another,
^ Besides, it makes a difference in our conception of the grace of God
in the Incarnation whether we regard that grace as manifested in the
Son of God leaving heaven that He might enter on the humiliation of
our earthly life, or as manifested simply in His Passion and Death for
us. There is an added element of condescension in the former case
that is absent in the latter. It is not often that Paul speaks of the
act of the incarnation itself as a revelation of the love of God, but he does
so represent it in two passages at least (Phil. ii. 3-10, and 2 Cor. viii. 9).
And it would deprive those of meaning were we to regard him as
mistaken in believing in the personal pre-existence ofthe Son of God.
See Rainy on Philippians, p. 127.

200 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
it is one and the same Christ who is the subject of them ;
the continuity of His life and consciousness unites them as
parts of one history extending over the Eternity that is past,
the brief episode of ITis earthly career, and the Eternity that
followed. And, on the other hand, there is the no less indis
putable truth that, as Paul represents the matter, Christ's
experience of these successive states rnarks the progress of
His Personality from what is (in one point of view) a less
perfect form of Being to one that is perfect and complete.
While His life in the flesh was a state of Humiliation com
pared with His life as pre-incarnate. His state as Exalted
involved an increase of personal glory (or personal qualifi
cation for the work of our redemption) compared not only
with the earthly state, but also with that which was prior to
it. The exaltation was not simply His return to a glory He
was in possession of before, but an accession of personal
greatness for which His earthly career furnished the needed
preparation and discipline.^ What Christ became as Risen
and Glorified at once revealed what was distinctive in His
eternal and unchanging nature, and crowned it with the
perfection for which He was destined from the first. These
two points must receive recognition in any theory profess
ing to set forth the more speculative aspect of Christ's
Person that would commend itself as Pauline.
There are but three possible views to be taken of this
subject, and each of them has received support.
I. The first is that Christ, in Paul's teaching, is in His
essential nature a Man, and no more. Starting from the
undoubted fact that He who lives in heaven, our Lord and
Saviour, is genuinely human, the advocates of this view
refuse to claim for Him more, and in predicating pre-
existence of Christ they hold that the New Testament
1 As Haupt {Philip. Brf, p. 96) puts it, " '2vv6poi>os Gottes ist er erst
kraft seiner Erhohung geworden, denn der Platz zur Rechten Gottes
bezeichnet die Teilnahme an der gottlichen Herrschaft."

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 20I
contemplates Him as Man in that prior state. This opinion
is based on their interpretation of i Cor. xv. 47, " the Second
Adam is from heaven," according to which Paul is supposed
to teach that Christ existed before as the heavenly Pneu
matic Man, clothed in a celestial body, to be revealed in due
time as the Pattern Man in order to communicate to His
people that spiritual body that is the appropriate organ of
the higher manhood. The passage is confessedly one ofthe
most difficult in Paul's writings. Holtzmann, who himself
accepts the view taken by so many modern scholars, that
Paul taught the doctrine of a Pre-existent Heavenly Man,
and that it formed part of the inheritance he had brought
with him from his Rabbinical training to the understanding
of Christian truth, includes this in his list of several passages
noted by him in Paul's writings, in regard to which he says
we can never be sure that we understand him in the sense
which the apostle intended. With commendable fairness
that writer allows that it is to Christ as Exalted that Paul
applies the term " the Second Adam," since it is only as
Exalted that Christ can be spoken of as the New Spiritual
Head whose glorified body is the pledge of a similar resur
rection-life to His people. While this is so, Holtzmann
still maintains that indirectly there is a reference to the
Heavenly Pre-existent Man in the phrase "from Heaven,"
indicating the apostle's belief that Christ had a prior
existence as the Primal Man. The difficulty in the way of
our acceptance of this interpretation, and it is one that seems
to me insuperable, is that in other passages quoted above
His pre-existent life is described in terms that are incom
patible with His being no more than human, or the created
Model of other human intelligences. He is declared to be
the instrument by whom creation itself was effected; ^ and
when He is said to have existed in the " Form of God," the
" Form " whether held to be something essential to His Being
'Col. i. 15.

202 ST. Paul's conception of christ
and inseparable from it, or something He could divest Him
self of, points in either case to a relationship with the very
life of God that seems inconsistent at least with creature-
hood.i And therefore, although it is going in the face of
what, up to recently at least, was almost an accepted result
among modern students of Paul, I am unable to agree with
the opinion that the apostle conceived of Christ as the
Heavenly Man of Jewish Theology.^ The truth in this
view, and it is one that must find a place in any theory that
is to reflect his thought, is that Christ is a True Man ; and
that inasmuch as He is the same through all the stages of
His history, the reality of the human element must be recog
nised in Him as belonging to His essential nature, however
difficult it may be for us to conceive the fact.
2. The second view by which Paul's statements have
been interpreted, is that Christ pre-existed as a Divine
Person, the second Person of the Godhead, who in His
birth assumed human nature into personal union with His
Divine nature, each maintaining its own distinctive attri
butes unchanged by the union. The co-existence of two
natures essentially different from each other is regarded as
having been effected by the Divine Omnipotence, and as
constituting the mystery of the incarnation. The strength
of this interpretation lies in the fact that it does full justice
' It may, besides, be urged that if He was Pre-existent as Man, it
could not be said that it was not till He appeared on earth that He was
made in the " likeness of man," and was found in " fashion as a man."
RitschI, indeed, thinks {Altkath. Kirehe. p. 80) that if it had been the
apostle's view that Christ was Man only in His earthly appearance,
he must then have written ^o/jip^ duSpaxov instead of SoyAou as the
proper contrast to fiopc})'^ Qsov (Phil. ii. 6). But we cannot isolate /,cop(pii
Soi/Xou in this way from what follows, where it is explained as meaning His
Humanity. ^ Later commentators are opposed to this idea. Haupt, in his com
mentary on Phihppians (1897), says he cannot " discover the Pre-existent
Man Christ in Paul's writings " (p. 71). Klopper has a long note in refuta
tion of it in his Brief an die Philip. (1893), pp. 134-140. R. Schmidt
also is opposed to it. See his Paulinische Christologie.

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 2O3
to the Divine Factor in the Person of our Lord, and to
those passages that assign cosmological functions to the
Pre-incarnate One ; and further, that it finds a reason in
the original constitution of His Person for His present
supremacy over all as Lord. Its weakness is that it
sacrifices the humanity of the historic Christ, and with
that. His moral and religious significance for the life of man
to what is conceived to be the interest of His essential or
metaphysical Divinity. There is no question as to the basis
of His Personality being truly Divine. The only question
is whether His Original Godhead is to be conceived of under
those attributes of Infinity that are incommunicable to
human nature, or as having affinities with and relations to
what is human that explain the Divinity of Man as
" made in the image of God." The idea of His essential
or Metaphysical Divinity is, to say the least, not actively
present in our conception of Christ. For our belief in
Him is not that God " in all His absoluteness, omniscience,
omnipresence, took on the form of a Man and walked
among men in Galilee," so that Jesus was everywhere
present at the same time and knew all the occurrences on
earth and all the secrets of science and philosophy; but it
is the belief that God was in Christ in so far as He can
be present in a human personality, revealing Himself under
those features of moral character which we can understand
and appreciate in virtue of our moral affinity with God.
But if, as a certain class of theologians allege,^ there is all
^ I refer to those theologians who, in conceiving of the union between
the Divine and Human in Christ, start, not from the affinity of the one
with the other, but from their essential unlikeness and disparity. The
Divine is with them the Infinite, the Omniscient, the Omnipresent One,
incapable of union in the real sense with the human or finite, inasmuch
as a human consciousness possessed of omniscience and omnipresence
would be no longer human. As a modern instance of this metaphysical
treatment of the subject, I would refer to the elaborate work of Powell
on the Principle of the Incarnation, 1896. Approaching the problem
from this point of view, the author regards Jesus as the subject of a

204 ST. Paul's conception of christ
the difference between what Christ in His transcendent
nature is and what we are, that there is between One who is
possessed ofthe Infinite attributes of Divinity and those who
are finite and exist under the limitations of creaturehood, then
it is hard to see how there can be any real union between
the Divine and the human in His Historical Personality,
or how He could be in any true sense a Man, with a
human consciousness and the subject of human experiences.
Inevitably the entire worth of His Person for the life of faith
is impaired by a doctrine that denies all affinity between the
original constitution of the Person of Christ and our personal
life, or that forces us to conceive of Him in His original
pre-existent being as contrasted with and essentially separate
from us ; and were the latter supposition true, Paul's language
would have no meaning in which he speaks of Him who had
pre-existent relations with God and creation as essentially
one and the same with Him whom he knew as a " man."
This difficulty has of course always been felt, and the long
controversy of the ancient Church that preceded the fixing
of the dogma exhibits the wavering of theologians in their
endeavour now to maintain the unity of His Person, involving
the practical surrender of the Human factor, and now the
duality of the Natures, with its consequent surrender of the
unity of the Person. The decision of the Council of Chal-
double consciousness, a. Divine and a human, in virtue of which He
was, in one and the same moment, in the one sphere of consciousness,
omniscient and in full possession and exercise of His Divine nature,
and in the other, ignorant and subject to the limitation of His creatures.
The union of the Divine and human in the Person of Christ is, on this
view, however, a purely formal one. The human remains really dis
sociated and separate from the Divine. To speak of Christ as at once
omniscient in the Divine sphere and ignorant in the human, as filling
all space on earth while at the same time locally confined to one place,
the subject of attributes that are disparate and naturally exclusive of one
another, is to use language to which no real meaning can be attached,
and which certainly does not describe the Christ of the Gospels. But
we are landed in this when we attempt to construe to our thought the
fact ofthe Incarnation starting with metaphysical postulates:

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 205
cedon was no solution of the problem, but it brought the con
troversy to an end for the time ; and the Church acquiesced
in a judgment which, in exalting the Divine at the expense
of the Human, gradually widened the breach between the
dogmatic and the historic Christ, lessening very seriously
the influence of His Humanity on the life of the Church,
and obscuring it from the view of men, except in so far as
it was brought home to their minds by His suffering and
death. " The God-Man of the Catholic Church," says a
German historian, " is too prevailingly only God to be at
the same time also Man. He is Man only to undergo
the Passion. It is the holy Virgin that represents normal
Humanity in its Spiritual Perfection." ^
The Reformers accepted the Christology of the ancient
Church. But with the revival of the evangelic faith there
came a fresh realisation of the truth of our Lord's humanity
and its supreme worth in the salvation He has procured
for men ; and new attempts were made on the old lines to
formulate the doctrine of the Person of our Lord in a way
that would rescue the human element from the Doketism
that resulted from the old view. The two branches of the
Protestant Church had each its own type of doctrine on
this subject. Lutheranism, holding that the natural effect
of the union of the Son of God with our nature was the
communication to the latter of the Divine attributes of the
former, saved itself from the charge of reducing the
humanity to a mere semblance by maintaining that the
exercise of these Divine attributes was in abeyance during
the earthly life of Jesus, that they existed in Him only in
a concealed or hidden form. Abandoning this unsatis
factory position, the later representatives of the Lutheran
1 Schneckenburger, Vergleichende Darstellung des Luth. tt. Reform.
Lehrbegriffs, vol. ii. p. 229. His words are : " Der Katholische Gott-
Mensch ist zu prjeponderirend nur Gott um zugleich wahrer Mensch zu
sein. Er ist Mensch nur um die Passion zu dulden. Die normal geistig
vollendete Menschheit reprffisentirt die Heilige Jungfrau."

2o6 ST. Paul's conception of christ
type of thought have maintained that the eternal Son of
God laid aside the Divine attributes in becoming Man, so
as to leave room for a genuine human consciousness and
development. Hence we have the dogma of the Kenosis
of the Son of God, which, propounded in the most extreme
and most consistent form by Gess, asserts that in becoming
Incarnate the Eternal Son of God denuded Himself of the
essential qualities of His own nature and all that prevented
Him becoming the subject of true human experiences.
The criticism of this dogma has been accomplished in a
way that has brought out its irreconcilableness with right
reason by my predecessor. Dr. Bruce; and I think it has
been amply shown by him, that however attractive the
theory may be as the basis, in the hands of Gess, of a
faithful representation of the Christ of the Gospels, the
supposition of an act of " self emptying " on the part of
the Second Person of the Trinity, that means the divesting
Himself of those qualities that constitute His Divine
Nature, is one that just views of God do not allow us to
entertain. The theology of the Reformed Church deals with the
difficulty in another way. It accentuates more strongly
than the Lutheran the disparity between the Divine and
the Human, and holds in opposition to it that the Human
cannot partake of the qualities of the Divine. The union
that is implied in the Incarnation would thus seem to be
an impossibility. But here it brings in its doctrine of a
Double Life and dual consciousness of the Son of God.
As the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God
remains in the exercise of His Divine prerogatives,
knowing and upholding all things. But He has another
life, as the principle of the Person of the God-Man. In
the Man Christ Jesus He limits Himself so as to make
possible a genuine human life, and is truly united to
the human nature by the Holy Spirit. He is wholly in

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 207
the Humanity of Jesus according to its nature and at
each stage of its development, but also wholly outside
of it in the sphere in which He lives and acts as the
Second Person of the Trinity.^ This view has been
lately revived and advocated by Canon Gore. " There
is reason to believe," he says, " that the apostoHc writers
contemplate the continuance of the Divine and Kosmic
functions of the Son of God through the Incarnation ;
that the state of humiliation within the sphere of His
humanity must have been compatible with their exercise
in another sphere, by the same Divine Person, of the
fulness of the Divine Power. In other words, that the
Son of God, even when He walked the earth, was actively
engaged in ruling this world from a different centre, so
to speak, that, while in the sphere of His humanity He
was ignorant of many things, in another sphere He knew
all things." ^ I do not, however, see that on this view we
^ The Logos, as the Reformed theology has it, is lotus extra Christum
et lotus in Christo : He is in heaven while a man. The truth expressed
in this language is that the Redeeming Love of God is not lessened in
God by its being the life of Christ, any more than a man's virtue is
lessened by being communicated to another raan. The Lutheran
Christology maintains that the Logos is lotus in Christo, and denies that
it is extra Christum at all. Gess goes so far as to say that " the Logos
became man only if He ceases to feel, to perceive, to act, except in the
human nature which He animates" {P. u. W. iii. 315). This means, of
course, the temporary extinction of His Divine self-consciousness. The
truth that finds so imperfect an intellectual expression in the Lutheran
system is that God is wholly revealed in Christ, that in Him we have
very God, and not a God reduced to the measure of our capacities,
or different from God as He is.
''¦ Gore's Dissertations, the " Consciousness of our Lord in His mortal
Life." Mr. Hutton, in his essay on " The Incarnation and Principles of
Evidence," seems to suggest a similar view in the following words,—
words which indicate also a thorough-going doctrine of Kenosis : " It
seems to me the most presumptuous of all presumptuous assumptions to
deny that the Son of God might have really become what He seemed to
be, a finite being, a Jew of Jewish thoughts and prepossessions, and
liable to all the intellectual errors which distinguished the worid in
which He lived. If there is an indestructible moral individuality which

2o8 ST. Paul's conception of christ
can believe in a Divine Personality as the principle of the
Personal life of Jesus Christ, since it is only outside of
the latter and as extramundane, that this Divine Person
is conceived as existing as He really is ; or that we can
affirm more of Christ, if this theory is true, than that
He possessed in an extraordinary measure that Spirit
of God that is the principle of every true human person
ality. And in that case the union of the Divine and the
Human in His person is no more than the supreme
instance of the union that is normal of every true
Christian. And to this the Christology of the Reformed
Church, it seems to me, inevitably comes.^
constitutes self, which is the same when wielding the largest powers
and when it sits alone at the dark centre, — which, for anything I know,
may even live under a double set of conditions at the same time, — I
can see no metaphysical contradiction in an Incarnation" {Essays,
vol. i. p. 242).
1 Dorner has attempted the solution of the Christological problem
in a way of his own. He regards the union of the natures as the result
of a moral process. The incarnation is to be understood properly in an
ethical sense, as the result of the Divine (the Personal Logos) gradually
communicating Himself to the Human in the Person of Christ, as the
man grew in moral receptivity. This theory implies a dual personality
in Jesus till the union of the two natures was completed, and the logos
entirely communicated Himself to the man. Conscious that, in this
form, his doctrine was a revival of the error of Nestorius, Dorner in his
latest work {System of Christian Doctrine) no longer maintains the
separate personality of the logos, but, with Rothe, views the logos as a
" principle " or factor of the Godhead. The real contribution of this
theologian to Christology is the emphasis he places on the truth (which
receives such prominence also in Rothe's construction of the doctrine of
the Second Adam) that the union of the Divine and Human in the
Person of Christ was a gradual process and proceeded from the
Indwelling of God in the Man Christ Jesus, the fulness of the manifesta
tion of God in Him keeping pace with His growth in personal hohness
and love. The study of Christology, ancient and modern, is valuable
for the fresh points of view for the understanding of the religious
contents of the Person of Christ which it furnishes. The failure of
theologians one and all to interpret intellectually the Person of Christ in
the light of the special religious truth that in each case gives interest to
their speculations, illustrates the inability of the human mind to deal
with the metaphysics of the subject. It is plain that only such deter-

THE eternal nature OF CHRIST 209
3. Whether, then, we think of the Pre-existent Christ as
the Heavenly Man merely, or as the Second Person of the
Trinity, bare Divinity and no more, we fail to account for
the Christ of whom Paul speaks, in whom the Divine and
the Human both co-exist and are brought home to our
hearts in a way that defies explanation on any theory that
views them as originally and antecedent to the Incarna
tion, distinct and opposite in nature in the way they are
regarded in both the explanations that have been criticised.
But a third view remains to be considered, that which
represents Paul as teaching that Christ pre-existed, not ';
as Man nor as God, but as God and Man in essential ^
union. Denying that there is any such original antithesis
between the two natures as ecclesiastical theology pre
supposes, — maintaining, on the contrary, the original and
essential identity of the two, — certain Christian thinkers
have held that Christ was from all eternity God-Man,
at once Son of God and Son of Man, the Image of God
and Revelation of Him to His creatures, and the Ideal or
Archetypal Man in whose image the human race was
made. The Incarnation was not then properly the
assumption of human nature, for before creation itself
Christ was Man and our Brother; it was the assumption
of our flesh, and involved a change of state or condition
merely, the laying aside of the Divine Form of His
Humanity that He might partake of it in its flesh-and-
blood form, so that under its conditions He might do
and suffer what He could not while in the Form of God.
The Incarnation, then, simply revealed the essential oneness
of the Divine and the Human, and the relation that
already existed between the Son of God and Mankind.
minations of Christological opinion as reflect the light that comes from
the historic life and work of Christ can be regarded as expressions of
Christian truth ; and that all views must be set aside that fail to do this,
or that reflect a hght borrowed from outside speculation.
14

2IO ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
This understanding of the Eternal Nature of Christ
has commended itself to speculative minds in all ages,
and is widely held at the present day.^ It is maintained
not only by continental theologians of note, but by many
in recent years in our own country. Readers of F. D.
Maurice's works will remember the vitality of this belief
in his theological thinking ; and the late Dr. Dale advo
cated it not less strenuously, and insisted on the apprecia
tion of the truth of Christ's Eternal Humanity and pre-
existent relation to the Human race, as necessary to the
understanding of the relation between God and man as
set forth in the Scriptures.^ This doctrine, indeed, belongs
to the best days of Greek Theology, and was held by those
who were most eager in doing justice to the unity of the
Person of Christ. For if He was throughout all states the
Son of God, one and unchanged, then the humanity He
took to himself could be no new thing, but must have been
already rooted in His Eternal Being. He must have been
Man as well as God before He came into the world.
There is much in this view to commend it. It recog
nises the kinship between God and Man, and the essential
correspondence between the Divine and human. It rebukes
that false conception of what constitutes the greatness of
God that makes some hesitate to see God in One who
shares the frailties of human nature, and who is wanting in
those Infinite attributes of the Godhead which they
identify with His Glory. By emphasising the truth
that Jesus Christ in His historic life is the manifestation
of God, it exalts the moral and religious qualities by which
He is known, the righteousness and love that appeal to
our trust and love, and it proclaims the significance for the
1 See Note on The Different Forms of this Theory of the Pre-
existent God-Man.
" Edwards {The God-Man) seems also to hold this view. He speaks
of the Logos as " Eternal Man," though he explains this as only " an
idea of what the Logos Incarnate will be" (p. 18).

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 2 1 I
Eternal Life of God of the idea of human nature with the
elements that make it up and as it is realised in Jesus of
Nazareth.^ At the same time I doubt whether, as formu
lated by theology, this doctrine of the Eternal God- Man
can be accepted as a solution of the problem of the Person
of our Lord. It is involved in the same difficulties as have
been referred to in connection with the Lutheran and
Reformed types of Christological doctrine. For the
limitation of the Divine in the Man Christ Jesus has to be
accounted for, as in these cases, and we are driven, in our
attempt at explanation, either to the theory of Kenosis or
that of the Dual consciousness. The religious truth to which
this view seeks to give expression is of priceless moment,
but the intellectual form in which it is expressed eludes our
grasp, and the truth seems imperilled when we make our
faith in it dependent on our apprehension of the form.
A special emphasis was given to this mode of conceiving
the Person of Christ in the Christology of Apollinaris ; and
some reference may be made to his view, since he has
been recently regarded as having reproduced more faith
fully than any other the original Pauline thought. Accord
ing to that great thinker, the Logos (word) or the Pneuma
(spirit) was the pre-existent factor in the Person of the
historic Christ, and took the place of the human pneuma or
nous. This teaching was condemned because it followed,
his opponents urged, that His Humanity was an im
perfect thing, consisting only in His participation of the
human body or material side of our nature, wanting in
those higher elements of will and freedom that enter into
our conception of a true humanity. The charge was well
1 "All religious philosophy will admit that in God there is the
Eternal Prototype of Humanity. All intelligent religious thinking must
recognise in the Deity an eternal basis for the nature, the advent, the
career, and ideal of mankind " ( The Christ of To-day, by G. A. Gordon).

212 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
founded. He held, indeed, that the pneuma in Christ was
in its very nature human as well as Divine ; the flesh or
natural physical man of the historic Christ was but the
organ through which the Divine Spirit, essentially human
in its nature, manifested itself Still, it remained true that
the humanity which He brought with Him into the world
was, in its ideal character, its immunity from temptation,
its natural incapacity for sin, a very different humanity
from ours. Nor could He, as long as He was thus human
only in His eternal nature, redeem from sin and death the
humanity that is ours, or reconcile us to God. The Church
saw that it was but a form of Doketism to say that the
only thing Christ had in common with ordinary men was
the flesh or material part of His humanity, and in rejecting
such teaching it was guided by the instinct of truth.
At the same time, the general conception of the Eternal
Humanity of the Son of God, and of Christ as predestined,
in virtue of being in His pre-existent state human as well
as Divine, to realise the union of God and man in the flesh,
is a very attractive one; and the language at least of
Apollinaris, in his advocacy of it, seems to answer
strikingly to that of Paul. In his History of Dogma,
Harnack has remarked on this. These are his words :
" One cannot but express his astonishment that in Apollin
aris speculation has returned to its first beginning, for this
Christ is really the Christ of Paul, the heavenly Spirit-Being
who assumed the flesh." ^ This judgment, however, seems
to me to go too far in magnifying the resemblance between
Apollinaris' doctrine and that of Paul. There are certain
features common to both that tempt us to identify the one
with the other, and we are not surprised to find in modern
biographers of the life of Christ the influence of Apollin-
arism when they deal with the mystery of His Person.^ It
^ Dogme7i Geschichte, vol. ii. p. 217 (note).
2 The Kenotic Christology of Gess bears a strong resemblance to

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 213
accords with Paul's view of the identity of the Pre-existent
Christ with the Christ Incarnate, to think of His Person as
being, under both conditions, at once Human and Divine.
And Apollinaris' theory seems to be echoed in Paul's
language in reference to the transition from the Heavenly
to the earthly state of being, suggesting, as that language
to all appearance does, that it was not so much the assump
tion of another nature that took place in His Incarnation,
as that of a lower form of the same nature, the assumption
of the flesh, a distinction being implied between humanity
as it existed at the roots of His own Person, and humanity
as derived from us, destitute of the Divine pneuma, and
simply flesh. The language Paul habituaHy uses in
reference to the Person of Christ is psychological and
moral rather than metaphysical. The contrast, according
to him, is not so much between the Divine and the human,
as between the Spirit, which is at once Divine and Human,
and the flesh. And from this circumstance his language
lends itself to the support of theories such as that of
Apollinaris, which, going behind the historical in order
to form a conception of the Pre-existent One, regard
Him in that state as the Divine-human Pneuma, and the
humanity He assumed as being only flesh that concealed
the true inner personality of the Eternal God-Man.
But notwithstanding what has been said, the resemblance
is more in appearance than in reality ; and I am unable to
regard the view of Apollinaris as warranted by the thought
of Paul. The terms " Spirit " and " Flesh " are used by
the apostle in a psychological sense to describe the Person
of Christ from a religious point of view, and not to denote
ApoUinarism. For according to him it was the Logos nature that took
the place of the human soul in the body that was born of Mary ; only
(and here he differs from Apollinaris) it was the Logos nature de-
potentiated of all Divine attributes and reduced to a Receptivity for the
Divine. See Person ii. Werk, iii. p. 379, etc.

214 ST. Paul's conception of christ
metaphysical entities. In His being Spirit, clothed in
flesh, Christ, according to Paul, simply fulfilled the idea of
our humanity, and was what we are all called to be, and
what He makes us. And we seem unable to find in that
which was the religious basis of His human personality a
clue to the understanding of what He was in His own
distinctive Being as Pre-existent and Eternal.
I confess I have little confidence in any speculation
that has been formed on the subject, or in the power of
the human mind to grapple successfully with the difficulties
of it. It lies beyond our experience ; all forms of speech
about Christ as pre-incarnate must necessarily be figurative
and imperfect. The references of Paul are incidental and
insufficient to form a basis of theory. We are not to look
for that exactness of definition in Paul's Christology which
the conflict of later theologies developed. The age of
definition was not yet. A love so intense, so all-absorbing,
as the love of Christ that consumed the heart of the
apostle, cares not to inquire about the nature of the Being
that is loved.^ The contemplation of Christ in His Risen
Glory was enough for him. With this Glorified Man to
love, to live and labour and die for, to follow now and
to hope in for hereafter, he was indifferent alike to questions
that related to His Human Birth and His Eternal pre
incarnate nature. It does not appear that he ever made
the Incarnation the subject of reflection except in the one
passage in Philippians that has been considered ; and there,
the difficulty that is felt by us as to how One, Divine in His
pre-existent state, could become a Man and remain the same
in His original Personal Life, does not seem to have occurred
^ " As soon as we can give a reason for a feeling we are no longer
under the spell of it ; we appreciate, we weigh, we are free, at least in
principle. . . . Love must always seem to us indivisible, insoluble,
superior to all analysis, if it is to preserve that appearance of infinity, of
something supernatural and miraculous, which makes its chief beauty"
{Ps.m\e\, Journal, vol. ii. p. 21).

THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 215
to him. It is the Resurrection rather than the Incarnation,
I must repeat, that in Paul's view gives us the Christ with
whom we have to do, and who is the object of a faith that
has a definite content, who is known to us as at once the
Man who is Spirit, the instrument of the Energy of the
Holy God upon our souls, and the Son of God or perfect
image of the Father.
It is to be observed, then, that the previous stages of
Christ's Personality, His terrestrial and preterrestrial stages,
are spoken of by the apostle only incidentally and in their
contrast with His Present Life. His earthly state is repre
sented as one of imperfection contrasted with His state as
Exalted, for His real glory was concealed and obscured
by the flesh; while, in relation to His pre-existent state.
His life on earth is declared to have been a state of
impoverishment and voluntary self-abasement for our sakes.
No doubt what has always given to the Gospel Message its
power to touch human hearts is that Christ, in being born
into the world, is declared to have come from glory to
dishonour for us men and for our salvation, and that He
was aware of this humiliation. But wherein that humiHation
consisted, and what the differentia was between His historic
life on earth and His prior life in heaven, is a question that
could only be answered were we able to tell what precisely
is meant by the apostle's phrase, " He emptied Himself"
It cannot be of " the Form of God," if we are to understand
by " Form " not what is accidental but what is character
istic of God, which is essential to Him and inseparable
from His nature, for of that the Pre-existent One could not
denude Himself without ceasing to be God. Or, turning
to the other clause in his remarkable statement, " He
thought the being-on-an-equality-with-God was not, like
booty, to be grasped at by Him," — can we find here any clue
to what is meant by the phrase "He emptied Himself"?
Some answer in the affirmative, regarding the "equality

2x6 ST. Paul's conception of christ
with God " as a condition of glory and majesty that was
the manifestation of the Divine nature, and which could be
resigned for a time by His taking the form of a servant.^
But against this there is, as I have pointed out, much
to be said in favour of the view that we are not to under
stand " the being equal with God " as the actual pos
session of the Pre-incarnate Christ, but as a glory in
prospect, that was destined to be His ; and we can scarcely
speak in literal truth of one " emptying " himself of an
object that is not yet his own. But if any meaning at all
is to be attached to the phrase " He emptied Himself," it
is in this clause we are to find it, in connection with
what is said in what immediately follows about His taking
the " form of a servant." By this term, however, we are to
understand, I think, not a surrender of metaphysical attri
butes or prerogatives, but a moral act of self-abnegation in
which He declined to seek that predestined glory to be
Lord of all in a way that would be easy to Himself or that
would have indicated a spirit impatient to grasp its own,
preferring to assume the form of a servant that He
might win it by humble obedience to the Will of God and
loving service of His brethren. On this view there is no
hint of the metaphysical change involved in passing from
the one state to the other. We have the simple statement
that there lay at the root of it a sublime act of self-
renunciation that involved all the issues of an earthly
history, such as He passed through.^
^ Whether the to uvou ha ©em can be understood in this sense as a
something separable from Deity is of course open to dispute. Gess
explains it as something belonging to the inner nature of Christ, without
which He would cease to be Divine. He, with the majority of com
mentators, regards the "Form of God" as that ofwhich He "emptied
Himself" {Per. u. Werk, vol. ii. p. 313).
^ This passage (Phil. ii. 6-8) has no real bearing on the meta
physical questions that have been raised regarding the Kenosis of the
Son of God. There is a disposition among later exegetes to admit
this. Thus Haupt : " All those questions that come up in the treatment

the eternal nature of CHRIST 217
And if we are unable to form any definite conception
of the pre-existent state of Christ so as to state the differ
ence between it and His earthly one, we are as little able
to say what relation it bore to His state in Glory. If we
know Him now as the Son of God and the embodiment of
the power of the Divine Spirit, we believe that He was
never less than this ; and that if we can speak of His pre-
existence at ah, we are warranted in holding that the Spirit
and Divine Sonship that now characterise Him and that
shine through His life express the truth of His eternal
pre-existent nature.^ But, plainly, it is through the humanity
now Exalted in His person that these terms have meaning
for us ; and His present possession of a human nature, with
the concrete experience of a human Hfe and history that
fell to Him as an Individual Man, has not only added to
the fulness of His own being, making Him more than He
was before, it has also made Him to us the object of
positive knowledge, which He never could have been had
He not thus been revealed. For the ideas of Spirit and
Sonship, however true they may be of the Eternal Christ,
are no more than words to us till they receive meaning by
being realised in a Man whose influence upon us is
of the dogmatic doctrine of the Kenosis are entirely foreign to the
connection of these words. How the earthly existence of Jesus is
related to the essential attributes of the Godhead is a matter that does
not concern the apostle here. The question here is regarding the
contrast between two different forms of life " {Der Philip. Brief, p. 82).
The one truth regarding the eternal nature of Christ, as discovered in
His willingness to pass from the one form of life to the other, is the
truth of His self-sacrificing love.
^ The words of Clement of Rome {iipoi KopivB. B.) are often quoted
as representing most accurately the thought of Paul regarding the pre-
existent Christ, 0 Kvpios 0 craaa; ilfix; uv /ih to ¦Trparou Trusvfia, eyiiiiro
cseip^ (ix. 5), " the Lord, who saved us, being first Spirit, became flesh."
The same idea occurs in another passage (xiv. 2) of this most interesting
document, which Lightfoot speaks of as the earliest Christian homily
extant. It is worthy of mention, also, that in "The Shepherd of Hermas"
Christ is more than once referred to as the "Spirit" (S. ix. i).

2i8 ST. Paul's conception of -christ
recognised as that of the Spirit of God, and whose human
Goodness is perceived to be that of God Himself The
difference of metaphysical being between Christ and all
others must be acknowledged. But it is in virtue of what
He became through the participation of our Humanity and
through His Exaltation as Man, victorious over sin and
death, that He is the object of our religious faith and love,
that He is to us the vehicle of the Spirit of God and the
Mirror in whom God's face is seen, that His Person, in
short, is invested with the unspeakable importance it
possesses for the moral and religious life of the Race.
On the metaphysical or speculative side, then, there is
a limit to our understanding of the Person of Christ. On
the ethical side. He stands clearly known to us as the
revelation of the life of God ; but we are baffled when we
attempt to penetrate the mystery of that life, and to
explain the nature of its Premundane existence and its
Transcendent relation to God. What more can we say
about it than what St. Paul says in that passage that
has engaged our attention, that it is love, love that seeks
not its own glory but the good of man, the fountain
and original of that love that is seen in the life and work
of the historical Christ. Little profit is to be got from
the attempt to explain the intellectual mystery by the
application to it of our theoretic conceptions of the Divine
as differentiated from the human. The Divine is intelligible
to us only as the Principle or Causality of that which is
highest and most perfect in our notion of the human.
And Christ is recognised by us as the union of the two,
because He is the producing cause in us, and in all who
surrender themselves to Him, of that life of righteousness
and love in which we reach the perfection for which we
were made. The truth of our Lord's Divinity must rest,
as we have seen in this review of Paul's teaching, on the

the ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST 219
experience that testifies to the Divine life that proceeds
from Him.
A distinction is made by theologians between truths
that are of primary and others that are of secondary
importance. And in regard to the Doctrine of Christ, it
has been contended that to the former class belong those
truths that express the experiences formed in the life of
faith upon Him, while to the latter we must refer those
truths that relate to His pre-existence, as being speculative
in their nature and unverifiable in experience. There is
much to be said for this contention. For the metaphysical
distinction between Christ and all others is a mystery that
lies beyond our apprehension, except as a fact, and belongs
plainly to a different order of truths from those that set
forth what He is to us in the experience of the life of
faith. These appeal to us with an authority that commands
assent. Truth that is in its nature theoretical, whose
claim to be accepted rests on its being the presupposition
or implicate of truth that shines in its own light, stands on
a different footing from truth that is practical in its nature
and is borne witness to by the facts of the life of God in
our souls. There is a place for the former in the scheme
of truth, but it is not that place of pre-eminence which is
due to the latter alone. And if this be so, then our faith
in the Divinity of Christ is based, not so much on isolated
passages in the apostle's writings that teach His Pre-
existence and His transcendental relations to God and the
universe, as on that practical experience of the Supremacy
and All-sufficiency of Christ for the wants of the higher
Hfe of man, that finds abundant expression in the Epistles
and that forms the burden of the apostolic testimony. The
most convincing part of the evidence is by no means that
on which there has been a general disposition to place the
chief importance — I mean those texts that point to a
divinity understood in the metaphysical sense. The Divinity

2 20 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
of Christ in the apostolic writings is a truth on which the
soul rests frora the experience of His Divine Power, and the
satisfying character of the Revelation of God that is conveyed
in His Person and character. It is defined in terms that are
supplied by the experience of the new life ofwhich He is the
author. It is the soul's confession of the Supremacy of its
Lord in the region of the moral and spiritual life. And
inasmuch as there is not a page of the apostle's writings in
which this sense of the supreme significance of Christ for
the true life of man does not break out in words of affec
tion, trust, devotion, worship, it is a truth that does not
depend on single passages, but as an inseparable element
in Christian conviction, it is borne witness to in every page
of his Epistles. Dr. Dale, a profound student of Paul, truly
remarks that the least impressive and conclusive proofs of
the Divinity of our Lord are those in which it is definitely
asserted. Comparing the latter to the sparkling crystals that
appear in the sand after the tide has receded, " these are
not," he says, " the strongest, though they may be the most
apparent, proofs that the sea is salt ; the salt is present in
solution in every bucket of sea-water. And so the truth
of our Lord's Divinity is present in solution in whole pages
of the Epistles, from which not a single text could be
quoted that explicitly declares it. It is present in the
passionate and unmeasured love and devotion with which the
apostles regard our Lord ; it is present in their exulting faith
in Him ; it is present in their profound belief that the very
springs of their higher life are in Christ, and that only as
they are one with Christ can they hope for righteousness in
this world, or for glory in the next.^
^ Christia?i Doctrine, p. 87.

VII

THE CHRIST OF HISTORY AND THE
PAULINE INTERPRETATION

¦221

LECTURE VII
The Christ of History and the Pauline
Interpretation
We have traced in past lectures the main outlines of that
conception of Christ that we owe under God to the
Christian genius of Paul, and that recognises in so striking
a way the Supreme Function of Christ in relation to the
moral and religious life of Man. It is based, as we have
seen, on the apostle's own personal experience of the power
of the Exalted Christ. It is an interpretation of the Person
and work of our Lord in the light of the impressions of
His Risen Glory. But now we turn to consider how far
this magnificent conception agrees with the picture that
we have in the pages of the Synoptic Gospels. As I have
had occasion to remark, the picture of the historical Christ
is, with Paul, in the background. It is of secondary
importance, and is seldom referred to by him. The
knowledge that possessed saving power for hira began with
the impressions he received from Christ as Glorified, and
was derived frora the experience of His benefits ; and
these benefits he did not regard Christ as qualified to
bestow tiU He had died and risen again. All that pre
ceded His Death in the history of Jesus lay for the apostle
in the shade, and contributed little to the conception of
the Saviour that was so great a power over his life. But
we cannot help asking. In what relation does this Christ
of faith and of Christian experience stand to the Jesus of
history? Is it in full agreeraent with the revelation of
Him that is given in the words and acts of His historic

2 24 ST. Paul's conception of christ
life ? Outwardly, the differences between the two pictures
are great ; and on a surface view of the matter the one
may appear to be irreconcilable with the other. Exception
has often been taken to the legitimacy of Paul's representa
tion. The feeling of an antagonism between the two, and
of dissatisfaction with the prominence of the Pauline
doctrine in the thought of the Church, has found utter
ance in the cry frequently raised, " not Paul, but Christ " ;
and the plea, in itself a reasonable one, on behalf of a
" return to Christ," means, on the lips at least of some, the
entire repudiation of the Pauline Christology, as being a
corrupt form of the original doctrine. We can scarcely,
then, close our review of the subject without some con
sideration of the grounds on which the validity of Paul's
interpretation of Christ has been questioned, as well as of
the grounds on which a different Christology (drawn, in
contrast to that of Paul, from the facts of history) is con
tended for, in preference to his, by many who are one with
us in the acknowledgment of Christ as Lord and Master.
One fundamental objection taken to the truth of Paul's
conception is that it vastly exaggerates the real signifi
cance of the Person of Christ. While, it is said, in the
synoptic accounts, Jesus makes little or no reference to Him
self, puts forth no claim of personal supremacy, but places
the great truths of the Kingdom of God and the Divine
Fatherhood and human duty in the foreground, in the
Pauline teaching the Person of Christ becomes all in all.
Our first point of inquiry, then, is this. Does Paul assert
of the Exalted Christ what is inconsistent with what
Jesus claimed for Himself, and what is out of harmony
with the facts of His Personal history? Or is there in
Christ's recorded thought about Hiraself that which may
be regarded as the germ of the raore developed teaching
of the apostle ? And does the adraltted contrast between
Christ's own thought of Hiraself and the circurastances of

the CHRIST OF HISTORY 225
limitation and obscurity in which He was found in the
days of His flesh not lead us to expect, that when death
has put the finishing touch on His life-work and disclosed
the Divine purpose of His Mission, He will stand forth as
He did to the eye of the apostle, clothed with religious
functions that exhibit the close relation which He holds
to the higher life of man ? This, I believe, will be felt to
be the case when full justice is done to the picture of the
historic Christ in the Gospels.
There is of course a question of criticism behind the
settlement of this question. Are the records reliable ?
Did they not, it may be urged, receive their present form
at a time when the higher views of the Person of Christ
originating with Paul had already indoctrinated the mind
of the Church, and unconsciously influenced those who
handled the tradition of the life of Christ? and if so, are
we not compelled to regard much that is contained in these
Gospels not as pure fact, but rather as fact and doctrinal
idea as well,— fact after passing through rainds that were
already filled with the most exalted conception of the
Master, and could not help leaving the impress of that
conception on the recorded story ? There is much that
may with great plausibility be said to this effect, much
that cannot be altogether disproved. We find that the
Gospels do bear the marks of the individuality of their
authors. Traces are discoverable of the influence of dog
matic bias on their composition ; and there is nothing
d. priori against the possibility that the Pauline bias may
have added to the original Picture touches borrowed from
the dogmatic ideal. But that this tendency operated to
any considerable extent is exceedingly doubtful. For
while Paul's views on the free grace of God and the
universal destination of the Gospel quickly gained ground
and prevailed, there is no evidence that his Christology
raade any deep impression at the time, or that it was
15

2 26 ST. Paul's conception of christ
in favour in those circles from which the Gospels in their
present form emanated. That the value of the record
as a source of historic truth has been impaired to any
extent by theological bias proceeding from the school of
Paul, is what scarcely anyone will admit who feels the
power of the Life depicted in the Gospels. The harmony
of the character of Christ as there delineated, the inter
mingling of the Divine and human in such a way that
" the lowly and human never degrade Him in our eyes,
nor His Power and Greatness remove Him out of our
sympathies and understanding," is inconsistent with the
supposition. That such a picture was or could have been
the growth of unconscious theologising is far raore in
credible than that it is what it professes to be, the record
of a sublime reality .^
No documents have been subjected to a raore un
fettered criticisra than these Gospels, and to no part of thqm
has a raore thorough investigation been directed than to
that which relates to the Messianic consciousness, as it has
been called, or the conception Christ entertained of Hira
self and His personal relation to God and man. Most
students of the Gospels are agreed that He did claim to
be the Messiah, and that His consciousness of Messiahship
was rooted in His knowledge of Himself. That He knew
Himself to be the Son of God, and inspired with the filial
spirit toward God, is beyond all question. Equally beyond
question is it that He was conscious that He contained in
His own Person the principle of salvation for mankind, and
that He regarded it as His raission to bring men into
that same relation to God and to one another that was
embodied in His own life, — to kindle in them that sarae spirit
1 " I esteem the Gospels to be thoroughly genuine, for there shines
forth from them the reflected splendour ofa Divinity, proceeding from the
Person of Jesus Christ, of so Divine a kind as only the Divine could
ever have manifested on earth " (Goethe).

THE CHRIST OF HISTORY 227
of trust in and obedience to their Heavenly Father, and
of active love to mankind, that was the source of His own
blessedness. This was the task of His Messiahship. If
He, in accomplishing it, did not at the first plant Himself
in the foreground of their thoughts as the object of men's
faith, but rather held before their minds the great truths
of pure and spiritual religion, there was, as has often been
pointed out, good reason for His doing so. The ideas
of men at the time were so carnal that the premature
disclosure of His Messiahship, before their minds could
welcome the religious Good that answered to the true
idea of the Messianic salvation, would only have precipi
tated the crisis that He was anxious as long as possible
to avoid. The reticence of Christ about Himself is indeed re
markable. He told the world nothing, and His disciples
exceedingly little, — indeed, so far as the Synoptists report,
not a syllable, — of a pre-human life. He made no personal
pretensions ; He demeaned Himself as the servant of all,
and shrank frora all personal recognition or compliment.
In His teaching He pointed men always to the Father,
and refused any allegiance to Himself that did not proceed
from loyalty to God. This reserve — this modesty and
absence of everything akin to a spirit of egotism, this
unfeigned humility — is one of the most beautiful traits in
the character of Christ, and not only proved His fitness
to be the Sovereign of souls, but marked Him out as
the Channel of the highest spiritual communications. For
if God is to speak to the world, the fulness and clear
ness of His message must be in proportion to the humility
and self-renunciation of the messenger.^ But on the
other hand, Christ does not speak as a mere prophet.
He used language that no one who was a prophet and
1 This point is well brought out by Selby in his Ministry ofthe T.ord
Jesus, chap, iii,

228 ST. Paul's conception of christ
nothing more could have used. He identified His Person
with the message He delivered. He required of men not
only belief in the truth of the doctrine, but trust in
Himself loyalty to His own Person. To give up all
for the Truth was to give it up for Him ; to give it
up for Him was to renounce it for the Truth. He did
not, like Buddha and other teachers, place the truth above
Himself, or bid men take His words to heart and forget
about Himself, the speaker. " Jesus knows no more sacred
task," says Herrmann, " than to point men to His own
Person." i
This is the striking fact that meets us when we try to
understand Christ's thought about Himself It points to
His having the consciousness of a life that was united to God
as no other human life was, in consequence of which He was
personally one with the truth He revealed, and the greatness
of the truth was the greatness of the Person revealing it.
Out of this consciousness He spoke as one who stood in a
central relation to mankind, that made their attitude to Him
all decisive for their character and destiny. He declared
Himself to be the Judge of all. He spoke of men as
passing judgment on themselves according as they gave
their personal service to, or withheld it from. Him.
These claims betrayed a consciousness of oneness with
God, an identity of will, mind, purpose with Him ; so
that while entirely destitute of personal pretensions in
the ordinary sense of the word, while the humblest and
meekest of men, and subject to the laws of human
nature. He was moved at times to adopt a style of self-
assertion that no other ever ventured to use. He placed
Himself before men's minds as the object of religious
trust and obedience, as if He, being the personal em
bodiment of the truth of human character as well as of the
Holiness and Love of God, were more than all the words
^ Communion with God, p. 76.

the CHRIST OF HISTORV 229
He spoke, and as if the following and confessing of Him
exhausted the whole duty of men to God and to one
another.! When we have regard to this element in the Messianic
consciousness of Christ, we see that His thought about Him
self and Paul's thought of Him are not so far apart as sorae
would have it — that they are indeed in fundamental agree
ment. If in his Epistles Paul attaches an extraordinary im
portance to the Person of Christ and to the understanding
of what He is, he is simply echoing Christ's own estimate
of Himself As we have seen, it is through the experience
of the Risen Christ on his own inner life that the apostle
arrived at the understanding of what Christ personally is ;
and an interpretation of Christ thus arrived at may well
embrace elements of truth that were not present to the con
sciousness of the Person Himself who is thus interpreted.
It is no reason for discounting the worth of any aspect of
truth which we owe to the apostle, that Christ Hiraself, as
far as appears from the record, did not teach it. It is surely
a pointless remark of Cone, in his book on the Gospel and
its Interpretations, to say that " the Great Teacher of the
synoptic tradition would certainly not have recognised Him
self in the ' Second Adam.' " Even though it were so, it
would prove nothing against the validity of the conception
the term expresses, or its suitableness to set forth the truth
of Christ's qualification to be the power in us of a new man
hood. The view has indeed been held by many that Christ's
favourite designation of Himself, " the Son of Man," is an
exact equivalent of the Pauline term " the Second Adam,"
and that in so speaking of Hiraself Christ had present to
1 The charge of egotism has been brought against Christ's doctrine.
But the real question, as Abbot in his The Spirit on the Waters has
pointed out, is. Was Christ's judgment of Himself true? Did Jesus
possess the power to forgive sins, to give rest and peace to weary
humanity ? " If He did, how could He do otherwise than call the world
to accept what He had to give ? " (p. 209).

230 ST. Paul's conception of christ
His raind the sarae idea of His universal significance, as the
Pattern Man and Beginner of a new Huraanity, that the
apostle expresses by the term that he borrowed from the
Jewish schools of theology. " Can one," exclaims Gess,
" more happily interpret Christ's thought of Himself as
the Son of Man than is done by Paul in the contrast he
draws between the First and Second Adam ? " ^ Singularly
enough, the title " Son of Man " that was so often on
Christ's lips dropped very early out of the public teaching
of the Church. It occurs only once in the New Testa
ment outside of the Gospels (Acts vii. 56). Paul
seeras to have been entirely ignorant of it, " Son of
God " and " Son of David " being the only Messianic titles
known to him besides that to which' he himself gave
currency, the " Second Adam." The oldest Christian
literature that we have, the writings of the Apostolic
Fathers, make no mention of it. It first occurs in the
writings of Marcion and of the obscure Gnostic sect of
the Ophites. These striking facts leave room for specu
lation as to the origin of this Messianic title, the " Son
of Man " ; and raore, perhaps, has been written on the
subject than about any other point in N. T. theology.^
! Christi Person u. Werk, ii. 368.
2 Lietzmann {Der Menschensohn, ein Beitrag zur N. T. Theologie,
1896) goes so far as to hold that, as a Messianic title, it was imported
into the Gospels by Greek translators influenced by the Pauline idea of
the " Second Adam," and that as used by Christ Himself the word meant
just what it means in the Aramaic, " Man." It is undeniable, however,
that in Christ's mouth the word had a Messianic significance, at least in
Mark xiv. 62. There the reference plainly is to the passage in Daniel vii.
While the prophet there, in speaking of " one coming in the clouds of
heaven like unto the Son of Man" has in his eye the People of Israel
and its exaltation over the other nations, Jesus applies this prophecy to
Himself personally, and thereby makes the strongest possible claim to
Messiahship. In His answer to the High Priest He virtually says,
" I am He of whom it holds true that God gives Him power and honour
and dominion so that all nations and peoples and tongues shall serve
Him : His Rule is everlasting and His kingdom shall have no end."

THE CHRIST OP HISTORY 23 1
It cannot, however, be said that there is as yet any
agreement among scholars regarding it. The very mean
ing of the title "Son of Man" is still under discussion
among students of the Gospels, and the greatest variety
of opinion prevails regarding it. On that account I am
unwilling to make much of it as a point of contact
between the Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of Paul,
although I think there can be little doubt that the history
of the one phrase has had an influence on that of the other,
and that this points to a belief that they mean substantially
the same thing.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that in the emphasis
Paul places on the Divine Sonship of Christ he reproduces
the Lord's own judgment of Himself The thought that He
was the Son of God was indeed the secret of His own heart,
being seldom divulged, and for the most part left to men to
find out for theraselves who had experience of what He was
and could do for them.^ To awaken the life of Sonship in
men and to evoke faith in Himself as the Son of God and as
able to make them sons of God too, was the very object of
His mission. In viewing salvation as consisting in Sonship
derived frora Christ, the Son of God and the Incarnation of
the Filial Spirit, Paul was simply faithful to the teaching of
his Master. Again, frora his experience of the Spirit's power
that came from Christ, Paul apprehended Him as the em
bodied Spirit of God. And herein, too. He is in full agreement
with the representation of the Gospels. It is not only that
the historian refers the endowment of Jesus to the Spirit ; ^
Christ knows Himself to be dwelt in by the Spirit of God,
and His life to be under His continual inspiration.^ And
when we look at that life as set before us in the Gospels,
^ " He waited till He could pluck the discovery of His Sonship as
ripe fruit from the lips and from the hearts of those who had gone in and
out with Him, and had been the immediate witnesses of His working from
the beginning" {Uber den Christi. Glaub. von Jess., 1892, p. 73).
2 Luke iii. 21, 22. ' Luke iv. 18 ; Matt. xii. 28.

232 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
and think of the goodness it breathes, its invincible strength,
its unwearied self-sacrificing pursuit of the highest ends, its
universal sympathies and regards, — when we think of the
wonderful union it exhibited of a love to man and a faith in
man's redemption that never failed, with a trust in God and
assurance of His presence and help that no disaster, trial, or
disappointment could shake, — the impression we receive is,
that here is a Man who is different frora all others in that
the Power of the Spirit of God inspires and directs every
raovement of His soul, is the active principle of His inner
life and personality. In apprehending the Exalted Christ
as the Man of the Spirit, Paul describes Him not only as He
is to experience, but as the known facts of His history reveal
Hira to us.
If in certain respects Paul's interpretation goes beyond
Christ's own thought of Hiraself, or the thought that the
study of His life on earth leads us to forra, and includes
eleraents of truth, aspects of His Glory that are peculiar to
the apostle's experience, the worth of these is not lessened
by this circumstance, since in the estimate Christ forraed and
encouraged others to forra of Hiraself, there is a judgment
of His Suprerae place in relation to the spiritual life of men
that warrants us in expecting statements of what He is in
human experience that surpass what is said of Him as the
Christ of history. If He had spoken of Himself as a
prophet or preacher of God's truth merely, Paul's concep
tion of Him would have to be regarded as a raisinterpreta-
tion. But as we have seen, the language of Jesus shows
that He regarded Himself as the Revealer of God, and the
very Truth of human life and character. And this is the
idea of Hira that lies at the root of Paul's thinking, that finds
expression in the language dictated by huraan experience
in his highest ascriptions of worth to His Exalted Lord.
Is Paul's interpretation of the Death of Christ warranted.

THE CHRIST OF HISTORY 233
it may now be asked, by anything contained in the Lord's
own teaching ? According to the apostle, as we have seen,
the event on Calvary was a Divine appointment, by which
His gracious purpose towards sinful men was accomplished,
and salvation for them provided. To view the death of
Christ in this light is manifestly to separate it frora the
death of every other, and to ascribe to it a worth that can
be claimed for no other. It had proved itself a power of
salvation in this sense in the experience of Paul ; and the
question naturally occurs. Does Christ in His teaching give
any hint that His act in dying was to have this saving
virtue — was to be, from the highest point of view, an act of
grace on God's part, by which He was to restore the sin
ful race to fellowship with Himself? We cannot of course
expect the doctrine of the saving effects of Christ's suffer
ing and death to be set forth in His own teaching in the
sarae terras that we find it in Paul's ; for here again the
reraark applies, that the apostle's experience of what
Christ and His death were raust necessarily include
elements that were not in Christ's own thought — must
include in it reflections on its relation to facts of his
inner life that go beyond the vision of Christ ; nor are
we to pass judgment on the findings of the servant on this
subject because they are not confirmed by express words of
the Master.The real question is. Have we any words that show
that Christ's own attitude towards His death was the same
as that which finds elaborate expression in Paul's writings
— that He conceived of it as destined in the providence of
God to issue in the redemption of men from sin and death ?
His reticence on this subject, too, is indeed remarkable ; but
there is no doubt that the idea was present to His mind
that great moral and religious consequences were to follow
from His death, and that it lay in the scope of His mission
as Messiah, who had come to bring salvation to men, that

2 34 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
He should die. We have only two words recorded by the
Synoptists in which this conviction finds expression : that in
which He speaks of Hiraself as dying to ratify and
establish the new covenant,^ in which forgiveness of sin
was a principal benefit, and that in which He declares the
Son of Man was come to " give His life a ransom for
many." 2 We cannot do justice to these words unless we
take them in the sense in which the death of Christ is
understood by all the writers of the New Testament, who
uniformly refer to it as the Divinely arranged means for
the execution of a Divine purpose, which conteraplated
man's recovery from sin and death. And just as little can
we account for the universal understanding in the Apostolic
Church of the issues of Christ's death, and of the ends
served by it, unless we believe that Christ Hiraself gave
His sanction to that view in words that He spoke ; and that
we have in the utterances I have quoted a true record of what
He said. On what principles we are to explain the connec
tion between the death of Christ and the effects of it on raan's
salvation is a matter on which we have little in Christ's ex
press teaching to guide us ; but neither does it furnish, as it
seems to me, ground for calling in question the legitimacy
of the apostle's reasonings on that aspect of the subject, or
for disproving their truth. On this one essential point they
are agreed : that the death accomplished at Jerusalem, while
brought about by the sin of men, was the means intended
by God to work out a gracious purpose of redemption.
The emphasis placed by Paul on the Cross as the achievement
of salvation is warranted bythe importance attached by Christ
Himself to His death as an integral part of His mission to
save men, and as the condition of the success of that mission.
But the ground of complaint that the modern mind
has against Paul and his interpretation of the Historic
1 Matt. xxvi. 28. 2 Matt. xx. 28.

THE CHRIST OF HISTORY 235
Christ appears' just at this point. It is objected that his
conception of Christ takes account only of His death and
resurrection, and ignores the bearing on our salvation of all
the activities of His earthly ministry. And that, it may
be argued, can be no proper or adequate interpretation of
Him that singles out one fact in the history, and passes over,
as of no worth for forming a judgment on the whole, the
lessons that are to be learnt from the record of those deeds
and words in which one personality reveals itself to others.
Paul, indeed, it may be said, had a direct knowledge of Christ
in His Exalted state, and his interest was naturally concen
trated on the impressions that flowed from his immediate
fellowship with the Living and Glorified One. Connecting
these impressions with their source (the once crucified but
now Risen Saviour), he perceived the influence of the
death that Jesus died in qualifying Him to be the Source
of them, and to be the Author of the raoral and religious
benefits which the apostle enjoyed : having this understand
ing of the Cross in its relation to the Heavenly Christ, he did
not require to go beyond that one event which closed the
earthly history. Hence his silence about the Preceding
Life, and his apparent indifference to its lessons. We,
however, cannot occupy that ground. We have no such
knowledge of Christ as Paul had, to whora He was imme
diately revealed in His Perfected state as Exalted. In that
capacity He is to us unrevealed. For a reliable conception
of His worth for us we are thrown back on history — on the
knowledge to be gathered from the Gospels. This points
to a doctrine of Christ that we are to form for ourselves from
a study of His Life and words, for which it may be claimed
not only that it is more true to fact, and more real to us,
— its standpoint being the Historical and not the Exalted
Christ, — but also that it does fuller justice to the riches of
Christ's Person, because it draws not from one event, but
from the entire revelation that we have in His Life.

236 ST. Paul's conception of christ
What I have said represents fairly enough, I think, the
view of very raany at the present day ; and the questions
that are raised by this attitude of mind are very serious
and demand consideration. That there is a one-sidedness
about the Pauline conception, frora the circumstance alluded
to, is to be granted. One who believed, as Paul did, that
the real significance of Christ for man's salvation belongs
to His Heavenly and not to His earthly life, and who, in
consequence, goes back on what was transacted in those
brief years of the Lord's life on earth only in so far as they
bore on the transcendent virtue of His present life for us,
must needs omit ranch that is of the highest importance
for us to include in our Picture of Christ. Paul tells
us nothing of the revelation of God which we have in
the human life of Christ, or of what is to be learnt of
the Divine character from all those acts of raercy and
grace and sympathy with raen in their various circum
stances of need, in which the heart of Jesus was dis
played.^ He passes over the work of the Prophet of
Nazareth. The unrivalled supremacy of Christ as a
Teacher and a Revealer of truths bearing on human con
duct, that command conviction and dispel doubt and
ignorance regarding huraan life in its higher aspects and
relations, finds no place in that Iraage of Him that we owe
to the apostle. He calls Christ indeed the " wisdom of
God," ^ but he does not thereby mean to exalt the teachings
about life and duty that came frora His lips and that are
^ According to Paul, the Incarnation is a humiliation to Christ, and
the glory of His Personality is hid and concealed, if not curtailed, by
His earthly limitations ; it is not till He has died and is Risen again
that He is revealed in His proper nature. This is not the view of the
Apostle John. He regards the Incarnation as the continuous unveiling
of the Divine glory of Christ. The glory of His love and goodness is
apparent all through His earthly Life. The resurrection is but the con
summation of it. Paul's point of view naturally led him to undervalue
the instruction to be derived from the Life.
- I Cor. i. 18-25.

the CHRIST OF HISTORY 237
SO precious to us, but rather to signalise the truth of the
Divine character and purpose which we learn from the
death of Christ in its redemptive aspect, and the disclosure
of the plan of God for men's salvation that is made to us
in the mission and work of Christ as a whole. That there
are omissions in Paul's representation of Christ, when we
look at it as the portrait of His Personality, is evident.
Christ is greater than all the interpretations of Him, and
Paul's is but one of these. There is more truth to be
learnt from the study of His Person and work than men
have yet been able to spell out. But while all this is
granted, it must be denied that there is any such incon
sistency between the historic Christ and the Christ of faith
and experience as some allege, and I must demur to the
position that there is such a sufficiency in the revelation
of truth contained in the Christ of the Gospels as to make
us independent of that contained in the Christ set forth in
the Epistles. Each is necessary to the understanding and
appreciation of the other. And while it is true that for us
the Exalted Christ can be reached only through the
Historical, and is a Power over our lives in the measure
in which our thought of Him and of His actual relations to
us is enriched with the memories of His earthly life,^ it is
equally true that the history as a whole, and His death in
particular, must be conceived from the point of view of the
apostle who exhibits to us the Exalted Christ as the key
to the understanding of the History, if our faith in Hira is
to be the faith of the apostle, that is, if Christ is to be to
us the Power of God for our redemption from sin and
death. Let us at this point go back for a rainute to the past
and watch the evolution of Christian thought on this
subject, that we raay see more clearly how the matter stands.
1 " We need again and again to go back to the consideration of the
historical Jesus" (Gore, Bampton Lectures, 1891, p. 144),

238 ST. Paul's conception of christ
It is to be borne in mind that alongside of the faith in the
Heavenly Christ, which was everything to Paul, and which,
undoubtedly, tends to become separated frora its roots in
history and experience, and to harden into a dogmatic con
ception, there was from the beginning at work in the Church
an instinct that clung to the historic tradition of the Man
of Galilee who in the flesh had revealed God to men. The
Gospel of John is regarded by many as having been called
forth by that feeling that craved more in the Church's
Lord than a Christ who had been exalted to perform
redemptive functions, and whose human personality was in
danger of being lost sight of in the Divine activities of His
Heavenly Life. The Gospel of John is an interpretation
as well as a narrative of the Historic Christ ; but, unlike
that of Paul, which limits itself to the single event of
Christ's death, it covers the whole life, and finds the truth
it is written to enforce illustrated in historic event and
spoken word from the beginning to the end of His earthly
career; and this Gospel is of priceless value to the Church,
because it takes us back from the Risen Christ to the
Historical, and sets before us the manifestation in the
Flesh of the Son of God, of that Divine Life which is His
Gift to His people. But it cannot be denied that, after
all, the view of the Jesus of History it presents is a
partial one, for its didactic purpose is to exhibit His
Personal glory as the Son of God and the Revealer of the
Divine nature, and it selects only such material from His
Life as can be made to contribute to the exposition of that
idea. Then came the Synoptic Gospels, embodying the
tradition of the Life in all its memorable features. The
doctrinal bias of the writers is here reduced to a miniraum ;
and the Church has always accepted these histories as
presenting a faithful Picture of the Son of Man as He
revealed Himself in His goodness and truth in the varying
situations of a human life. The patristic period followed,

the CHRIST OF HISTORY 239
characterised by the speculative discussions regarding the
Person of Christ into which the Church was forced in its
controversy with error. Frora these discussions it came
forth triumphant, but at a cost ; for while the dogma in
which it expressed its conviction of the union of Humanity
and Divinity in the Person of its Lord grew in definiteness
and sharpness of outline, the historic Figure in which the
Divine and Human had been in fact so beautifully har
monised receded into the background. The theological
definition of Christ contained in the formularies of the
Church hid from men's minds the real human Christ who
had in His Hfe brought God near to man and raised man
up to God.^ But definitions cannot satisfy the hunger of
the soul ; and the religious Hfe of men throughout the
ages when the Gospels were almost unknown connected
itself less with the creed of orthodoxy that had removed
Christ so far from human feeling and made Him as
inaccessible as God the Father was, than with the worship
of the Virgin. To her had been transferred that ideal of a
pure and pitiful sympathy with sinning men that had in
fact been realised in Jesus ; ^ and she was in consequence
to many an erring soul the Saviour and Helper it needed.
Enthusiasm for Mary, which was at least the worship of
pure love, helped no doubt to vitalise the religion of the
Middle Ages. But here and there a truer vision came to
men, a vision of Christ not as the stern Judge of the
world, but as He had been beheld of old in His humility
and grace in the pathways of a human life. It was the
Iraage of the Jesus of the Gospels, full of compassion for
miserable raen, living only to do thera good, and finding
1 See Note A, where Dorner's striking testimony to this is
given. ' The worship of the Mass must have kept alive the memory of the
crucified Christ in the Mediseval Church, and was one point of contact
between the worshipper and the historical Christ. See The Nicene
Theology, by H. M, Scott, D.D., p. 220 (note).

240 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
His joy in poverty and loss for their sakes, that touched
the heart of Francis of Assisi, inspiring in hira and his
followers a life fashioned even to the letter to that of Jesus,
a life which made men feel that the Son of Man was once
more present in the world to heal and bless. Again, it
was the Image of the Man of Sorrows, perfected by the
discipline of the Cross into patience and untroubled peace,
that rose on the vision of Thomas a Kempis and burnt
itself into his soul. The power that the words of that
old monk still possess to comfort the sad and sorrowful
is due to the vividness with which he reproduces before
the mind's eye the Jesus who had hung on the ignominious
Cross, and the skill with which he transfers from the Gospels
and lodges in the heart that Iraage of patient, uncomplain
ing, all-enduring sorrow.'^ And surely it is a marvellous
tribute to the universal power of the Figure depicted in
the Gospels that the men who have been raised up from
time to time to reform religious life, and who have repre
sented in each case the spirit and genius of the age in
which they lived, have always found in it some new meaning,
that which most swayed their hearts and the hearts of their
contemporaries, that which best met their peculiar needs
and fulfilled their loftiest ideals.
When the Reformation came, a crisis had arisen in the
history of religion similar to that in Paul's day ; and the
Christ whom the apostle had preached once more spoke to
men. It is Christ the Exalted Head and Lord, the Van
quisher of sin and guilt, the Mediator of God's gracious
love to mankind, whom the Reformers saw and proclaimed.
Then, and as often since as He has been held up to faith,
1 Readers of George Eliot will recall the striking scene in the Mill
on the Floss in which Maggie Tulliver, in trouble of mind, happens to
open the pages of the Imitatio Christi, and as she reads catches a
vision of the " Invisible Teacher, the Pattern of Sorrow, the Source of
all Strength," that reveals to her the secret of life, and brings to her
peace of soul.

the CHRIST OF HISTORY 24 1
this Christ has proved a Divine power in the experience of
all who wrestled in earnest with the questions that arise out
of that consciousness of guilt and raoral weakness which is
an essential element in the self-knowledge of the race.
With the recovery of the Christ of Paul and of the
apostles, the quest after the historical Christ did not,
however, cease. It may in truth rather be said, that since
that time down to the present it has gone on with increas
ing ardour as well as success ; and the enlarged under
standing of the character and raind of the Christ of history
that has been attained, has fostered in raany the belief in
its all-sufficiency for the moral and religious life of man
kind, to the denial or overclouding of the higher significance
attached by the apostles to the Spiritual Heavenly Christ.
I need not dwell on the causes of this ; but araong these
may be mentioned the growing indisposition in modern
times to admit the supernatural, the impatience of dogma
and of an interpretation of Christ that iraplies dogma, the
revived interest in historical study, and the hesitating tone
regarding the huraanity of Christ that was, and still is, too cha
racteristic even of Protestant theology, and that was bound
to bring about a reaction and to lead to a severance in men's
thoughts of the Christ of history from the Christ of faith.
These and other causes have quickened a spirit of
critical inquiry into the contents of the Gospels that has
issued in remarkable results. Learning and imagination
have been devoted to the task of revivifying history, so that
the Figure of Jesus raay glow before our eyes, and His words
may sound in our ears as a living voice. One biography
of Christ after another has appeared in which the events
of the Sacred Life are raade to follow one another in
accordance with the author's idea in each case of the plan
of the whole; and the interest of the reader is sustained
by the writer's endeavour to account for the movements of
Jesus by an assumed knowledge of the motives that influ-
16

242 ST. PAUL S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
enced Hira. His character has been made again and again
the subject of profound study, and has been set in fresh
lights that illustrate His commanding claim on the love
of men. His words have received similar attention ; and
justice has been done to the principles of His teaching and
the plan or idea of His mission in a way that has not been
done hitherto. Witness the reconstruction of His doctrine
that has been attempted again and again by means of His
own great thought of the Kingdom of God — that reign of
God in human lives in which we reach the true end of our
being, and which is realised when He awakens in men
trust in Himself and love to one another. The gain of
all this original research is a knowledge of Christ — ^of the
thoughts of His mind. His aim and purpose. His sym
pathies, judgments, ideals of life, characteristic excellences,
for which it is claimed that it is the only proper under
standing of Him and the one basis of a Christology that
rests on historic fact. If, it is said, a person is known in
the living image and expression of his soul when we know
what his aims are, what his mind is, what he did, whom he
loved, what judgments he formed on the profoundest and
most interesting subjects that can occupy our thought, then
Christ is most truly known in an understanding of Him
that embraces these matters, and not through any dogma
about Him or about His life in a state of Being in which
He is really inaccessible to knowledge. The LIFE of
Christ, it is urged, contains the revelation we need ; let us
know how He lived and felt and acted, how He dealt with
men, rich and poor, good and bad, needy and prosperous,
how He stood in relation to God and the world, what He
thought about man and God and duty, about the things of
time and the things of Eternity — let us go back to the
Gospels and learn the secret of His influence by following
Him as He moved about araong men, teaching, healing,
consoling, blessing thera; and when we know Him thus,

THE CHRIST OF HISTORY 243
we may look for Him reasserting His power and renewing
His triumph over human hearts.
Now, apart from the exaggerated length to which it is
carried and to which I have given expression, this movement
of the modern raind back to the historical Christ is to be
welcomed on many accounts, not only for the new feeling of
reality with which it enables us to conteraplate the Christ
of the Gospels, but for the aids it furnishes to a deeper
understanding of His religious worth as the Exalted Head
of His people. At first sight, indeed, it seeras to carry us
away entirely from the Pauline interpretation ; for while,
in the latter, the knowledge of the historical Christ is
secondary and that of the Heavenly is primary in import
ance, the reverse holds of the new point of view. Christ
is regarded as an object of knowledge proper only as He
is revealed in His Life on earth ; as Exalted He is
declared to be beyond knowledge. There is a sense in
which the latter statement is true. We can have no
proper idea of the modes of Christ's activity as the
Glorified Head of His people except by means of the
impressions raade upon our minds by His earthly course.
In the apostle's view, indeed, the death and resurrection of
Jesus seem to mark His entrance on a life that is cut off"
frora the former one — on a life that is new, and whose glory
cannot be measured by anything that befell Him in time.
But, as I have tried to show in these lectures, the life of
the Exalted Son of God is new only in this sense, that it
is a liberation of His Personality from all that hindered
the perception of His real nature when He was on earth,
with the consequent expansion of His distinctive powers
for the activities that lay before Him as the Perfected
Messiah of the human race.i For the real knowledge
of what He is and does for His people we raost fall
back on the records of His earthly life, and fill up, by
1 See Note B on The Historical and the Exalted Christ.

244 ST. Paul's conception of christ
the impressions we derive from these of His Grace and
truth, the content of our conception of His Present state.^
Paul does not, indeed, refer much to the human history,
but there is no doubt that he presupposed in his readers
an acquaintance with it. Behind all that he says of the
Heavenly activity of the Lord there was in his own mind
a vivid impression of the human personality that gave
meaning to what he said. " He could not have written
as he does of Christ," says Dr. John Ker, " unless he
had before him the Christ of the Gospels in word and
deed and death and higher life." ^ And we cannot under
stand his language regarding the Glorified Christ unless we
bring with us a knowledge of the Historic Jesus. Were
we to obliterate from our minds all impressions of His
earthly Life, and to content ourselves with a belief in Him
exalted to communicate to us the benefits of His Work, He
would be little more to us than an intellectual conception
or a theological idea, — a category of thought, without power
to touch our hearts. Or, if conceived by us as a Person,
He would be to our souls what the spiritual Christ is to a
certain class of Mystics, the object of an intercourse in
which impressions are referred to Him that really come
from their own hearts, and that have no connection with
the historical manifestation of the Son of Man.^
1 In thinking of Him as Exalted we must not conceive of Him as
changed in His humanity or in the nature and range of His human
sympathies. " The man who would truly paint Jesus," says Naumann,
" must not show Him in pillared aisles or on the steps of altars, but
under thatched roofs and by the side of village roads," meaning that in
his lowliness and preference for lowly ways He is in glory what He was
as seen in the flesh.
^ Thoughts for Heart and Life, p. 96.
5 " The relation of faith to the Exalted Christ can be thoroughly ethical
in its character only by the ethical content of His Personal Life being
made intelligible to us in the Exalted One, and presented to us as a
direct point of contact for our faith. This is the case, however, only in
virtue of the Identity of the Exalted One with the Personality of the
earthly Jesus Christ : only in the Saviour Jesus Christ, one with the

the CHRIST OF HISTORY 245
The one safeguard against these evils is to draw our
conceptions of His present mind and present Activity in
and through His people from the material supplied in the
record of His life on earth. From His personal character
istics as there revealed, we are able to form a true idea of
what He is to us now. If it is His work in Heaven to
convey to His people the Good He Himself possessed on
earth, and possesses now in perfection, we can partake
intelligently of that Good only when we look at Him in the
mirror of His earthly life. If we are to share in His
Glory as the Archetypal Man, we must learn from His
conduct, in the relations in which He stood to God and His
brethren, what that Pattern Manhood is that He once
realised under earthly conditions, and that He would form
in us. The changes on ourselves that we may expect His
Indwelling Spirit to accomplish we can understand only
when, falling back on the Gospel record, we observe the
graces of moral and spiritual character that distinguished
His human life, and that carae from the personal Indwelling
in Hira of that very Spirit of God that is His Gift to us.
And how could we conceive of that Divine Sovereignty
which He now wields over the world if we had not the
history of His life to show us that the power by which He
overcame the world and subdued the hearts of raen was,
as it still is, the power of Love and of patient endurance,
the majesty of Self-sacrifice, the kingly might of Meekness ?
It is in the earthly life that we are to discover the nature
and effects of that Lordship which the Exalted One now
exercises over men. AU in that life is indeed humiHation ;
but were there nothing but humiliation, were there not a
hidden glory under it as well that was to be manifested in
Father and living to save sinners, and in His redemptive activity in
living personalities, is the ethical character and influence of the Exalted
One made intelligible and brought near to us, so as to be, through the
impression that He irresistibly makes on the conscience, the object of
a spontaneous ethical trust " (Max Reischle).

246 ST. Paul's conception of christ
due time, and to characterise His present and continuous
Activity on the lives and experience of His people, we would
have no idea at all of His Risen Glory. Any certainty we
have that what we now receive from communion with the
Ascended Saviour is really due to His influence upon us,
and is a part of the Blessing He is exalted to give, is based
on the perception of its correspondence with the activity of
the historical Christ. The effects of His present working
on His people must coincide with the characteristic
activities of His personal life on earth. And His Divine
Glory and Functions as Exalted are intelligible to us only
as the reproduction in His people of the personal attributes
of ITis historic life.
Hence the chief value of the Gospels consists in the
light they throw on the religious worth of the Christ of
Glory. As material for the construction of a biography
they are insufficient. Our so-called lives of Christ must
always exhibit lacuna that demonstrate their failure to
realise our idea of the biography of a historical character.
But the Gospels were not given us to be put to the use
that has become so common since Renan's Life of Christ
led the way in this department of theological literature.
Their value lies in the aid they furnish to the under
standing of the Christ of Glory, and of the benefits that
flow from present fellowship with Llim ; and their precious
ness in this point of view cannot be exaggerated. The
elucidation of this point is one merit of the Christology of
Albert RitschI, and is a service to the cause of truth by
that much abused theologian that deserves acknowledg-
raent.i All this must be emphasised against a tendency to
depreciate the value of the Historic Picture as compared
with that of the Heavenly Christ, which has found expres
sion in the writings of certain authors of the present day.
^ See Note C on The Christology of RitschI and his School.

THE CHRIST OF HISTORY 247
The sifting to which the Gospel history has been subjected
in late years, and the doubt that has been cast on the
truthfulness of many details, have caused a feeling of un
certainty and distrust in regard to the Historic Picture in
many minds. Is it wise to base our faith on the facts of
history? Do we not expose it to the danger of being
undermined in the course of critical inquiry? This doubt
has led the writers to whom I refer, in the interest of truth,
to magnify the Christ of Experience at the expense of the
Christ of History. Thus in his otherwise admirable
work on Christ and the Four Gospels, Dr. Dale says :
" If Christ does, in answer to faith, redeem us from sin,
impart power to vanquish it, cause us to love God and
transform us into new creatures, what further or stronger
evidence can we have that He is Redeemer and Son of
Man ? What though we were ignorant of parts of His
earthly history, it would still be possible to believe in Hira
as our Lord, and the experience of the Church throughout
the centuries would take the place of the Gospels, and con
firm our faith in His power to redeem frora sin all who
trust in Him." And Weiss, in his Life of Christ, puts
the case even more strongly : " The Christian faith would
remain much the same and would suffer no material loss if
it had pleased God to leave us only the apostolic announce
ment as it lies before us in the Epistles of the New Testa
ment, and with the Gospels to deprive us of all the records
from which we may construct a detailed picture of the
earthly life of Jesus." ^ One can sympathise with the
desire of these writers that the truth of the Gospel, by
being made to rest on its own authority, should be seen to
be independent of questions of historical criticism. But it
appears to me to be a very hazardous position ; nor do I
see how any lasting results could be accomplished by a
faith in the Exalted Christ that knew little or nothing of
1 Das Leben fesu, i. 15.

248 ST. Paul's conception of christ
the life and walk of Jesus on earth, or of the Spirit that
characterised His Earthly Activities. I beHeve that Weiz
acker is nearer the truth when he says : " But for that
Gospel which was speeding its way by the apostle's side,
rendering immortal the wonderful words of this Jesus, and
perpetuating His Image in all its human grandeur and
Divine inwardness (Gottinnigkeit), this preaching of the
Cross of Christ, the Sent of God, who destroys the flesh
and inaugurates the reign, of the Spirit, would have
remained a message for thinkers, an edifice of concep
tions."! But after making the fullest acknowledgment of the
value of the history of Christ, we turn now, on the other
hand, to emphasise the truth and supreme iraportance of
the principle which such writers as Dale and Weiss only
carry to excess : that it is to the Heavenly Christ, to what
He is as Exalted, that we raust look for the full and proper
experience of the salvation that He carae to give. Viewing
the earthly history of Christ as a whole, and as culminating in
His death, Paul interpreted it as a preparation for His
entering on His proper Messianic activity in glory, in
which He was to manifest Himself in the experience of raen
as the Author of their restored fellowship with God, the
Conqueror of sin and death, the channel to thera of
the gift of God's Spirit. This higher view is excluded by
! Das Apostolische Zeitalter, p. 150. In an article in the Theological
Review on " Christ in Modern Thought," Dr. Bruce sees evidence of the
partiality and one-sidedness of Paul's representation in his limited interest
in the Historical Christ, and adds, in a strain similar to the quotation
from Weizacker : " While not reflecting on him, one may be thankful that
other tendencies were at work in the apostolic age, that within the same
Christian community, side by side with Paul's subjectivity and at peace
with it, there flourished a simple, healthy objectivity which desired to
know the facts about Christ, to ascertain as far as possible what He said
and did, to get a clear, vivid picture of His life and human personahty
—to know Christ, in short, not doctrinally merely but historically, as the
Synoptist Gospels in part enable us to know Him."

the CHRIST OF HISTORY 249
many in these days, and we have forced upon us the
question. Is this Pauline interpretation true or not? Is it
in communion with the Spiritual Christ, Supreme, Victori
ous over sin and its consequences, the Source of new Life to
men, that we come into the possession of the real Divinely
ordained issues of His Mission ? Or, is it in a fellowship
with the Jesus of History, whose virtue upon us takes
effect, and is exhausted in the enlightenment of our minds
by the truths He taught, and in the encouragement of our
wills by the Pattern of goodness and nobleness of life He
has left us? We know what Paul's answer was. He
believed that no idea of the Christ did justice to the pro
phecies that bore on the Messiah, save that which He saw
fulfilled in Hira who died for our sins and rose again. He
believed that no other met the real need of human nature,
the craving for a revelation of God — for a token that God
has done something by which His Holy Love can find
access to human souls so as to destroy the power of sin
and bring to, an end the reign of death. He believed that
this conception of the Divine purpose and aim of Christ's
life-work had been communicated to him by the living
Lord Himself, who had appeared to hira from glory, and
had originated in his personal experience great moral and
religious changes which pointed directly to saving issues
wrought by the death and Resurrection of Jesus. And he
preached this Christ to men, and had in the regenerating
effects that followed abundant testimony to its truth and
power. The Gospel he announced was the Gospel of the
Risen and Exalted Lord, in whom, by the grace of the
Father, a new life of sonship and holiness was offered to
sinful men. There is no evidence that any such saving
effects would have followed had he been content to be the
expounder of Christ's words, had his preaching been simply
the recital of the Sermon on the Mount, or the proclama
tion of such truths as the Fatherhood of God, and the

250 ST. PAULS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST
Brotherhood of men, and the glory of service. The ques
tion that really interested men was, whether God had spoken
and made accessible to them a new life, including forgive
ness, power over temptation, victory over death ; and Paul's
declaration that God had raised up His Son from the dead,
and that in Him this New Life had been secured, and was
offered, met their case, and was welcomed because it
did so. In his brilliant Yale lectures, recently published, on the
Gospel for an Age of Doubt, Dr. Van Dyke insists that
the prophetic work of Christ is the aspect of truth that
must now be preached if we are to speak with effect to the
age in which we live. " We must get back," he says, " to
the unity and integrity of the thoughts of Jesus, the creed
of Christ, the broad outline of His vision of things human
and Divine, the central verities which appear firm and
unchangeable in all the reports of His teaching, the point
of view from which he discovered and interpreted the
mystery of life, that is what we must seek. And when
we find it, we must take our stand there, as men who
feel the solid ground beneath their feet. The Rock of
certainty is the Mind of Jesus expressed in His living
words and in His speaking life. Beyond that we need not,
and we cannot, go. Here is the ultimatum. This is the
truth we say to men, because Jesus knew it, and said it, and
lived it." 1 The author puts into emphatic language an
impression that is shared by very many, who feel the
incomparable beauty and power of Christ's teaching:
that it is frora the preaching of His doctrines and example
that we are to expect a revival of the Christian faith.
That this result would follow were the proclamation of the
Gospel to be Hmited to, and to stop short at, the reiteration
of the truths Jesus taught, and the comraendation of His
character for our imitation, is, I think, exceedingly doubt-
' Page 200.

THE CHRIST OF HISTORY 25 1
ful. History gives us no encouragement to believe that it
would. It was certainly not a presentation of Christianity
in this form that won for the Faith the enthusiastic attach
ment of men at the first. " It is an unpardonable historical
blunder," says a recent writer belonging to the Ritschlian
party in the Lutheran Church, " to suppose that the faith
of primitive Christendom was based on the impression of
the earthly image of Christ. A school might have been
formed, a hero-worship might have been instituted, had
that been all ; but a religion could arise only because the
ancient Church was conscious that God had revealed Him
self in the Resurrection and Exaltation of the Lord. The
ancient Church, too, derived inspiration and impulse, com
fort and strength, from the living Image of Jesus ; but its
faith and its hope did not rest upon that, but on the
transcendent experiences of the reception of the Spirit, and
the testimonies of the working of the Exalted Lord." ^
Much has happened since then that is bound to have
an influence on our apprehension of the Christian truth ;
but there is no reason to think that the situation is so
altered as to call for a presentation of it that would leave
out of account the essential eleraents that were the secret
of its success in its original proraulgation, or to encourage
us to hope that, were we to shift the eraphasis of faith from
the Exalted to the earthly life of Jesus, and to ignore the
higher point of view from which the apostle, regarding the
life as a whole, saw in it a revelation of the saving purpose
of God, results would follow now that could not have
followed such a one-sided view then. If we are left with
doctrines and moral truths alone, without the living Christ
to breathe into us His Spirit, so as to raake these the power
of life in us as well as to remove the hindrances within to
corresponding action, we are as far frora the salvation that
' Die Nachfolge Christi und die Predigt des Gegenwart, von J. Weiss,
p. 83.

252 ST. Paul's conception of christ
our nature craves as they of old felt themselves to be, with
all the help that philosophy gave them, till they had the
assurance that God had interposed on their behalf in great
redemptive acts through the instrumentality of His own
Son, whom He had raised from the dead.
It is objected, indeed, that it is impossible for us to have
intercourse with the Exalted Saviour such as Paul had.
He saw the Lord of Glory in a vision, and had thereafter
direct fellowship with Him. We cannot have this, and
must be shut out from the experience of the benefits that
are the fruit of Flis Exalted Activity. But the apostle
nowhere lays any importance on the vision by which he
entered on that intercourse, nor does he teach that a
supernatural impression of the Risen One is a condition of
others exercising the common privilege of communion with
the Exalted Christ. All that was necessary was the hearty
acceptance of the apostolic testimony of the Christ who
had died for men. Christ exercises His sovereignty
through the Cross, through the love revealed there. And
when men beholding that love were turned in faith and
penitence to God, they were raade to realise that Christ
was indeed exalted and mighty to save ; for how could His
love prove omnipotent over them, or become the vehicle by
which new life was quickened in their souls, if He were not
in very deed the living Christ — one with God, Lord over
all ? Nor are we to limit to the Cross or to the revelation
of Divine love on the Cross the power of Christ to draw
near to the soul, and by awakening in us a new life of
trust and faith in goodness, to bear witness to His activity
as the Exalted Son of God. In his beautiful book on Com
munion with God, Herrmann insists that any impression
made upon our hearts by the glory of the Inner Life of
Christ, such as brings God near to us, and assures us of
the love of a God whose will is to redeem us from sin and
to make goodness triumphant, is a testimony to the influ-

THE CHRIST OF HISTORY 253
ence upon us of the Risen One. It is through the under
standing of what is historically true of His Inner Life and
the entire appearance of Christ that we experience His
kingly might over our souls, and His function as the instru
ment by whom God Himself draws near to us, touches us,
works upon us. In the intensity of his faith in the power
of the love that died for men, Paul exclaimed, " God forbid
I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ "
(Gal. vi. 1 4) ; and we may surely attribute to the efficacy
of the Risen One every manifestation of the historic Christ,
and every discovery of His Personal Life that carries home
to our hearts a similar impression of His holy love that
shames the bad in us, raakes the good better, and turns us
to God. There are raany, indeed, who raust take a slower and
more circuitous way in order to arrive at a faith in Christ
as Risen and Exalted. They have no such perception of a
Divine power going forth from Christ on the view of His
Hfe and death. But one thing raust be certain to thera if
they are true to theraselves and to their better nature.
There can be no doubt of the justice of the claira of Christ,
in virtue of the ideal perfection of His life and character,
to the obedience of raen. Let thera accept in a practical
way His Lordship over their lives, and that union with
Hira that consists in the practical adoption of His leader
ship, in the cultivation of His moral sympathies, in the
active support of the cause of humanity for which He lives,
in the regulation of life by His will, in submission to the
trials of life in His Spirit, will in due time convey to them the
assurance that they are in living fellowship with Him, and
that it is only through what He is and is doing for men as
their Exalted Head that they are enabled thus to follow
Him.i 1 I well remember, as a student, being impressed by the emphasis
with which Professor J. T. Beck of Tubingen urged upon his student-audi-

2 54 ST. Paul's conception of christ
All this, of course, goes to exalt the importance to faith
of the Christ of history. And had it been the intention of
the author, in the sentences I have quoted, to insist on
obedience to the precepts and example of Christ as a
means by which raen may rise to the higher point of view
frora which Christ is presented in the apostolic testiraony,
I would have had no controversy with hira. For I believe
that to raany who nowadays have lost faith in the super
natural, the one way open to a recovery of it, if they are
sincere in the desire for religious assurance, is to put them
selves into the position of the disciples while they had the
Lord with them, to attach themselves to Hira whose per
fection in human goodness and wisdora appeals to ah,
whatever raay be their doubts as to His Higher Nature, and,
following Him faithfully, to wait till the silent influence of
His Personality upon their souls brings with it the con
viction that He is Living and Supreme.^
ence, many of whom had been caught in the current of sceptical thought
that then ran so strong, to seek religious certainty by beginning with
the Christ of the Gospels, and living in fellowship with Him. " Hold
fast," he exclaimed in closing his course on Christian ethics, " by the
Redeemer, and learn to know Him increasingly in His Original Form.
Follow Him as He is and acts and speaks in the Picture furnished by
those who were eye and ear witnesses to Him. He lived of a truth ;
such a picture could not have been drawn by the pencil of man ; no one
invented it. Get to the heart of the matter, build upon the Christ of
the Gospels, and you will have a foundation of rock on which the floods
even of this age will dash themselves." As the works of this remark
able man, who in his lifetime was so great a religious power in South
Germany, are little known in our country, I have given in the Appendix
an extract of some length from his Gedanken aus und nach Schrift, to
the same effect as the above. See Note D. There is also a striking and
impressive passage towards the close of Bishop Temple's Bampton
Lecture, in which he shows how the study of the Jesus of the Gospels
leads on to a religious certainty {The Relatioti between Religion and
Science, pp. 248-252).
' The place of the " Historical Christ " in the evangelical system is
the subject of an interesting article by Max Reischle in the Zeitschrift
fiir Theol. u. Kirch., 7 Jahrgang, 3 Heft. (1897), pp. 171-284. He points
out that the starting-point of the faith of Paul and the first disciples was
the Risen Christ ; it was the view of Christ Risen that made His earthly

THE CHRIST OF HISTORY 255
But in that case we could not speak of the elementary
faith in Him that is sufficient for a starting-point as the
ultimatum, or the highest attainable, as Van Dyke has
done. Unless we are to regard the apostle as self-deceived
in his interpretation of Christ, unless we are to resign our
selves to disappointment of the hope of the human heart
for a revelation that will throw light on the dark problems
of huraan life, we raust believe there is a higher truth than
that raentioned by the author in the passage I have given :
we raust hold that the real ultiraatum of human belief is
faith in Christ as Living and Supreme, and as the Founder
of a new fellowship between God and man, in which son-
ship, forgiveness, and eternal life are more than truths to
be believed — are Divine blessings to be realised, gifts
graciously bestowed by God for His Son's sake, and to be
received by us through faith in Him.
Both pictures of the Lord are indispensable to the
Church : that which is derived from His earthly ministry,
and that which reflects His state as Exalted. Nor is there
any real inconsistency between them. There have been
times, indeed, when the one has been realised so vividly
that the rehgious Hfe has found it almost impossible to
realise the other along with it, or to make a proper use of
life intelligible to them, and the object of their faith. To us, who know
only through others that Christ rose from the dead, and have had no vision
of Him for ourselves, the Character of the earthly Christ, and the influ
ence of His Spirit on others in the Church, is what faith naturally fixes
upon in the first instance, and from this we rise to the conviction of His
Resurrection. The conditions of the origin of faith are different in the
two cases, but the faith itself must be the same. If ours begins with
the apprehension of Him as He is revealed to us in His gracious inter
course with sinners in the days of His fiesh, it must go on to the cer
tainty of Him as Risen and Exalted, in order to be one with the faith of
the apostles ; and the apostolic faith, on the other hand, if it is to be
an evangelical faith in Him as the Saviour of sinners, must descend from
the vision of His risen glory to the knowledge of the redeeming power
of His life and death. " The Exalted Christ to whom their faith clung
was, as regards the content of His life, none other save the Crucified One."

256 ST. Paul's conception of christ
the other. In the apostolic age the greatness and glory of the
Exalted Christ was so real to believers, that many could not
grasp along with it the thought that He who was now in
possession of Divine prerogatives could ever have stooped
so low as to be born into the world and to share in the
humiliating experiences of a human life. They doubted
whether His suffering and death had been real — whether,
after all, the Son of God had been a man in more than the
appearance. Paul did not share that doubt ; but we can see
from the Epistle to the Hebrews, which was written to
those who were familiar with His teaching, that it was
shared by sorae who took his lofty views of the Person of
Christ. And his reserve in regard to the earthly life of
Jesus, which, as we have seen, is so characteristic of his
Epistles, proceeded, one is alraost disposed to think, from a
lingering feeling in his mind of the incongruity between
the two pictures. With our altered conception of things,
our difficulty is not where the primitive Christians found
theirs. It is in the opposite direction. To us Christ is so
manifestly human, our perception of the raoral beauty and
conformity to the highest standard of human action, of that
spirit of self-denial that bore shame and death for us is so
keen, and our conviction of His oneness with us in every
human experience and in every sympathy that belongs to
manhood is so strong, that we are apt to stumble at the
idea that One who was so unmistakably a Son of man can
have risen to that height of glory in the heavenly places in
which He is set before us in the Epistles. The danger is
that, in our intense reahsation of His huraan life, we may
lose hold of the truth of His present life as the Exalted
Son of God.
Christian experience, however, brings these two pictures
together and raakes thera one, or shows us at least that we
are dealing siraply with two aspects of one and the same
Personality. For the life of faith in Him reveals a Power

the CHRIST OF HISTORY 257
working in us that makes for holiness and is stronger than
sin and the flesh and the world, pointing thereby to the
Supremacy of Hira frora whom it comes, and to His identity
with God. While the effects of that power on the character
and life of believers, the resemblance to Jesus in His low
liness and love and purity and manly strength which it
works out in them, points to its identity with the personal
life of the Son of Man, who embodied in so distinctive a
form these and all other graces of true character. What the
spirit of Christ does in the hearts of His people now is seen
to be the continuation of that same gracious Activity whose
achievements are narrated in the Gospels. The knowledge
of Christ that is fruitful is that which is derived at once from
history and from faith — history revealing to us the personal
grace of the Head of His people, faith disclosing to us the
Power by which He reigns still and repeats in us the
characteristic qualities of His Life.
In that raovement that has riveted the minds of men in
these days to the human Hfe of Jesus, and to the memoirs
in which the Picture of that human life is preserved, we raay
surely see the hand of God, the striving of the very Spirit
of Christ leading us into a fuller apprehension of what He
is and is able to do for us. No doubt it has been needed to
correct the tendency to a dogmatic understanding of Christ
and of Christianity, that finds itself raore at home in the
Epistles than in the Gospels, and in consequence apprehends
the truth that dogma represents in a form which, however
accurate and scientific, is without warmth and conveys no
conviction. It is reported of the late Professor J. Ch. K. v.
Hofmann of Erlangen, that towards the end of his life he
said, " Paul has had his day, it is time the Gospels had theirs." 1
And Hofmann was a devout man, a profound believer in the
' My authority for this statement is Naumann in his little book. Was
heisst Christlich Social, p. 47- His words are : " Der selige Professor v.
17

258 ST. Paul's conception of christ
truth of God's word, and an exegete to whom students owe
more for the light he has thrown on Paul's Epistles than to
any other modern expositor. We believe that good must
come of all the study and labour that are expended on the
Gospels in order to bring out into clearness the great
thoughts of Jesus, and the revelation of the Divine Will that
is given to us in His life and character. We will be made
to realise more vividly than before that the great instrument
for the moral quickening and elevation of humanity is the
personal influence of Jesus Christ on the heart and life, and
that we are in possession of that knowledge of Him, of His
aims and purposes, of His sympathies and moral judgments,
that is indispensable in order that His Personal influence
upon us may lead to the highest results. But while the gain
from all the inquiry that is directed toward the Christ of
history is in this way unquestionable, it cannot make Paul's
interpretation superfluous, or lessen its value for the Christian
life. Nor are we to understand the words of v. Hofmann
as if he meant to suggest this. Paul himself was the most
signal instance of a character that reached, we might say, the
very pinnacle of human greatness through the influence of
Jesus Christ upon his inner life, and the perfect sympathy of
raind and feeling with His Lord that flowed from his fellow
ship with Him. So dominant was this influence, so absorbing
the attachment that grew out of it, so assimilating a power
did it prove in his conscious experience, that he could say,
" I live no raore, but Christ lives in me." ^ But this same
Paul, who illustrates so strikingly the elevating influence of
Christ on the life and character, attributes it all to the living
Christ who had laid the human race under an eternal debt
of gratitude by His work of atonement for sin and His
victory over death, and who is clothed with the power of
Hofmann in Eriangen hat einmal gesagt, ' nach der Zeit des Paulus
miisse eine Zeit der Evangehen kommen.'"
^ Gal, ii. 20,

THE CHRIST OF HISTORY 259
the Spirit of God to reproduce, in all who surrender them
selves to His love, the characteristic qualities of His own
perfect manhood. And in order that our knowledge of
Jesus Christ in His human raanifestation raay become vital
in our experience, and may prove an influence conforming
us to what He was, we must add to it the faith of Paul in
a Christ Risen and Exalted. As long as there are those
who are burdened with meraories that are a continual
reproach, and who feel the power of evil appetites they
are unable to rise above, — as long as there are those who
tremble before that event -that seems to mock all their
efforts after a higher life, and who crave an assurance that
death has not separated thera for eveFTfbm friends whom
they have lost but cannot cease to love, — raen will turn
with thankfulness to this teacher who shows us what God
made Jesus to be when He raised Him frora the dead,
who announces a Christ who has put away sin, who has
vanquished death, who is now by the grace of God the
Head of a new Humanity, and able to repeat in as
many as believe in Him the wonder of His own Holiness
and Immortality.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

LECTURE I
Note A, p. 8. — Paul and the Historical Christ
A great amount of investigation has been directed in
modern times to the allusions found in Paul's Epistles to
the teaching and incidents recorded in the Gospels. Paret's
article on " Paul and Jesus," in 'Cc& Jahrbiicher fiir Deutsche
Theologie (iii. B., i Heft, 1858), led the way in this in
quiry ; and that article remains the classic on the subject.
All that has been written since is in substance contained
in it; and it ought to be read and re-read by those who
would understand the relation in which Paul stood to the
historic Christ. The Witness of the Epistles, by Rev. R. I.
Knowling, M.A., 1892, is a mine of information on what
has been written since Paret's day ; and in the fifth and
sixth chapters of that work the reader will find a detailed
account of references in the Epistles to our Lord's life and
teaching; the fullest acknowledgment is made of the
author's indebtedness to Paret. Sabatier's brief stateraent
on the subject {The Apostle Paul, p. 70-75, English
translation) is worth reading; he emphasises the point that
one thing calculated to impress us more powerfully than
all the isolated facts mentioned in the Epistles is the
general picture Paul draws of the Saviour's Hfe, so " exactly
answering to the impression left on us by the Gospel narra
tives as a whole."
Hausrath {der Apostel Paulus) remarks that " if Paul in
his letters makes little of the historical, and deduces the
Messiahship of Jesus from the Old Testament rather than
from the life of Jesus, if the individual incidents of the Lord's

264 appendix
life weigh less with him than the significance of His death,
the reason was not that his knowledge is defective on these
matters, but that the speculative tendency of his spirit
thinks in religious postulates and not in facts." The
following passage frora hira raay be quoted as presenting
a suraraary of the historical knowledge to be gathered from
the Epistles : " That he knew, in a particular case, to give the
historical even to detail is proved by his own stateraent to
the Galatians, that he had so set Jesus before their eyes as
the Crucified One that he never believed he would have
reason to fear that they would turn to another Gospel. His
knowledge erabraces the whole life of Jesus. He mentions
His Davidic descent (Rom. i. 3, ix. 5), and he knows of
His baptism, and makes an allegorical use of it in his
Epistles (Col. ii. 11; i Cor. x. 2 ; Rom. vi. 3-4). He
knows the preaching of the kingdom of God, and the
sending forth of the apostles, and their being furnished with
power over the devils (2 Cor. xii. 12 ; i Cor. xii. 10, 28, 29 ;
Gal. iii. 5), and he has so accustomed himself to call them
the Twelve, as in the time of Jesus, that he uses this expres
sion even when it was no raore applicable (i Cor. xv. 5).
The poor life of Jesus (Phil. ii. 4-8), the spirit of raeekness
and gentleness that aniraated it, the self-forgetting, humble,
serving love — all this is perfectly present to the apostle
(2 Cor. V. 15 ; Gal. ii. 20; Phil. i. 8). He has a more
accurate knowledge than the Evangelists themselves had of
the history of the Passion. At least his narrative of the
Lord's Supper in the night on which he was betrayed
corrects the differences of the Synoptists (i Cor. xi. 23) ;
it is not unknown to him that it was the princes of this
world, and not the people, that wished the death of Jesus
(i Cor. n. 8), and the treachery of Judas (i Cor. xi. 23).
The reproaches of the Crucified One (Rom. xv. 3), His weak
ness on the cross (2 Cor. xiii. 4), and the nailing to it of
the handwriting of the proconsul (Col. ii. 14) — all this
stands in so living a way before his soul that he can picture
it also before the eyes of others. The narrative of the
appearances of the Risen One is, in particular, given by him
with great regard to detail (i Cor. xv. 3)" (pp. 142-3).

APPENDIX 265
Jowett has an interesting note in his Commentary on
I Thes. iv. IS, on " What did St. Paul know of the life of
Jesus?" "In I Cor. xv. 3-10," he says, "the apostle
describes hiraself not only as preaching to the Corinthians
the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ, but as dwelling
on the minute circumstances which attested it." He goes
on to ask, "Had he told thera in like raanner of other
events in the life of Christ — had the parables and discourses
of Christ interwoven theraselves in his teaching, were the
rairacles of Christ a witness to which he appealed?"
These questions, he says, must remain without an answer ;
" but as far as we can trace, it was not the sayings or
events of the life of Christ, but the witness of the Old
Testament prophets that formed the larger part of St.
Paul's teaching, the external evidence by which he sup
ported in himself and others the inward and living sense of
union with Christ, the medium through which he preached
' Christ crucified.' "

Note B, p. 1 2. — Paul's Idea of the Christ
BEFORE HIS CONVERSION
There is every reason to believe that before his conversion
Paul shared the carnal notions of his countrymen about the
temporal might and dominion that were to belong to the
Christ who was to come. These ideas seem to have
Winded him to the spirituality of Jesus' claim. His re
pudiation, after he was converted, of the Jewish idea of a
national deliverer is probably referred to in 2 Cor. v. 16,
where, speaking of the change that had taken place in his
estimate of persons and things from the time he had dis
cerned the love of Christ in dying for all, he says, " Yea,
though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth
know we Him no more." Some, indeed, think that these
words imply that Paul had had a personal knowledge of
Jesus when He lived with men, and that he here declares
that he had no longer any interest in that knowledge of
the incidents and words of the historic Christ now that he
had an understanding of Him as the Lord of Glory. It is

266 APPENDIX
difficult, however, to believe that the biography of Jesus
was so destitute of interest or of value to the apostle that
he could use this language regarding it. Others infer from
these words that, for a time after his conversion, Paul
attached importance to the Jewish descent and nationality
of Jesus as giving his believing fellow-countrymen some
advantage over Gentile Christians, and as making obliga
tory on the latter the observance of the carnal ordinances
of the Jews. This is the view of Dr. Matheson in his
suggestive book on The Development of Paul (p. loi). He
regards Paul here as looking back on the first period of his
Christian life, before he had stepped into the larger view of
Christ he afterwards reached, and as confessing, " there was
a time when I made much of what Christ according to the
flesh was, but that time is past." When we think, however,
of the circumstances of Paul's conversion, and of the com
plete recoil from the old ideas that had so misled him that
was sure to take place in a mind so thorough as his was, it
is scarcely credible that any lingering suspicion of the
worth of carnal distinctions could have survived the dis
solution of his scheme of belief which followed, as soon as
he was convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, and that as
spirit He now belonged to a state of being where all such
outward distinctions were absolutely without meaning.
When he speaks, then, of " knowing Christ after the flesh,"
it is more natural to understand hira as using the word
" Christ " in its official sense rather than as a proper name,
and as saying, " Once, with the rest of my countrymen, I
believed in and looked for a Christ who was to come in
outward glory, and to raise Israel to a place of supremacy
among the nations, but I cast away that notion from the
time I knew Jesus to be the Christ, Jesus who died for all
raen, and has founded a kingdom in which the spirit is
everything and the flesh is nothing." This is the view that
is taken by Gess, Neander, Schmiedel, and Denney in his
" Second Epistle to Corinthians " {Expositor's Bible), pp. 204,
205 ; see also a fine sermon on " Knowing Christ after the
Flesh," by Rev. F. Mudie, in Bible Truths and Bible
Characters. Dr. Bruce thinks that the words in 2 Cor. v.

APPENDIX 267
16, must be looked at in the Hght of Paul's controversy
with the Judaistic section of the Church, who made much
of external companionship with Jesus as a qualification for
apostleship, and questioned Paul's right to cah himself an
apostle because he had not had this privilege. Paul's reply
would then raean that he had known Christ thus, but that
he regarded such an acquaintanceship as valueless. Dr.
Bruce agrees with those who are opposed to an under
standing of the words that would iraply on Paul's part a
depreciation of the worth of the knowledge of the historic
Christ. " To cast a slight on the words and acts spoken
and done in that ministry, and on the revelation of a
character made thereby, was not, I imagine, in all his
thoughts " {St. Paul's Conception of Christianity, pp. 255—6).
Note C, p. 28. — The Conception of Christ in
the Pastoral Epistles
Since Schleiermacher wrote his treatise calling in ques
tion the Pauline authorship of i Timothy, the question of the
apostolic origin of these Epistles — for all three form one
problem — has been eagerly canvassed. Perhaps it is yet
too soon to come to a decision as to the final result.
Those who deny that they came from Paul's pen refer
them to the early part of the second century, and regard
thera as having issued frora a circle where Paulinisra pre
vailed, and as having been intended to raeet the practical
errors and confusion in Church-life that were produced by
the spread of Gnostic ideas. The general conceptions are
Pauline, but there is truth in the allegation that they are
wanting both in the depth and sharpness of outline that
characterise the treatraent of doctrine in the undisputed
writings of Paul. The aim of these Epistles is strictly
practical. The eraphasis is placed less on doctrine than on the
"godliness " {evae^ela) that is produced by sound doctrine.
And this accounts for the general terms in which Christ is
spoken of There are few references to the historical
Christ. He is declared to have corae into the world

268 APPENDIX
(i Tira. i. 15), and to have "appeared" and been "mani
fested" in the flesh (2 Tim. i. 10; i Tira. Hi. 16) (where
o? raust now be accepted as the true reading ^) — a forra of
speech that rerainds us of John's apprehension of the
Incarnate One as the raanifestation of God. It suggests,
too, the pre-existence in another state of Hira who is
" manifested " in tirae. Christ is also said to have been of
the " seed of David " (2 Tira. ii. 8), and to have, " before
Pontius Pilate, witnessed a good confession" (i Tim. vi. 13).
We read also of the " wholesome words of the Lord Jesus "
(i Tira. vi. 3) as being the test of true doctrine, which indi
cates the value that was now set on the historical record of
our Lord's teaching. Christ is called the " One Mediator
between God and Man, the Man Christ Jesus" (i Tim. H. 5).
The term Mediator applied to Christ is new, and is a point
of affinity between these writings and the Epistle to the
Hebrews (xii. 24). As the Man who is distinguished from
all other men, inasmuch as, while they need salvation (i Tim.
ii. 4), He is in the position to mediate between them
and God to convey salvation to them. He answers closely
to the idea of the Second Adam expounded in Rora. v.
12—19. The idea of His Person conveyed in the words
(i Tira. iii. 16), "He was raanifested in the flesh and
justified in the spirit," is strictly Pauline. The flesh, the
seat of His manifestation, is synonymous with human
nature on its material side, while the spirit in which He was
justified is the higher element of His Personality. By His
"justification in the spirit" we are to understand, that in
virtue of this higher principle in Him, — the spirit, — He was
authenticated as being that which He reahy was in spite of
appearances ; the reference, doubtless, is to the Resurrection,
where, according to Paul in Rom. i. 3, Christ was " marked
out as being the Son of God " (which He had really been
in the days of His flesh in a concealed and incomplete
form) "according to the spirit of holiness." He became
then, according to the teaching of Paul in the undisputed
Epistles, " a Life-Giving Spirit " : the words " being justified
in the Spirit '' conveys much the same sense.
^ See Hort, The New Testament in Greek, vol. ii. pp. 132-3.

APPENDIX 269
The Person and work of Christ are declared very
emphatically to be a raanifestation of the Goodness of
God. In Hira there was a signal appearing of the
"Grace" (2 Tira. i. 9; Tit. ii. 11) of God "bringing
salvation to all," of " the kindness and philanthropy of God "
(Tit. in. 4). God is designated throughout as the
"Saviour" of men (i Tim. i. i, ii. 3, iv. 10, Tit. i. 3,
ii. 10), and Jesus' identity in mind and aim with God is
implied in the fact that He also is called the " Saviour "
(Tit. i. 4 ; 2 Tim. i. i o). He came to " save sinners "
(i Tim. i. 15). To this end He "gave Himself for us"
(Tit. ii. 14), or, as it is expressed more fully in i Tim. ii. 6,
" He gave Himself a ransom for all."
The effects of His death are moral rather than
religious : it is salvation as an ethical good, and not as a
mere deliverance from guilt, that is emphasised ; salvation
from lawlessness and sin (Tit. ii. 14) raore than frora
the curse of the law, or regeneration (Tit. iii. 4). As Risen
and Exalted, Christ is called not only our Saviour, but
also the " Lord." He is not mentioned in these writings
as the " Son of God."
The Spirit is spoken of as the possession of believers,
and as the source of moral renewal (2 Tim. i. 7, 14; Tit.
iii. S) ; but He is not called " the Spirit of Christ." There
is no reference to the truth, so characteristic of Paul, of
the Indwelling Christ. The phrase " in Christ " does occur
several times (2 Tim. iii. 1 2, i. 9), but it does not seem to
have the same force or significance as in the recognised
Pauline writings ; and one feels, in reading these Epistles,
that there is a measure of truth in Schenkel's judgraent :
" The Christ-Image of the Pastoral Epistles is made up of
Pauline formulas, but there is wanting the Pauline raind and
spirit, the raystic inwardness, the religious depth and
raoral power which live in the Christ of Paul" {Das
Christus-Bild der Apostel, p. 361).
On the other hand, the leading features of the Pauline
Christology are here. Christ is a Man, but a Man who
stands in a unique relation to God and raen, as Mediator.
He has for us the rehgious value of God, for God is

270 APPENDIX
manifested in Him, and He is Lord and Saviour, as God
is : He is mentioned habitually along with God as of the
same importance to us (i Tim. v. 21, i. i, 2; 2 Tim.
iv. I ; Tit. i. 4, ii. 1 3), and the language in which His
Incarnation is spoken of, as a manifestation in the flesh,
pointing, as we have seen, to a prior existence with God
(whether in person or principle), seems to account for the
fact that He who was a Man has been raised to such a
practical equality with God in the thought and regard of
the Church.

LECTURE II
Note A, p. 39. — -St. Paul and the Supernatural
Birth of Christ
The statement that Paul does not in the Epistles teach
the doctrine of the supernatural birth of Christ will scarcely
be disputed. Allusions to it have been found in Rora. i. 3, 4,
and Gal. iv. 4. In the forraer passage the Divine Sonship
of Christ is based on " the Spirit of Holiness " ; but there is
nothing in this inconsistent with the natural origin of His
physical being, any raore than there is anything in the words
applied to Isaac (Gal. iv. 29), " born after the Spirit," that is
inconsistent with his huraan parentage. The other passage
that has been appealed to, Gal. iv. 4, " God sent forth His
Son, made of a woraan, raade under the law," is equally inde
cisive. The pre-existence of Christ is implied here, but not
His supernatural birth ; for it is the object of the apostle to
point out, not wherein Christ differed frora other raen, but
His identity with thera in His human experience and in
the raanner of His appearing. The words " born of woraan"
of theraselves no raore exclude the idea of a huraan parent
age than do the same words when applied to John the
Baptist in Matt. xi. 11.
Nor is it at all clear that his conception of Christ as the
sinless Second Adam involves as its necessary iraplicate a
miraculous birth. In order to answer to the idea conveyed
by that title, indeed, Christ must be regarded as a new
Moral Creation. As the Fountain of a new moral life to
raen He raust owe His distinctive Being to a fresh creative
act on the part of God. No theory of evolution can account
for His unique moral greatness. On the other hand, the
miracle of His moral life does not necessarily imply a physical
miracle at the beginning of His human existence, although
271

272 APPENDIX
all that we know of the very close connection between the
material and the spiritual, the flesh and the spirit, points to
such a physical miracle as rendering more credible the
wonder of the sinless development of His humanity.
It has been further argued that Paul's idea of Christ as
a Central Personality, from whom each member of the
human race derives the life that issues in the moral develop
ment of his separate individuality, compels us to conceive
of Him as possessing our human nature, not as an indi
vidual member of the race, but in its collective character,
not as the Son of an individual man, but as born of
Humanity in virtue of a sovereign act of God. But any
view that would rob Christ of His individuality in order to
maintain this universal significance that belongs to Him is
an erroneous one, and leads to a Doketic denial of His
humanity. Nor could He be to us the Perfect Example of
a religious life, if the religious life was divorced in Him
from any marked individuality of trait and temperament.
The Christ of the Gospels is intensely individual, in the
true sense of that word.
On the whole, it seems impossible to argue such a
matter to a satisfactory conclusion on general considera
tions. It must be determined by the view we take of the
historicity of the chapters in the Gospels that relate to
Christ's birth of the Virgin. It is plain, however (if we are
to argue from the silence of the apostle), that he did not attach
any fundamental importance to it. His Christology was
based, not on the fact of the supernatural conception, but on
the fact of the Resurrection and Glorification of Christ. The
words of Schenkel here express the truth : " The problem of
the supernatural birth of Christ did not exist for Paul,
because with hira the resurrection is the real birth-hour of
the Heavenly Man, Christ " {Das Christus-Bild der Apostel,
p. 257). Similarly, Sabatier in his L'Apdtre Paul (1886),
p. 339 : " The part which the fact of the supernatural birth
plays in the Church theology is taken in Paul's system by
the fact of the Resurrection. The new historical epoch
begins with the Resurrection of the Saviour, which was the
first appearance of the supernatural life on earth."

APPENDIX 273
It has been pointed out by Abbott {Spirit of God on
the Waters') that the attitude of John in his Gospel to the
question of the supernatural birth of Christ is similar to that
of Paul. He, too, represents faith in Christ the Son of God
as resting on grounds that are independent of the settlement
of that question. Nathanael welcomes Jesus as the Son of
God, while he is still under the impression that He was the
Son of Joseph and Mary according to report (i. 45-49).
Faith is spoken of throughout the Gospel as arrived at with
out any reference to the circumstances of the beginning of
Christ's earthly life. There is no mention in his Gospel of
the miraculous conception, and it is doubtful whether the
evangelist knew of it. The common understanding among
those who figure in the Gospel is that He was a native of
Nazareth, and born of Joseph (vi. 42, vii. 41). That was
made a pretext by the captious Pharisees for not believing
in Him, inasmuch as they inferred from prophecy that
Messiah was to be born " in the town of Bethlehem, the
city of David" (vii. 42). The design of the evangelist is
evidently to show that faith in Christ as " of God " rested
on the spiritual perception of the divine glory in Him, and
was not affected vitally by knowledge or ignorance of the
facts regarding the beginning of His earthly life.
This harmony between Paul and John, the two great
interpreters of Christ, in regard to the relative insignifi
cance to religious faith in Christ of our belief on this
subject, is to be kept in view in our judgment of those
who hesitate to accept the narratives in Matthew and
Luke on the infancy of Jesus. The words spoken by
Julius Muller, author of the classic work on the Christian
Doctrine of Sin, before the General Synod in 1 847, are
memorable : " Wenn jemand wahrhaft verstiinde was Busse
und glaube ist und so das Evangelium vom Heiland der
welt, dem Sohn Gottes und des Menschen aus lebendiger
Erfahrung seines Hertzens predige, also auch unfehlbar an
der flecklosen Herrlichkeit Christi festhielt und doch dabei
verriethe, dass nach seiner Ansicht die gottliche Wirksam-
keit in dem Anfang des menschlichen Lebens Jesu das
natiirliche Medium nicht aussrhliesse, — nun, so hoffen wir
18

2 74 APPENDIX
ZU Gott, dass Er die Evangelische Kirehe n immer so tief
sinken lassen wird, einen solchen heterodoxen Prediger, der
ihr hundertmal mehr niitze ist als ein Aratsgenosse von der
reinsten aber seelenlosen Orthodoxie, aus ihrera Dienste
entfernen zu wollen."
On the general subject, and especially on the historical
question involved, the student may consult with advantage
Gore's Dissertations, the article on " The Virgin Birth of
our Lord." The more speculative aspects of the subject
are treated in Rothe's Ethik, iii. par. 534—6, and by Gess,
Christi Person u. Werk, iii. pp. 394-5. Both Rothe and
Gess maintain strongly the miraculous origin of Christ's
humanity as the postulate of His sinlessness. On the
other side, see Lobstein on Die Lehre von der iibernatUrlichen
Geburt Christi, and Hering's article in Zeitschrift fur
Theologie u. Kirehe, 1895, ^ H., on Die Dogmatische
Bedentung u. der religiose, Werth der iibernatUrlichen
Geburt Christi.
Note B, p. 62. — On the Gradual Apprehension
OF the Christian Ideal
Canon Gore illustrates the point, that the contents of the
Christian ideal have been gradually understood and appro
priated, in the following words : " No doubt, for example,
many early Christians had an imperfect perception of the
obligation of truthfulness, but when Augustine vigorously
asserted it to be a part of Christian morality, he asserted
what is undoubtedly true. Christ did lift all conversation
to the level of absolute truthfulness, to the level formerly
held only by statments under oath : ' Let your yea be yea,
and your nay, nay.' We in our time, to take only one
more example, have learnt to give great prominence to the
virtue of considerateness. The rough and sumraary classi
fications of raen in groups, the equally rough and summary
condemnations of thera, the inconsiderate treatraent of
heretics, and even of speculators — these facts in Church
history strike us as painful and unworthy. Considerate
ness, we say, is a Christian virtue. ' Let your considerate-

appendix 275
ness be known unto all men.' We look back to our Lord
and are astonished that any can have failed to see His
intense respect for individuality. His freedom frora fanati
cism — in a word. His considerateness. Certainly it is there.
Only, lest we should be arrogant, we need to remeraber
that other ages and other races have caught more readily
in Hira what we ignore, — His antagonism to pride or to
the selfish assertion of property, — and that the whole is
not yet told" {Bampton Lecture, pp. 169, 170).

LECTURE III
Note A, p. t6. — The Revelation of God's Love in
the Death "of Christ and His Resurrection
Theodor HAring, in his suggestive little work, Zur Ver
s'ohnungslehre (1893), shows that without the resurrection
of Christ the revelation of God's love furnished by His
death would have been incomplete. The point is so im
portant, and is so well put by the author, that I quote his
words : —
" Daher wird auch in diesera Zusaramenhang besonders
deutlich, warum dieser Liebe bis in den Tod der Erweis der
Todesiiberwindung nicht fehlen darf, wenn sie jenen Glauben
hervorzurufen soil im Stande sein : der Todesiiberwindung
eben nicht nur in dem Sinn, dass sie in der Todesprobe
Stand gehalten, mithin sich als eine in diesera Menschen
seinem natiirlichen Leben iiberlegene Macht erwiesen hat,
sondern als die hochste Macht alles Wirklichen. Mit
andern Worten ; ohne das Kreuz kein Erweis der hochsten
Liebe, wenn man das Wesen der Liebe ins Auge fasst;
ohne Auferstehung kein Erweis der hochsten Liebe, wenn
man darnach fragt, ob sie die alles beherrschende Wirk-
lichkeit ist. In den Worten ' hochst ' und ' gottlich,' die
wir unwiflkUrlich gebrauchen, wo vom Tod Jesu die Rede
ist, liegt ein Anlass zur Zweideutigkeit. ' Grossere Liebe,'
' gottlichere Liebe ' giebt es nicht dem sittlichen Werte
nach, als die sich in den Tod opfernde ; aber damit ist
noch nicht notwendig gesagt, ob sie gottlich ist in dem
Sinn, dass sie als das Wesen Gottes unzweideutig sich
brundgibt. Eine Wirklichkeit ist sie selbstverstandlich,
wenn immer sie die Kraft in einem Menschenherzen gewon-
nen, die von Natur starkste Kraft unseres inneren Lebens zu
iiberwinden ; aber Glaube, Vertrauen auf Gottes Liebe, das
276

appendix 277
jeder Anfechung widerstehen kann, entsteht nur, wachst
und voUendet sich nur, wenn die Liebe Gottes als die
Wirklichkeit, ohne gleichen, als die schlechthinige, jede
andere Wirklichkeit, auch die des Todes liberragende, sich
offenbart " (pp. 46, 47).

Note B, p. 85. — On Sacrificial Language in
Paul's Epistles
i here are in all only three passages that can be quoted in
this connection. The first is Rom. Hi. 25, referred to in
the text. The second is Eph. v. i , " Walk in love, as
Christ also has loved us, and hath given Himself for us an
offering and sacrifice unto God for a sweet-smelling savour."
The death of Christ, however, is here spoken of as a sacrifice
in the moral sense, in so far as it was the sublime expression
of His Love and self-surrender to the Will of God ; and
in this respect it reveals a principle for the imitation of
believers, who are to act in the same spirit, and so raake
their lives also an offering and a sacrifice unto God.
The remaining passage is I Cor. v. 7 : " For Christ our
Passover is sacrificed, or slain, for us, wherefore let us keep
the feast," etc. The whole passage is an exhortation to
believers to live out the Christian life in a spirit of holy
gladness. The Passover lamb was not strictly an offering,
but a memorial of the death that signalised the deliverance
of Israel from Egypt ; and when Christ is spoken of as our
Passover (lamb), believers are reminded that the means of
their redemption from sin is also a death, that calls for the
renunciation of all sin on the part of those who are to
partake of its benefit. The Passover lamb was slain in
order to be eaten at a feast from which all leaven was
excluded, and our Passover was put to death in order that,
partaken of by us, He might be the author in us of a Life to
which everything of the nature of sin was entirely alien.
There is not a hint here of Christ's death in the sense of a
sin-offering. Among those who are opposed to the dogmatic under
standing of the sacrificial language in Paul's Epistles in

278 appendix
reference to the death of Christ may be mentioned R.
Schmidt {Die Paulinische Christologie), Weiss {Bibl. Theol.
of the N. T., i. p. 426, Eng. Trans. (Clark)), Seeberg {Der
Tod Christi), Jowett {St. Paul's Epistles), Essay on Atone
ment and Satisfaction. It is a striking fact that Paul
nowhere teaches that believers were to cease partaking in
the sacrificial system then in vogue, which we would have
expected him to do had he held and taught, with the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that the death of
Christ was of the nature of a sin-offering, and raade the
continued offering of sacrifices under the law an anach-
ronisra, if not a sin. Mackintosh thinks this omission
accidental {The Natural History of the Christian Religion,
P- 398).
Note C, p. 87. — On the Meaning of 2 Cor. v. 21.
This passage bears a strong resemblance to that in
Rom. V. considered in the text. The phraseology and
point of view are different, but the meaning is much the
same. The design of the death of Christ is stated to be
" that we might be made the righteousness of God in
Him " ; while in Rora. v. 1 9 it is thus put, " that we raight
be made righteous." The abstract terra, " the righteous
ness of God," is employed in writing to the Corinthians, in
order to be in line with the form of speech he uses in
reference to the death of Christ, where the abstract term is
raade use of, being required by the nature of the case:
" He hath raade Him to be sin " (not a sinner) " for us,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him "
(ver. 21). The effect of His "being raade sin for us" is
thus precisely the same as that attributed in Rom. v. to
His " obedience." In both cases alike it is, that we raight
be brought into right relations to God, into the enjoyraent
of His favour.
In writing to the Corinthians, the point eraphasised by
Paul is God's part in so appointing and arranging the
death of Christ as to execute thereby His saving purpose :
" Christ was made sin for us." His aira is to trace all up to

appendix 279
God (ver. 1 8), to show that the great reconciliation originated
with God, and that His grace is conspicuous in the entire
transaction. On the other hand, in writing to the Romans
his object is to magnify the work of the Second Adam, the
•Divine instrument for accomplishing the reconciliation.
Accordingly, we read, in the former case, that Christ, while
sinless and undeserving of death, was " made sin," was
made to appear a sinner by being subjected in the pro
vidence of God to death, the punishment of sin. By dying
the shameful death on the cross. He was placed in the
position of a transgressor, and was caused to experience in
body and soul sufferings that were in sorrowful contrast to
what was proper to Him as the Sinless One ; and this, that
we raight be treated as the opposite of what we really
are, and accepted as righteous. He was dealt with as a
sinner in the death He endured, that we might be dealt
with as righteous in the favour we receive. How His
being dealt with as a sinner secured our being dealt with
as righteous is not explained in this passage, but is
explained, in so far as it admits of explanation, in the
passage in Rom. v., where His obedience to the will of
God, manifested in His consenting to die the death He did
not deserve, is declared to possess that moral worth that
has efficacy to secure our acceptance in God's sight.
Some have found an explanation in the words " for
us " ; and taking virep in the sense " in our room and
stead," they interpret the clause as meaning that in being
dealt with as a sinner, Christ took our place, and had laid
upon Him the punishment that was due to us, so that
God can now deal with us as those who have already
in the Person of Christ borne the punishment of sin,
and cannot in justice be punished a second time. It is
possible to take this meaning out of the words. But they
do not of themselves suggest it. The preposition vivkp
means properly " on our behalf," for our sakes. And there
is an awkwardness in taking it in the sense of "in our
place" here, because it would make Paul say, God hath
raade Hira who knew no sin to be sin in our place, that is,
instead of making us to be sin, but in fact we are sinners

2 8o appendix
already. The more serious difficulty which this interpre
tation encounters is referred to in the lecture.
On the whole, I am unable to attach to this passage
the significance in relation to a theory of the Atonement
that Dr. Denney does, who speaks of it as " the keystone
of the whole system of apostolic thought " (" Commentary
on Second Epistle to the Corinthians," p. 218 — Expositor's
Bible). I am disposed to regard rather the passage in
Romans in this light. It is just in a doctrinal Epistle such
as Romans is that we might look for a clearly defined
statement on the subject.
Note D, p. 88. — On Rom. iii. 23-26.
This passage is a crux to the exegete. The thought
is compressed, and the construction of the relative clauses
difficult. I state what appears to me, after a careful study,
to be the meaning. I follow the translation of Weizacker
(New Testament), which is based on what seeras to be
the most natural understanding of the clauses, and which
suggests the sense of the whole. He renders from ver. 21
thus :
" But now the righteousness of God without the law is
manifested, even the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus
Christ, for all them that believe, for there is no difference;
for all men have sinned and come short of the glory of
God, but are justified (or accepted) as righteous by an act
of His own free favour, by means of the redemption in
Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a Propitiation through
faith in His blood, that He might manifest His Right
eousness — on account of having overlooked the sins that
were formerly committed, because God exercised forbearance,
having respect (or, with a view) to the manifestation of His
righteousness that has now taken place, — in order, then,
that He might be seen to be one who, righteous Himself,
accepts as righteous him that is of faith in Jesus."
The leading thought of the whole passage is that the
design of the Death of Christ, and of that gracious arrange
ment under which believers have in His death a means of

appendix 281
propitiation, is the exhibition of the Righteousness of God
(ver. 25). At this point there is a parenthesis, and not
till the end of it is reached have we the words, " that He
might be righteous, and the justifier of him that believes in
Christ " — words which expand and explain the main thought,
that the death of Christ is intended to exhibit the Right
eousness of God. These words state the double aspect
which the Righteousness of God has ; in virtue of it, God
is at once Righteous in Himself, the Maintalner of Right,
true to His own nature as Holy, and, at the same time, the
justifier of those who believe in the revelation of His
Grace, in that He places them in a relation to Himself
that is conformed to what is right, i.e. in that He forgives
their sin, and restores them to His favour. There is, then,
in the Righteousness of God as exhibited in Christ a
gracious element. It is, indeed, a gracious attribute. It is
love pursuing its end, which is the recovery of man to God,
in a holy way, i.e. a way in keeping with His character as
holy. The parenthesis, beginning with " on account of the
overlooking of sins that are past," is intended to remind us
that this exhibition of righteousness was necessary because
of the fact that before Christ came sin had been overlooked
or passed over. The reason why God had been so for
bearing was hid tih the death of Christ took place. Then
this forbearance was seen to have its ground in the
righteousness of God revealed in that event. It was seen,
in other words, to have its ground in the gracious arrange
ment under which men came to have in Christ a Saviour
who has expiated sin. This arrangement proved that the
righteousness of God was something far grander than men
had deeraed it to be, or than it would have been seen to be,
had God, instead of exercising forbearance, dealt with
men in strict justice, and punished them for their sins.
Righteousness was thus manifested as that attribute of the
Divine nature that not only maintains a holy order in the
universe, but that also provides for the forgiveness of
sinners. In what way the Death of Christ exhibits the
former aspect of the Divine righteousness is not stated

252 APPENDIX
here, except generally that the latter is illustrated in
the power of His Death to expiate sin. The intention of
the author is simply to show that the gospel way of salva
tion by faith is the exhibition of the Righteousness of God,
understood in this large sense, not as punitive or retributive
justice, but as holy love, a will ever faithful and true to its
own law, which is the salvation of raen in a manner con
sistent with eternal truth and holiness. Recent theo
logians of all schools accept this as the idea of
Righteousness taught in the passage before us. In their
Commentary on Romans, iii. 25—26, Sanday and Headlam
say: "The words (ver. 26) indicate no opposition between
justice and mercy. Rather that which seems to us, and
which really is, an act of mercy, is the direct outcome of
the ' righteousness,' which is a wider and more adequate
narae than justice. It is the essential righteousness of God
which impels Hira to set in motion that sequence of events
in the sphere above, and in the sphere below, which leads
to the free forgiveness of the believer, and starts him on
his way with a clean page to his record " (p. 91). Gcebel,
in his brief Commentary on N. T., says on this passage:
" hiKaioa-vvi] avTov ist hier Eigenschaftsbestiramung, aber nicht
die Strafgerechtigkeit Gottes, sondern allgeraeiner diejenige
ethische Unwandelbarkeit Gottes, vermoge deren er das
Bose niemals gut heisst, also die Siinde nicht vergiebt ohne
Siihne." This scarcely does justice to the gracious element
in the conception. Ritschl's account of the matter is truer
to the thought of Paul here : " God has raanifested His
righteousness in the death of Christ, inasmuch as it is in
keeping with His nature both to justify him who believes
and to require an expiation of sin in entering into fellow
ship with sinners " {Altkath. Kirehe, p. 86).
Note E, p. 89. — Whether Christ suffered
Spiritual Death.
The theory referred to in the text has been held in
another and raore consistent form by those who have main
tained that what Jesus suffered in the place of sinners was the

appendix 283
torments of hell, the proper punishment of sin, or the sense
of the Wrath of God, spiritual death. This logically is the
position we are shut up to if we hold that the essence of
the work lay in His having borne the punishment of sin in
our room and stead. But surely to speak of Christ's having
endured the wrath of God that is directed towards sinners
is only to confuse the mind. It is inconceivable that He
can have borne our sin in the sense that the guilt or proper
punishment of it was transferred to Him, and that He
had experience of the pains of remorse. There is a sense,
of course, in which we raay speak of Christ having borne
the wrath of God, if we mean by that expression that He
had experience of those evils in the world that indicate the
displeasure of God at sin, and of which He would naturally
participate as incorporated with the life of man, and liable
to share in the evils of man's disordered life. And viewing
death as the culmination of this penal element in the world,
we raay regard His Death as charged with the power to
express to Him the wrath of God against sin. But if it
be meant that He was Himself in any sense the object
of God's displeasure, or that He exhausted, by Himself
personally enduring it as it enters into the experience of
the sinner, or that the wrath of God broke upon His head,
we must repudiate such an idea as altogether unwarranted.
It is time that such an expression, so liable to be misunder
stood and to confuse our thoughts of God,should be discarded.
I entirely sympathise with the remarks of Gess on this sub
ject. " What tact," he says, " is shown by the apostles in
their never speaking of Jesus as bearing the Divine wrath !
Our sins He has borne on the tree. God has raade Him to
be sin. He became a curse. The punishment lay upon Him.
He is set forth for a manifestation of the righteousness of
God in His blood. That the apostles, using such strong
expressions, yet never make mention of the Divine wrath
towards the Atoner, has its root in the feeling that anger sig
nifies a state of indignant feeling that we dare never attribute
to the mind of the holy God towards the holy Jesus. One
may say, indeed, that this silence of the apostles is a proof
of apostolic inspiration, and that the language even of

284 appendix
respectable theologians about Jesus bearing the Divine
wrath is a proof how far below the apostles theologians
stand. Punishment may fall upon the innocent along with
the guilty, anger can be directed only against the guilty.
The innocent children of a murderer must, in accordance
with the Divine order of the world, bear a portion of the
punishment of their father ; that God is angry with them
no intelligent man would dream of saying. And the idea
of the Father being angry with the Son, who drinks the
bitter cup in obedience to the Father ! Angry at His deed
of self-sanctification, John xvii. 19! At the deed which
the Father recompensed with the exaltation described in
Philippians ii. 9 ! Not only the language of science but also
that of edification ought once for all to free itself from such
ineptitudes of expression, which have an effect the opposite
of edification in the case of thinking persons, especially of
those who think in accordance with Scripture " {Christi
Person und Werk, iii. 442).
An instructive note will be found in Dr. Bruce's
Humiliation of Christ on the doctrine that Christ suffered
spiritual death in the place of sinners, as held by the
Lutheran and by the Reformed Dogmatists — Note C to
his sixth lecture.

Note F, p. 90.^ — ^Owen on the Atoning Element
IN THE Death of Christ
It was a pleasant surprise to me to find such emphasis laid
on the spiritual eleraents in Christ's offering by the great
Puritan, as his authority is often adduced for a narrow
view of the atoneraent that ignores these eleraents. In
his work on The Holy Spirit he devotes a chapter (iv.)
to " the work of the Holy Spirit in and on the Human
nature of Christ." And here he insists on the presence in
His death of those actings of the grace of the Holy Spirit
by which He was distinguished all through His life.
" And these," he says, " are diligently to be considered,
because on thera depends the efficacy of the Death of
Christ as to atonement and merit ; for it is not the death

APPENDIX 285
of Christ, merely as it was penal and undergone by the
way of sufifering, that is the means of our deliverance, but
the obedience of Christ therein, which consisted in His
offering of Himself through the Eternal Spirit unto God,
that gave efficacy and success to it." He then proceeds to
inquire into those " principal graces of the Spirit which He
acted in this offering of Himself unto God." They are
(I leave out his exposition under each head) : ( i ) Love to
mankind and compassion towards sinners. (2) His un
speakable zeal for, and ardency of affection unto, the glory
of God. And with respect to the latter, two things were
aimed at by Him: (i) The manifestation of God's right
eousness, holiness, and severity against sin. (2) The exer
cise of His grace and love. " His zeal and affection unto
the glory of God's righteousness, faithfulness, and grace,
which was wrought in the heart of Christ by the Eternal
Spirit, was that wherein principally He offered up Himself
unto God." (3) His holy submission and obedience unto
the Will of God. " His death was the highest act of obedi
ence unto God which ever was or ever will be to all
eternity, and therefore doth God so express His satisfaction
therein, and acceptance of it." (4) His faith and trust in
God, which, with fervent prayers, cries, and supplications.
He now rested on God and His promises. He concludes
thus, " Now, concerning those instances, we may observe
three things to our present purpose :
" I. These and the like gracious actings of the Holy
Christ were the ways and means whereby, in His death
and blood-shedding, — which was violent and by force
inflicted upon Him as to the outward instruments, and
was penal as to the sentence of the law, — He voluntarily
and freely offered up Hiraself a sacrifice unto God to raake
atonement; and these were the things which, from the
dignity of His Person, became efficacious and victorious.
Without those His death and blood-shedding had been no
oblation. " 2. These were the things that rendered His offering of
Himself ' a sacrifice to God of a sweet-sraeHing, savour '
(Eph. V. 2). God was so absolutely delighted and pleased

286 APPENDIX
with these high and glorious acts of grace and obedience
in Jesus Christ, that He smelled, as it were, a savour of
rest towards mankind, or those for whora He offered Him
self, so that He would be angry with them no more. It
was not by the outward suffering of an outward and bloody
death, which was inflicted on Him by the raost horrible
wickedness that ever human nature broke forth into, that
God was atoned; nor yet was it merely His enduring the
penalty of the law that was the means of our deliverance ;
but the voluntary giving up of Himself to be a sacrifice in
these holy acts of obedience was that upon which, in an
especial manner, God was reconciled to us.
" 3. All these things being wrought in the human nature
by the Holy Ghost, who in the time of His offering acted
all His graces unto the utraost. He is said thereon to 'offer
Himself unto God through the Eternal Spirit,' by whom, as
our High Priest, He was consecrated, spirited, and acted
thereunto."

Note G, p. 91. — Haring on the Death of Christ
AS A Demonstration of the Evil of Sin
It is a peculiarity of Haring's treatment of the subject,
that he apprehends Christ as aiming, by what He did and
suffered, at awakening in His Church a consciousness of
guilt that answers to its greatness. For without this forgive
ness is ethically impossible. There are two ways in which,
he says, we raay conceive Christ as having accomplished
this. Either by His death on the cross, regarded as the
supreme manifestation of the wickedness of raan. We can
conceive Christ as wihing to submit to such a death at the
hands of men, because He recognised it to be the object of
God, in allowing the sin of man thus to exhaust itself on
His Son, to convince men of their great guilt, and awaken
the consciousness of their demerit. Or, by enduring the
death of the Cross in obedience to the Will of the Father,
we may think of Him as having practically acknowledged
the divinely ordained connection between sin and evil, and
thereby the inviolability of God's law; and the Church

APPENDIX 287
as led by Him to the same knowledge and recognition.
" The fact that the Father surrenders the Son to death 
and to this death — forces on us, as it did on the
early Church, the thought that Jesus Himself saw in this
death of His a direct raanifestation for the condemnation
of sin, the most powerful sermon on the inviolable earnest
ness of the Divine love ' which made Him to be sin who
knew no sin.' " Haring contends for this interpretation as
fitted directly to awaken that consciousness of guilt which
is a condition of forgiveness. But he admits also the
efficacy for this object of the Death of Christ when appre
hended simply as the manifestation of the sin of men, and
without the higher meaning attributed to it, when it is
regarded as an act of submission on Christ's part to the
majesty of the inviolable order of God.
Note H, p. 96. — On the Doctrine of the Fall
IN Jewish Literature
The prevailing view in the Talmud is that Adam was not
originally destined to die, and that it was his sin that is the
cause of the mortality of the race. How far his sin also in
volved the moral ruin of mankind, as Paul teaches, is a point
that is not quite so clear. Weber sums up the general result
in these words : " Free will, even in reference to our disposi
tion toward God, remained even after the Fall. There is
hereditary guilt, but not hereditary sin. The fall of Adam
has occasioned death to the whole huraan race, but not
sinfulness in the sense of a necessity to sin. Sin is the
result of the decision of every individual, as experience
shows, but the Fall has not made it necessary " {Lehren d.
Talmud, 2 1 7).
In the Apocalypse of Esdras we have express state
ments that Adam's sin has involved the human race both
in sin and death : " O Adam, what hast thou done ? for
though it was thou that sinned, the evil has not fallen on
thee alone, but on all of us that come of thee " (viii. 48) ;
" the first Adam, being a wicked heart, transgressed and
was overcome; and not he only, but all that are born of

288 APPENDIX
him " (iii. 20) ; " for a grain of wickedness was sown in the
heart of Adam from the beginning, and how much wicked
ness hath it brought forth unto this time" (iv. 30). This
is identical with the Pauline view, but great uncertainty
prevails among scholars as to the date of the composition
of Esdras, or at least of those portions of it from which
these words are taken. We cannot positively affirm that
the apostle borrowed his doctrine from this book, as it is
possible that those who refer its composition to the latter
years of the first century may be right. In this case, it
would be nearer the truth to say that Esdras was dependent
on Paul, and not Paul on Esdras.
In his Book of Baruch (1896), Mr. Charles insists that
the author of the Book of Esdras, though a Jew, and
writing in the interests of Judaism, was strongly influenced
by Christian writings. In the Book of Baruch, which in
its earlier portions is referred by him to the year 5 5—70
A.D., there are two different ideas on the subject in different
constituents of the book. The one is that Adam's sin
brought in physical death ; but the responsibility for sin
is fastened on each individual. " Each one of us has
been the Adam of his own soul" (54, 19) (chap, xxiii. 4).
The other refers the universality of sin as well as of
death to Adam's sin. " O Adam, what hast thou done to
all those who were born from thee, for all this multitude
are going to corruption ? nor is there any numbering of
those whom the fire devours" (48, 42). In another passage
(54, 15) Adam's sin is declared to have brought premature
death on all. Mr. Charles thinks the more pessimistic
passages betray the influence of the darker views of Esdras
on the mind of the writer. He regards the Book of Baruch
as reflecting more faithfully than Esdras, except in that
one passage, the views of the synagogue. It is then at
present impossible to say with certainty that the view of
transmitted sin and death that Paul teaches was taken from
the Rabbinical teaching of his day. It was a common
tenet that physical death had come with Adam's sin ; but
there is no direct evidence that it was the opinion of the
age that spiritual death had also followed : the likelier view

APPENDIX 289
is that it was his deeper apprehension of sin and the
bondage of human nature to sin, that led hira to believe in
original sin, and in its proceeding from the same centre as
that from which physical death had come.

Note I, p. 104. — St. Paul and the Imitatio
Christi
The apostle's doctrine of the Imitation of Christ is very
different from the view of those who have held that the
earthly life of Jesus is intended to be copied by His
followers. It is the Inner Spirit of that Life that remains
for him the principle of true character and the law for all.
He is the Indwehing life of those who are united in the roots
of their being to Him, and He works in them, freely reproduc
ing in them His mind and disposition ; but being now re
leased from the conditions ofthe flesh. He does not manifest
Himself in them in the same forms of action or exhibit the
sarae concrete features that His earthly course presents.
" As the way," says Hort, " He is meant to transform us ;
but the transformation is not into the fashion of Jesus of
Nazareth, but into a fashion shaped out of our own raaterials.''^
There are only four passages in which the historical Christ
is referred to by Paul as an Example. The first is Rom.
XV. 2—7, where he inculcates the duty of the strong to
bear with the infirmities of the weak, and not to please
theraselves by following a course of action that would be
an offence to others. " For even Christ pleased not
Himself," he adds, " but bore the reproaches of others."
And then, in bringing his argument to a close, he says,
" receive ye one another as Christ also received you." The
mind of Christ, seen in His gracious fehowship with all
raen irrespective of what they were, is to be raanifested by
Christians extending fellowship to those frora whom they
may differ on points of belief or practice. The love of
Christ is commended to their imitation in its unselfishness
and indiscriminate bestowal of His fellowship. Again, Eph.
V. 2, " Walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave Himself
1 The Way, the Truth, and the Life, p. 205.
19

290 APPENDIX
for US," where the generosity of His love to man is the point
singled out (" He gave Himself for us ") as the characteristic
of the love which Christians are to exhibit to one another.
Once more, we have the great passage in Phil. ii. 5, etc.,
where the mind of Christ, who descended from a Heavenly
Life to a life on earth for our sakes, is enjoined on us for
imitation in a passage where it is Paul's object to exalt the
grace of humility ; and it is as a wonderful example of the
spirit of condescending love that Christ is thus brought be
fore us. Now, in all these instances it is one and the same
spirit of love that is spoken of under a variety of aspects.
Christ is held up to us as the Supreme Example and
illustration of Love to Man. And in the way in which the
apostle brings Christ before us in this character there is a
studied absence of reference to historical instances in the
life of Christ ; it is that life as a whole that is present to the
raind of the apostle as the incarnation and erabodiraent of
the principle of love. When Paul speaks of himself as
under law to Christ (i Cor. ix. 21), and bids us bear one
another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ (Gal. vi. 3),
he means the law of love that Christ our Life illustrates.
He himself, he tells us, is an imitator of Christ in this
subordination of self to the good of others (i Cor. x. 33),
and he does not hesitate to bid the Corinthians to
imitate hira, as he hiraself iraitated Christ. Recognising
the supreraacy of Christ as the Perfect Exeraplar of huraan
love, he is conscious of hiraself as acting habitually from
the same principle and worthy of being followed by others,
in so far as he had successfully patterned his own Hfe on
that of his Master.
To Paul, then, the historical Christ was the Ideal of
Love, and as such the object of his imitation if not in the
particulars of His earthly Hfe, yet most certainly in the
spirit that ruled that life from first to last. If it was to
that Ideal as realised in Christ who had died and had
risen again that he habitually looked, rather than to its
historical setting in the earthly Life of Jesus, the reason
was that the Risen One alone, he knew well, through the
Spirit proceeding from Him, enabled His followers to die

APPENDIX 291
to self and live that higher life of love which the Master
had once lived on earth. The Risen Christ, victorious over
sin and death, was therefore the proper object of imitation
to the believer ; to be conformed to Him in His Dying
and Rising again was his ambition and aira. Paul craved
in a perfect Example one who was not only in the graces
of human character all that raan should be, but who had
attained to that destiny for which man was made. This
he found in the Christ in whom Man had overcome death,
and been crowned with everlasting life. He set the once
Crucified and now Risen Christ accordingly before him,
that he might not only by His Spirit fulfil love in its
essential requirement, but raight attain to the " resurrection
from the dead," and to that perfection which consists in the
complete supreraacy of the Spiritual over the raaterial.

LECTURE IV
Note A, p. ii 9. — Difference between Paul's Doc
trine OF THE Spirit and that of the Book of
Wisdom
This difference has been well put by Gloel in his sug
gestive little book on Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes
nach der Lehre des Ap. Paulus. The following quotation
sums up the points of difference : —
" Paulus glaubt an den gottlichen Geist, well er ihn
erfahren hat ; das apokryphische Buch spekuliert Uber
die Weisheit und kombiniert dieselbe mit der ganz ab-
geblassten, aus der Tradition entnomraenen, Vorstellung
vom Geiste Gottes. Fiir jenen ist der Geist die Gottes-
kraft, die ihn im innersten Wesen umwandelt ; fiir dieses
ist die Weisheit die Lehrerin, die iiber Gottes Wege unter-
weist 7, 22; 8, 9 ; 9, 10 f; 10, 10. Weisheit lernt der
Mensch ; der Geist ergreift ihn.- — -Alle Ausagen beider,
so ahnlich sie scheinen raogen, haben also einen ganz ver-
schiedenen Sinn.
" Die Weisheit stattet rait alien Tugenden aus, denn
aus ihrer Belehrung entspringen sie (6, 1 7 ff". ; 8, 7). Auch
der Geist verleiht alle Tugenden, aber well er sie als eine
Kraft Gottes im Menschen wirkt.
" Die Weisheit bewahrt durch ihre Belehrung den
Gerechten unstraflich (10, 5. 13); der Geist wirkt in dem
friiheren Siinder einen Kampf gegen das Fleisch.
" Die Weisheit macht zu Freunden Gottes, ' denn nichts
liebet Gott als den, der rait der Weisheit vertraut ist'
(7, 28 cf 4, 10; 7, 14; 9, 12); der Geist aber wird dem
geschenkt, der die erwahlende Liebe Gottes ira Glauben
aufnimmt. " Die ' Unsterblichkeit ' ist der Lohn fiir ein in Weisheit

appendix 293
gefiihrtes Leben, ' denn gute Bestrebungen bringen gute
Friichte hervor ' (3, 1 5 cf i, 1 5 ; 2, 22 ; 3, 5 ; 3, 14 ;
5, I 5 f • ; 8, 13, 17; 10, 17); der Geist ist die Kraft eines
neuen ewigen Lebens.
" Woher die Verschiedenheit ? Paulus ist der Apostel
Jesu Christi, der bezeugt, was er erfahren ; der Verfasser
des Weisheitsbuches dagegen ein Religionsphilosoph, nicht
unberiiket von griechischer Philosophic, dessen Spekulation
im wesentlichen auf moralistischer Grundlage ruht und
nur wenig durch eine aus ernster Frommigkeit hervor-
gehende religiose Betrachtungsweise altiriert ist {s.B. 7, 7 ;
bes. 8, 21 : Gott verleiht die Weisheit; 9, 9-18); also
eine Lehrweise, welche etwa derjenigen der Patr. Apost.
kongenial ist, von letzterer nur unterschieden durch eine
spekulative Haltung" (pp. 86, 87).
Note B, p. 121. — Recent Literature on the
Pauline phrase Iv Xpoa-Ta
The Pauline phrase iv Xpia-rcp has been made the sub
ject of an interesting monograph by Deissmann, 1892 {Die
N. Tliche. Formel " in Christo Jesu "). Paul, he maintains,
is the creator of it, and it expresses a truth characteristic
of his theology. It is an instance of the formative power
of Chrisrian thoughts to create forms of language that
express them. It does not occur in the Synoptic Gospels :
there, /^e™, "with," not Iv, "in," is used to describe the
relation of men to Christ, e.g. Matt. xii. 30; Mark in. 14;
Luke xxiii. 43, etc. Paul never uses /^era tp set forth rela
tion to Christ : the Synoptic Gospels never use 'ev. Deiss
mann conceives that it must be taken in a local sense, as
declaring Christ to be the element in which the Christian
lives. It is the technical expression for the Pauline central
thought of the Koivmvia, or fellowship with Christ. The
underlying idea is that Christians somehow live in the
element Christ, as birds live in the air, and fishes in the
sea, and the roots of plants in the earth (p. 84). It is as
Pneuma that Christ sustains this relation to His people. The
Christian Hves in the Pneumatic being, Christ. In regard to

294 appendix
the idea Xpiar6<;, or irvevfjua iv Tivi, which corresponds
to iv XpiaTm elvat, he says : " As one may, without being
guilty of absurdity, say, The man is in the air, and the
air is in the man, so raay an author, who has represented
the manner of existence after the analogy of the air, speak
at once both of rts iv Xpiarw, and XpiffTo^ iv tivi" (p. 92).
" The same idea underlies both forms of representation ;
only, the way of looking at it is in the one case e specie
Christi, in the other, e specie hominis. They do not exclude
one another, but together complete the local mode of
apprehending the relation of the individual to the Pneu
matic Christ "1 (p. 93). Even although they could not be
perfectly harmonised, the author adds, one has no right, in
the case of a raan like Paul, who was no systematic theo
logian, to speak of contradiction here. A religious ethical
genius emancipates himself from all theological methods.
His expressions are wont to reflect the events of the
moment with absolute honesty. " The question whether
we must apprehend the local ground-thought of the formula
in the proper sense, or as a rhetorical expedient (Hiilfs-
mittel), cannot with certainty be deterrained, but the
former view is the more likely." The formula is the proper
Pauline expression for the closest conceivable comraunion
of the Christian with the Living Christ (p. 98).
Holding Paul to be the originator of the phrase, he
views the Johannine use of it as betraying the PauHne
influence on the later writings of John — the elvai iv XpiaTw
becoraes in his vocabulary fjteivare 'iv ifioi.
These results have not passed unchallenged. Karl, in
his Beitrdge zum Verstdndniss der Soter. Erfahr. u. Specul.
des Ap. Paulus, 1896, accepts the general position of Deiss
mann as to the Pauline originality of the phrase, but thinks
that he has missed the exact sense of it. Taking for his
parallel the expression iv jSeeXgSouA., Matt. xii. 27-28,
where the idea of a possession of the believer by a personal
' Abbott {The Spirit on the Waters) thinks that we have here a
double metaphor, — the Spirit in the man representing man as a machine
moved by internal springs, the man in the Spirit representing man as
an organism influenced by an external atmosphere. — P. 311.

appendix 295
spiritual Being is conveyed, he understands the phrase as
meaning that the man who is iv Trvevfian, or e'l^ Xptarm, is
within the spfiere of the influence or operation of the Spirit,
or Christ (the two being the same thing). On this view,
Karl differs from Deissmann in emphasising, more than the
latter in his interpretation of the phrase, the personal influ
ence of a spiritual Being to which that raan is subject whose
state is described by the phrase under discussion.
In an article in the Stud. u. Kritiken, 1896, i Heft, on
Paulinische Probleme II., Prof. Weiss also reviews the con
clusions of Deissraann. He agrees with him that in the
mass of characteristic passages, iv XpiaTm elvai means an
" abiding within the exalted Christ." But he thinks that
Deissraann has pushed his theory too far ; and he finds, after
a searching examination and comparison of passages, that
Paul often uses the phrase where no such out-of-the-way
meaning attaches to it ; iv, conveying the idea of limitation,
often describes the sphere within which the action takes
place, e.g. Rora. xvi. 3, 9 ; Col. iv. 7 ; i Thess. Hi. 2. The
formula, he thinks, must have been in common use in
Paul's day, and applied in a general sense, though the
specific sense attached to it when it describes the Pneumatic
relation of believers to Christ is Pauline. The influence of
the Septuagint, where the use of e'l' is used in reference to
God, had probably to do with the combination in Christ,
2 Sam. xxii. 30; Ps. xvii. 30; Zech. xii. 5.
Note C, p. 144. — On the Use of the Term Kvpio^
in the Septuagint
The term Kupto? is the common rendering of Jehovah in
the Septuagint. If there was anything originally distinc
tive in the use of " Jehovah " as the name of God in con
trast with other names, this distinctive idea was not present
to the Greek translators, who render Jehovah Adonai, when
it occurs, either by a double Kiipto^ {e.g Ps. cviii. 21;
Ezek. xiv. 6), or by K^Optoci alone (Isa. Ixi. i ; Jer. ii. 22).
Kipio^ and ©eo? are used indiscriminately as translations of
the Hebrew name for God. Accustomed to this usage.

296 APPENDIX
Paul, however, confines the terra Kvpio'? to Christ, and
reserves ©eo? for the Father God. With him Kvpio<; is not
strictly identical with the Old Testament Jehovah. " Kvpioi,
applied to Christ, answers to the Hebrew Adonai, never to
Jehovah. While Christ is often termed Kvpio<; tCvo^ ip,ov,
¦^fiwv, Jehovah as proper narae has no suffix. A frequent
Divine name in the Old Testament is also Jehovah Elohim,
which the LXX. translate by Kvpio<; 6 ©ed?. But this ex
pression is never used in the New Testament of Christ, a
surprising fact if Jehovah in the eye of the apostle was a
name suitable to be applied to the Son of Man." So far
Cremer. At the same time, the fact remains that Paul applies to
Christ the term Kvpio<;, which was so freely applied to God
in the Old Testament, and this plainly points to the belief
that He whom he called Lord was in some sense God as
well as He who was termed ©ed?. The designation Kvpio's
implied divinity. It is strictly descriptive of His mediatorial
office in glory, for Christ was not Kvpio<; till He was exalted.
At the same time, the Kvpiorij^ is a form of the activity of
one who in nature is Divine. He possessed in Himself the
conditions that must be found in one who is to occupy so
central a relation to mankind. This seeras to have been
the motive at work in the application to Him of a term
which in the religious consciousness of the time was equiva
lent to that of God.

LECTURE V
Note A, p. i66. — The Angelology of St. Paul
A study of Paul's angelology would make plain to how
great an extent he shared the conceptions of the age in
which he lived, and what noble service he did in freeing
men's minds from the tyranny of these conceptions. For
while he believed with all the world at that time in the
existence of angels, he succeeded in exposing the baseless
ness of their right to the rehgious regards of men, a right
that had been accorded to them in the popular belief
The apocryphal and pseudepigraphic writings, and espe
cially the Book of Enoch, which is full of the angels, must
be studied in connection with, and for the understanding of,
the allusions to angels in the New Testament. Everling,
in his suggestive little work. Die Paulinische Angelologie u.
Daemonologie, 1888, has thrown much light on such difficult
passages as i Cor. xi. 10, viii. 4—6; 2 Cor. xi. 2, 3, etc.,
by quotations from these books that illustrate the notions
commonly entertained at that time on this subject. Much
instructive matter bearing on Paul's doctrine will be found
scattered throughout Klopper's great Commentary on the
Epistle to the Colossians, especially pp. 227—236.
Paul shared the general view, set forth ih the Epistle to
Hebrews as well, that angelic agency was a distinguishing
feature of God's government of the world under the Old
Testament Dispensation, and that it had ceased with the aboli
tion of the latter. The world of Judaism and heathendom,
the old world as distinguished from the new that had come
with Christ, the a'lmv fieXXcov, was under the angels. They
were the intermediaries in its administration and govern
ment, and in the communication of God's wih to men.
Through their instrumentality the law was given (Gal. iii.

298 APPENDIX
1 9) ; and this is mentioned by the apostle in the course of
an argument raeant to prove the temporary character of
the law, as a mark of the inferiority of the legal system,
compared with the Dispensation of promise, which had
corae direct frora God to men. The " elements " of this
world, which he represents the Galatians as having been
subject to before they became Christians (Gal. iv. 3, 9),
and whose functions, as regards their religious training, he
compares to the office of tutors and governors to the son
under age, are understood by raany to refer to angelic
agencies ; for these were associated in the common mind
with the phenomena of the material universe, and were
supposed to animate the world, and to guide the movements
of its forces. The heathen religions were ceremonial, and
abounded in festivals and rites that were fixed by the
movements of the heavenly bodies ; and through these the
will and activity of the angels were thought to be com
municated. The stars moving across the heavens were
identified with the heavenly host ; many hold that the
apostle, sharing this belief, viewed the stars as bodies
animated by spiritual beings (i Cor. xv. 40). The
dependence of pre-Christian religions on the movements
of sun, moon, and stars, regulating the observance of
their rites, might well be regarded as equivalent to the
subjection of raen to the angels under that old world.
But the abolition of legal ceremonial systems by Christianity,
raeant for the apostle the displacement, once for all, of
the angels frora the position they had formerly held in
relation to raan under God's governraent. In the economy
of the spirit, which had succeeded to that of law, men
had direct access to God as " sons," and the function and
religious significance of angels ceased. Not to angels has
He subjected the "world to come" which has already
entered, but to Christ and to Mankind in Christ (Heb. n. 5).
This, in brief, is Paul's view in the earlier Epistles.
Angels, for him, exist even under Christ. They are also
sources of temptation to men, if we are to take what he
says in i Cor. xi. 10 as in earnest, and more than a
pleasantry. But their power is broken, their office is

APPENDIX 299
ended, and they have no influence of one sort or another
on the religious life.
It was not till the necessity arose for dealing with the
Colossian heresy that he had occasion to speak of the
bearing of the work of Christ on the angels, and their
altered relation to men in consequence of the Cross. The
legalism of the Colossians had its real root in their angel-
worship ; for, sharing the belief that the angels had given
the law and were its guardians, and had power to inflict
punishment on those who transgressed it, these false
teachers represented obedience to its commandments as
being a direct service to the angels, and an acknowledgment
of their rights over men ; and they aimed, through the
outward discipline of the law, at effecting a likeness to
angelic intelligences. Accordingly, while formerly he had
taught that Christ had delivered men from the law, he now
changed his voice, and presented Christ to their faith as
having, in the act of setting men free from the law, freed
thera at the same time frora the angelic powers which had
tyrannised over them through the law. The question
arises. How did Paul conceive of these angelic powers, as
evil ? or as good ? or as neither the one nor the other ?
Much may be said in favour of the first view. For their
hold of men through the law, that is, through the occasion
that the transgression of the law had given to them,
amounted practically to a power that was exercised by
thera in inciting men to sin.
The matter was thus looked at. Sin, having through
man's own act entered into humanity, has become in con
scious experience a power that would naturally appear to
the religious imagination as a power wielded by personal
evil agency behind consciousness; and it was equally
natural to conceive of this personal agency of angels, or
demons, as clothed with a certain legal right, as the instru
ment of God's justice, thus to rule men, making fresh sin
necessary and holiness impossible.
Many find, in his early Epistles, indications of the
apostle's belief that there is the personal working of
unseen powers behind ah the manifestations of evil in the

300 APPENDIX
human race, and that it is the real cause of these mani
festations. So they explain i Cor. ii. 6—8, where the
princes of this world are spoken of as the authors of the
Deed on Calvary, and their wisdom is declared to have
been brought to nought there, — as really referring to evil
intelligences representing the powers of the^ unseen world.
And similarly, the personal language used by the apostle
(Rom. vii. 1 7) in reference to " sin in the flesh " of
human nature is explained by the idea that the dfiapna
of the flesh is " not properly the sin of man, but a
personal power of sin to be distinguished frora man's sin,
the kingdom of demons that is hostile to man, and would
subject man to itself" (See Die Psych, des Paulus von
Simon, pp. 54—60). If there is truth in this view of the
connection, in the apostle's raind, between sin and the
law on the one hand, and the power of demons on the
other, raan's deliverance from sin would be conceived of as
really a deliverance from the power of evil agencies, and
their being deprived of the right to have dominion over
human souls. And Christ would be viewed as the Agent in
this deliverance, and effecting it either by having given
Himself as, in a manner, the ransom by which their right was
acknowledged and satisfied, as in the old view of Iren^us
and Origines, who. founded on the passage in Col. n. 1 8
their doctrine that the purchase of souls from sin by God
was accomplished by the surrender of Christ as a compen
sation to the devil ; or, the death of Christ might be regarded
as having stripped these powers of their rights over human
ity, inasmuch as His being slain of them was a gross abuse
of these rights. He being without sin, and therefore not
amenable to the death which they had power to inflict
upon sinners. By their violence toward the Champion of
Humanity they may be viewed as having outwitted them
selves, and deprived themselves of their former rights over
the race he represented. This opinion has also been held.
But it is plain, I think, that till we know raore of the
demonology upon which these Epistles proceed, certain
aspects of the soteriology of the apostle will remain a
problem to us.

APPENDIX

301

One thing certainly that makes us hesitate to regard
these " principalities and powers," of which God " divested
Himself" in the death of Christ, as malignant powers,
is that in this Epistle the angels, who were thus set
aside by Christ from the authority they formerly had, are
represented as within the sweep of Christ's reconciling love
as now dependent on Christ, in order to be brought within
that harmony of all things with God which is the end of
His Son's work.
On these two points, then, we notice an advance in the
later Epistles with regard to Paul's teaching about the
angels, first, in his apprehension of the death of Christ as
having displaced them from the rule they once exercised
over men; and second, in his inclusion of them in the
Divine plan of redemption. But it is significant that Paul's
interest in the angels is exhausted when he has made good
his point that they are powerless, and have no real relation
to the religious life of men. He does indeed, in Eph. vi. 1 2,
speak of the Christian warfare as being with principalities
and powers, — by which he intimates his belief in spiritual
agencies that are in active opposition to the Divine will.
But of angels as concerned in the administration of religious
influence to men we hear no more after he has shown that
the Christian dispensation has abolished the function they
once discharged in the Divine Economy.
There is nothing in Paul of that prying curiosity into
the secret administration of Providence which we find in
Jewish literature, and which revelled in speculations about
the ranks and orders of angels. The Romish Church has
here served itself heir to the fantastic imaginations of Jewish
theology on this subject. But Paul had too much practical
good sense to trouble himself much about these matters.
We cannot, indeed, say much regarding the nature of
the spiritual Force that is the cause of the phenomena of the
material world. It is more consonant with our modern
ideas to conceive of God as directly and immediately acting
on nature, and according to that regularity of action that we
speak of as law. Ancient thought, on the other hand, con
ceived of God as effecting His purposes through subordinate

302 APPENDIX
Spiritual agencies. Cardinal Newman is perhaps the only
great writer in modern tiraes who is true to the spirit of
ancient thought in this particular, for he holds very strongly
the belief that all raovement in nature is caused by angelic
intelligences. In his sermon on the Feast of St. Michael, or
the powers of Nature, he says : " Proceeding on such passages
as John v. 4; Ex. xix. 16—18; Acts vii. 53; Rev. vii. i ;
Gen. xix. i 3 ; 2 Kings xix. 35 ; 2 Sara. xxiv. i 5—17, as far
as scriptural communications go we learn that the course of
nature, which is so wonderful, so beautiful, and so fearful, is
effected by the ministry of these unseen beings. Nature is
not inanimate : its daily toil is intelligent ; its works are
duties. . . . Whenever we look abroad we are reminded of
those most gracious and holy beings, the servants of the
Holiest, who deign to minister to the heirs of salvation.
Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every
beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments,
the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God in
heaven." ^
There may be nothing irrational in all this, however
alien to our ways of thinking. It is a forra of expression
for the faith, that nature is living, or rather, that spirit,
spiritual intelligence, is the real cause of all power and
energy in the world ; and that faith is welcorae in what
ever form it clothes itself; in its most fantastic dress it is
preferable to the idea that nature is dead, and that there is
nothing more than mechanical force at work in its pheno
mena.^ To the apostle the religious interest at stake in the
question about the angels was secured when he had made
good his point that Jesus was supreme over all, and that no
intermediate intelligence had power to corae between him
and God, or to subject our life to the thraldom of that
material world which was supposed to be the seat of their
^ Newman's Sermons, vol. ii. pp. 360-362.
2 R. Rothe was a firm believer in angels. It is said that when dying
he bade his friends stand aside, smihng as he added : " It is not good
that there should be too many people around a deathbed ; then there
is no room for the angels."

APPENDIX 303
power. And if the truth of Christ's supremacy over " all
principalities and powers " is to have value for us as a
rehgious truth, we must translate it into the form I have
set forth in the text, and regard it as the expression of the
truth that through Christ, the Second Adam, and faith in
His love, we are able to raake all things in the natural
world, even those that would otherwise work adversely to
us, to rainister to our Highest Good.
For a full stateraent of the Old Testament doctrine of
angels there is nothing better than Prof A. B. Davidson's
article on " Angels " in the forthcoming Bible Dictionary
edited by Dr. Hastings, by whose kindness I have been
permitted to read it in proof
Note B, p. 1 80.— Beck on Truth and Life
The following is from the opening lecture of his course
on the Doctrine of the Christian Faith. I extract it from
his Gedanken aus u. nach der ScJirift. Neue Folge, 1878.
" Ich weiss es, . . . wie wogenartig auch edlere Gemiither
umhergeworfen werden von Zweifeln und mancherlei Lehr-
meinungen, und eben desshalb lege ich Ihnen die Bitte
aus Herz : Fassen Sie Ihre Seelen in Ruhe und Geduld
wahrend des Vortrags, und seien Sie nicht schnell zu
innerera Murren, wenn manches Sie eine harte Rede diinkt,
auch nicht schnell zura hoffnungslosen Verzagen, wenn
nicht in Balde alles denk und mundgerecht fiir Sie ist, und
die Frucht nicht vom Baurae Ihnen in den Mund fallt.
Das ist nicht wesenhafte Wahrheit, sondern Schein und
Wahn, was sich bequem und rasch macht, was nicht enge
Pforte und schmalen Weg hat, nicht Kraft und Ernst des
ganzen Menschen in Anspruch nimmt, sondern nur eine
vereinzelte Operation, die Denkoperation. Die Wahrheit
besteht nicht aus bios formalen Gedanken, sondern ist reales
Leben. Die Mittheilung der Wahrheit kann nur als Lebens-
einpflanzung stattfinden und diese erfordert Offenheit, Stille
und Ausdauer, dass Anwurzelung und Entwickelung zu
Stande komme. Die Wahrheit muss Anstossiges und
Freradartiges fiir uns haben, so lange und so weit wir selbst

304 APPENDIX
ihr noch fremd sind ; die Zubildung zu ihr und die Aus-
bildung in ihr geschieht nach festen Gesetzen eines Lebens-
processes, und nicht nach blossen Gesetzen eines Denk-
processes. Darum kann die Wahrheit, die hoher ist als
wir selbst, auch nur allmalig und stiickweise von uns
erkannt werden, kann auf der Entwicklungsstufe, auf der
wir gerade stehen, nicht in alien Theilen und Beziehungen
uns zuganglich und verstandlich werden. Wer ausharrt und
das festhalt, was er schon als innerlich versiegelte Wahrheit
hat und dabei das noch Befremdliche nicht wegwirft, son
dern fiir weitere Priifung sich reservirt, der gewinnt Boden
und Samen, woraus ihm immer reichere Ernte erwachst ;
wer abspringt, so oft ihn ein Zweifel juckt, statt seinen
Zweifel selbst zu bezweifeln, wer abbricht, wo sichs seiner
angelernten Manipulation nicht fiigen und biegen wih — der
mag ein fahrender Schiiler werden oder ein versessener
Antithesenmeister, aber zur Wahrheit, die ihn tragt und
iiber sich selbst hinausfUhrt, die ihra Lebenssubstanz gibt
und Capital fiir eine Ewigkeit — zu der Wahrheit kommt
er nie."

LECTURE VI
Note, p. 2 1 o. — Different Forms of the Theory of
THE Pre-existent God-manhood of Christ
Most of those who have believed in the Pre-existent God-
manhood of Christ have represented it as an eternal
determination of the Godhead, or of the Logos. But the
opinion has also been held by some that the Pre-existent
Humanity of the Son of God is not eternal, but was
assumed by Him in an act prior to creation, in order that
through It all things might be created, and that it is this
taking of our nature into union with His own Eternal Nature
that constitutes Hira the First-Born of creation. This is the
doctrine of Isaac Watts and others, and it has been recently
revived, although without any apparent dependence on pre
vious writers, in a work entitled The Nature of Christ, h^y
William Marshall, 1 896, in which, with great earnestness and
confidence in the scripturalness of his view, the writer, in
opposition to previous Christologies, advocates the position
that the Son of God, before creation and for mediatorial
ends, became the Divine Man in order to represent God to
men and men to God : and that it was this Divine Humanity
that He laid aside when He became Incarnate, in order that
in our flesh and blood He might work out our salvation.
He thus distinguishes between a twofold incarnation, that
which took place before and for the ends of creation, con
sisting in the assumption of our nature in its spiritual
essence, and that which took place when He descended to
this world, consisting in the assumption of a flesh and blood
humanity subject to temptation and disease and death.
The point of sameness in this view and the ordinary form
in which the doctrine of the Pre-existent Divine Humanity
of Christ has been held is that in both there is posited a pre-
20

3o6 appendix
existent humanity, which in its Divine or Heavenly form is
laid aside at the Incarnation in order that a flesh and blood
form of it raay be assumed ; but while, on the one view it is
regarded in its Heavenly form as Eternal and essential to
the Son of God, on the other view, that advocated by the
author I have raentioned, it is represented as brought into
existence in tirae and for raediatorial ends. I confess I am
not able to appreciate, as the author himself does, the
advantage that his view possesses over the other, or the
importance he attributes to its adoption as likely to bring
about a reform in our religious thinking. The whole
subject belongs to a region of pure speculation, into which
we raay venture with our theories, if we choose, but where
we are not likely to make discoveries that will approve
themselves as such to any others besides ourselves.

LECTURE VII
Note A, p. 239. — Dorner on the "Idea of Christ
IN THE Middle Ages " {from History of the Doctrine
of the Person of Christ, Div. ii. vol. i., pp. 273-275)
" But when, in opposition to Adoptionism, it had been
established that Christ was the Son of God even as to His
huraanity, the long - repressed torrent burst irresistibly
forth ; then was the humanity of Christ robbed of its proper
significance, and the iraage of His own Person was so
sublimated into the pure transcendence of the deity, that
to the eye of simple faith He only bore the aspect of ' our
Lord God.' Thus, whilst apparently heightened, Christ
ology was brought to a point at which the God-man, the
sympathising High Priest, who belongs to our race, prac
tically ceased to exist ; and there remained only the un
approachable holy God, as He was conceived and feared
by men previous to the appearance of Christ. All that
was now expected with regard to Christ was that He
should come again to judgment. No marvel, then, that an
Antichristian horror of death and Hades fell on Christen
dom, — that it sought a compensation for the loss of the
sympathy of the God-raan in huraan intercessors, whose
post it was, forraing as they did the ideal Church, to
preserve sinful humanity from the devouring fire of the
holy Judge, into whom Christ had been transforraed. The
loss of the historical God-raan, of the Son of man full of
grace and truth, thus reawakened, in the religious nature of
humanity, impulses similar to those out of which had
grown, prior to the coming of Christ, the myths and
Christological preludes of heathendom.
" The first result of this loss of the Hving, divine-human
307

308 APPENDIX
Mediatorship of Christ, was that the piety of the Middle
Ages created for itself, in the exercise of a phantastic
imagination, by way of compensation, a host of mediators,
amongst whom the Queen of Heaven occupied the foremost
place. By this procedure another tendency of the natural
heart found a kind of satisfaction, — the tendency, namely,
to the deification of nature, that is, to the deification of
humanity and its powers, apart even from Christian grace ;
a tendency in which are combined at once timidity and
defiance, indifference and haughtiness. For Mary, the
mother of the Lord, was held not to have needed redemp
tion ; and was not, therefore, on an equality with the other
members of her race : she was raised above them by her
freedom from original and actual sin ; she was absolutely
pure and holy frora her very birth; and on the ground of
this, her perfection, which she possessed prior to the birth
of Christ, she was fitted and worthy to be the mother of
God. She sets before us, therefore, — she who stood, to the
piety of the Middle Ages, in a relation of such prime
importance, — what huraan nature is capable of producing
out of itself even apart frora the rederaption by the
God-man."

Note B, p. 243. — On the Historical and
Exalted Christ
We distinguish between the Historic and the Exalted
Christ, but we are apt in doing so to forget the essential
sameness of the two. On this Deissraann has some good
remarks, that call attention to the fact that to the apostle the
distinction had not the significance we sometiraes attach
toit. " The Exalted Christ is the centre of his Christian
thinking. This Christ is to hira indeed the same as He
who, after a life of poverty, had died on the cross and had
been raised again ; but this Risen and Exalted Christ is to
him a historic Greatness in the eminent sense of the word.
When we speak to-day of the ' Historic ' and the ' Exalted '
Christ we are influenced by the modern view of the nature

appendix 309
of historical science, for which, as is self-evident, only that
life of man that lies between birth and death can be viewed
as historic reality. To the man of antiquity, however,
everything is history that takes place in heaven and on
earth and under the earth, in time and eternity, among
Gods, heroes, and men. The man of antiquity in this
respect resembles the giants in battle who et? c^rjv e'f ovpavov
Kal TOV aopdrov Travra eKKOvat, raK '^(epcnv aTe^vw? Trerpa?
ical S/aO? irepiXajj,^dvovTe<;} The raen of the N. T. are no
exception. The stateraent iv dp-)(r] fjv 6 Xojoc; is meant for
a historical statement, as much so as is that other, ical ttj
'^P'Spa T-p rptr-r) cydfio^ icyivero iv Kdva ttj? PaXtXata?. To
expect frora the Apostle Paul, a nature so corapletely
dominated by ethical religious interests, a consciousness of
the modern conception of history would be a gross anach
ronism. He thought aTe')(va)<; : when he spoke of the
Risen Christ he did not reflect, Now I have left the ground
of history and am venturing into another sphere, — on the
contrary, what raade hira great, the remarkable energy of
his faith in Christ, was rooted in this, that he was as im
movably convinced of the Historic Reality of the Risen,
Living Christ as he was of the historic fact that Jesus had
died on the Cross, or that he himself had had a vision of
Christ " {Die N. Tliche. Formel " in Christo Jesu "), p. 8 1 .
Note C, p. 246. — The Christology of Ritschl
AND HIS School 2
The Christology of the school of RitschI is one of the
most interesting features of the remarkable raovement of
theological thought initiated by that theologian. The leading
outlines of the master's mode of apprehension of the subject
are reproduced with striking fidelity in the teaching of his
^ Plato, Soph., 246 A.
2 The edition of Ritschl's Rechtfertigung u. Vers'ohnung, vol. 111.,
to which reference is made in the following account, is the 3rd, 1888.
I have also consulted Ritschl's Leben, vol. ii., p. 208-220. There is
a brief account of his system by Thikotter {Darst. u. Beurth. der
Theol A. RitschI, 1887) which will be found useful. Students will

3IO APPENDIX
disciples, though there are divergences from Ritschl amongst
them as well as differences frora one another on points that
are not uniraportant. Coraplaint is sometimes made that
Ritschlianism is one thing in one case and a different in
another. And there is an element of truth in this, for it is a
method common to all who have come under his influence,
rather than a system that is adopted by them in its various
parts. But the impulse that he has given to Christological
study follows in all cases much the same lines. I must
content myself with a very general account of his teaching
on this subject. Ritschl's quarrel with the ecclesiastical
Christology is that it proceeds on a wrong method. It
defines the Divinity it attributes to Christ before it has
taken account of the actual effects of the working of that
Divinity in history and human experience. Not till after
it has thus defined the nature of Christ and His trans
cendent relation to God does it inquire into the forms
of activity in which it manifests itself to us. In other
words, instead of proceeding on the inductive method,
starting from experience and asking what the confession
of Christ's Divinity means for those who make it, and
what that religious experience is which originates the
confession, it follows the deductive method, and begins
with a so-called intellectual or scientific knowledge. We
must, however, be satisfied with a religious knowledge of
the subject — with one, that is to say, that is based on the
experience of the religious benefits that we owe to Christ.
We thus return to the position of Melanchthon in the
first period of his theological activity, that the knowledge of
the benefits of Christ is the starting-point for the under
standing of His Godhead. The knowledge of the Divinity
of Christ is inaccessible to those who come to the study of
the subject with ideas of the Divine borrowed from natural
religion. The true knowledge of Him flows from faith.
receive much help from the instructive work of G. Ecke, which has
just appeared (1897), Die Theologische Schule A. Ritschl. It may be
recommended as by far the fullest in information, as well as the fairest
in tone, that has been published on the questions at issue between
Ritschl and his opponents.

APPENDIX 3 I I
The judgment of Christ's Divinity at which we thus arrive
is, it is true, a " Werturteil," or a judgment of value, to use
the well-known Ritschlian phrase ; that is, it affirms a
truth that expresses the sense of His religious worth to
us. It does not follow frora this, as some say, that it is a
merely subjective judgraent, or that it does not state that
which is true of Christ in Himself All religious judg
ments, Ritschl holds, are " Werturteile." "We can know
God and what is Divine," to use his words (p. 376), "only
through the apprehension of His value for the satisfaction
of our nature." " The ' Werturteil,' " as one of his disciples
says, " declares whether the thing is for us of iraportance
or is indifferent, whether it affects us with pleasure or the
reverse. Applied to religion, it means that what we can
know of God is to be gathered from the effects of His work
ing upon us." There is no contrast between the thing as it
is in itself and the thing as apprehended by us ; the " Wertur
teil " is contrasted merely with a theoretic judgraent, which
necessarily excludes the personal factor. " He who does not
understand this through sheer intellectual prejudice," says
Ritschl's son and biographer, " might with as good ground
say that Ritschl denies the existence of God and teaches
atheism, as that he denies the reality of the Godhead of
Christ in the full sense of the word " {Leben, p. 2 1 2).
The Godhead of Christ is thus the confession of the
religious estimate of its Founder by His believing Church.
It is the outgrowth of their experience of Christ. On the
one hand. He is " Lord," a term by which His people confess
His sovereignty over all, His dominion over the world, a con
fession that has its root in the experience of His present
activity in saving them frora sin and overraastering the
hindrances to their well-being. And, on the other hand,
He is the Revealer to them of the grace and truth of
God. The disciples recognising what the Exalted Christ
was to thera, viz. the Revealer of the loving God and their
personal Lord, expressed their convictions of what He was
by calHng Hira Lord, and speaking of Hira as Divine ; " for
an authority," says Ritschl, " that either excludes all other
standards or subordinates them to itself, and that commands

3 I 2 APPENDIX
in an exhaustive way all the trust of the soul that is due to
God, has the value of Godhead" (p. 383).
But this knowledge of Christ, derived from experience,
must be authenticated by the history of Christ : " If the
Divinity of Christ, or His Sovereignty over the world in
the form of the Exalted One, is to be apprehended as
necessary knowledge, or as a part of the Christian religious
view of the world, it must be borne witness to by the
operation of Christ upon us. But every operation of
Christ upon us must have its standard (by which we judge
its claim to be an effect of Christ) in the historical Form
of His Life. Accordingly, the Divinity or the Sovereignty
of Christ must be discoverable in definite features of His
historic life as attributes of His temporal existence. For
what Christ is in His Eternal Life, and what He, as Exalted,
effects on our experience, would be utterly unthinkable if
we did not see it exemplified first in His historical exist
ence in time. If the conception of His present Sovereignty
cannot be filled up with definite characteristics derived from
His working in His Historic forra of Being, it is either a
worthless scheme of thought, or an occasion for every
possible sort of fanaticism. On the other hand, holding
fast the conviction that Christ now rules over the Church
of the Kingdom of God, and is working towards the object
of gradually bringing the world under the Divine rule, we
must then be able to recognise this Sovereignty over the
world as a prominent characteristic of the historical life of
Christ" (pp. 383, 384).
Accordingly, the real interest is transferred to the
historical Christ, which is the exclusive ground of, and the
one norm for all representations we may form of Christ's
extra-historic Being and Activity. We may not attribute
to Christ Exalted any feature of material iraportance which
cannot be shown to hold first of His historic life and to
be part of the picture given to us in the Gospels. The his
torical Christ is the source of our Christological affirmations.
And, accordingly, Ritschl takes us to the Gospels, and
emphasises the study of the Christ of history and the
features of His personal Hfe. Christ comes before us, there.

APPENDIX

313

in the capacity of the Founder of the Kingdom of God. It
was the task of His life and teaching and activity to
establish the Kingdom, and this He does, on the one hand,
by revealing the love of God to men. This is one aspect
of ITis Divinity as a historical Person — He is one with
God in His love. His wHl, His mind. And the other is.
His Sovereignty over the world ; for God is Sovereign, and
Christ attests His claim to this Divine position by His
power over the world. This power was evinced in His
independence and spiritual mastery of the world, and His
superiority to all the hindrances it presented to the prosecu
tion of His mission, as well as in His patience under the
suffering it inflicted upon Him — for in bearing its evil and
the bitter consequences of falling under its displeasure,
Christ conquered it, broke its power. It is not in any
private display of power of a material, palpable sort, either
in His historical life in the world or in His supernatural life
in His Exalted State, that the Sovereign Might of Christ
is displayed, but in the sphere of His spiritual life, through
the victory of good over evil, by His patience and meekness
under wrong, and the unflinching fidelity with which He
bore the sufferings to which He was exposed (pp. 428-436).^
According to the suggestions of the N. T., then, the
elements in the historical appearing of Christ that are com
prehended in the attribute of His Godhead are His Grace
and Truth in the execution of the calling of His Life, and the
superiority of His spiritual self-determination to the particular
istic and natural motives that the world offered (p. 436).
The Divinity thus predicated of Christ is purely ethical.
There is no contrast between the human and the Divine
natures, as in the orthodox doctrine. For Christ as man
is not apprehended as in possession of an abstract human
nature, but as the individual man Jesus, who was faithful to
His special vocation, and by His perfect love and patience
1 There is a fine passage in the Ep. to Diognetus in the spirit of
Ritschl's Christology, in which the author shows that man may Imitate
God even in respect of His Lordship, inasmuch as the latter consists
not in using force to inferiors, but in one taking upon him the burden of
others (chap, x.)

314 APPENDIX
furnished the self-manifestation of God {Leben, p. 2 1 6).
This identification of God, whose nature is love, with man
in the one Person, while a paradox to reason, is religious
truth and the intuition of faith.
It follows also that the Divinity predicated of Christ is
transferable to His people, and is thus predicable of His
Church in so far as it is viewed as the sphere of His
continued influence. The Church is the organ by which
God manifests Himself and exercises sovereignty over the
world ; it exhibits the operation of Hira who in the his
torical Form of His Being revealed God and exercised
dominion over the world. "It is included," says Ritschl,
" in the full idea of the Godhead of Christ, that His Grace
and Truth and world-subduing Patience should reach their
proper effect in the existence of a Church of the Kingdom
of God that should be invested in the same attributes.
For one must combine together in idea Him who exercises
Divine lordship, and is, to use Lutheran language, ray Lord,
and those who experience this sovereignty in themselves.
The Church, the Kingdom of God, must be viewed in this
light, since its members, acting from the motive of uni
versal love of raan, and wielding a power over the world
that renders them independent of it, thereby raanifest the
effect upon them of the peculiar working of Christ.^ Hence
we explain the fact that the idea of the Divinity of Christ,
or the application of the Old Testament name of God to
Him, first proceeded from the Church. Christ was not in
the position to designate Himself so. Accordingly, we
can form a right theological judgment regarding this attri-
^ Ritschl is careful to define the power that he ascribes to the
Sovereignty of Christ. It is not a fact of sense-experience. " The
phenomena in which many seek the proper proof of the power of
Christianity, political influence, legal authority of persons and Church
institutions, are suspiciously like a falsification of Christ's purpose, and
there is needed a very strong faith in the Invisible, in order, under the
the confusions and atrocities as well as pitiful things in Church history,
to keep in view the growing might of Christ over the world " (pp. 433, 434).
Then he explains that the Power over the world which he attributes to
Christ's people falls within the sphere of the spiritual life, as in the case
of the Master.

APPENDIX 3 I 5
bute only when we think of Christ as Efficient Head of the
Church of the Kingdom of God. For it is not till we
thus combine Christ and His Church that we recognise
that He is in His order unique " (dass er in Seiner Art der
Einzige ist) (pp. 437, 438).
The further question with which ecclesiastical Christ
ology busies itself. How the Person of Christ comes to have
such a value for the religious life of man ? is, according to
Ritschl, " no proper object of theological inquiry, because
the problem lies outside of inquiry of every kind. What
the Church tradition offers us in this connection is in
itself obscure, and not fitted on that account to explain
anything. Christ is given to us as the Bearer of the
perfected Revelation, that we may believe on Him. But
the union between Him and God the Father admits of
no explanation of a scientific sort. And as a theologian,
anyone may know that useless inquiry after such explana
tion only leads to the obscuring of the recognition of Christ
as the perfected Revelation of God" (p. 426).
The general idea of the Christology here sketched
is shared by all who acknowledge Ritschl as their master.
All are agreed as to the importance of the principle that
the historical life of Jesus, and the experience of His con
tinued activity in the Church which accepts Him as its
Founder, are the sources of true Christology, and that the
religious estimate of Him that is drawn from these sources
is final for the faith. His Divinity is a judgment of His
religious value. The confession of it is an expression of
the experience of salvation that we owe to His person.
The words of Gottschick, one of the earliest of Ritschl's
disciples, have the genuine Ritschlian ring : " If the faith
in the Godhead of Christ is really religious faith, and no
speculation of the understanding; if it expresses the fact
that Christ, as we have experience of Him, calls forth our
absolute reverence, our full thankfulness, our unreserved
surrender to love, that He secures us in the blessed and
eternal life that is the specific gift of Godhead, — then His
Godhead, being the correlate of this experience and per
sonal surrender, must be recognised by us in those very

3l6 APPENDIX
characteristics that call forth the determination of our
personal life. But these are the marks of His manifested
historical human life, not of a hidden background of it
which we may postulate to explain them. The God
head of Christ, therefore, expresses the value which the
historical reality of this Personal life possesses, as the power
that produces the new humanity of regenerate and recon
ciled children of God."
There are disciples of Ritschl, indeed, who emphasise
the understanding of the historical Christ as the basis of
religious faith and certainty almost, as it may seem, to
the exclusion of the other aspect of His activity as Risen
and Exalted; while another section, more faithful to the
apostolic representation, which reserves the application of
Divine honour and prerogatives to Christ as Glorified,
accentuate the experience that is formed by faith in Him
under the latter aspect. With Herrmann the historical
Christ is everything. The one dominating thought in
His " Comraunion with God " is the experience of the
Divine that is forraed by spiritual contact with the Christ
of history. Kaftan, on the other hand, more Pauline in
his sympathies than Herrmann, insists on communion with
the Risen Christ, and on the experience of the summum
bonum that the Glorified Christ confers (see his Wesen der
Christi. Religion, pp. 337—342).^ But Kaftan holds as firmly
as Herrmann does, that the true idea of the Divinity of
Christ is derived from the Picture of Jesus contained in the
Gospels, and that we cannot receive from the Exalted
' Rade, another of Ritschl's disciples, emphasises even more than
Kaftan this point. " The worship of the Glorified Christ," he says, " is
what we mean when we speak of faith in the Godhead of Christ. This
is what the early Church meant ; and by this worship they exalted Him
to a position of oneness with God. This worship of Christ grew out of
their impression of His Person and the experience of His work upon
them. It still holds that no one can call Christ God who has not found
in Him a Redeemer. But he who has experienced Christ's power
cannot regard Him as a mere man. For a man cannot redeem us from
what is the universal fate of man. If Jesus was a mere man, then He
was indeed the Genius in the religious sphere, as others are geniuses
in other spheres. But then we could not speak of His being a
Redeemer in the Christian sense."

APPENDIX 317
Lord " revelations that are new, that complete or surpass
what is given to us in the historical Jesus." And in spite
of the occasional obscurity of Herrmann's language, it is
evident, I think, that the power he attributes to the his
torical Christ to reveal God and to make God a power in
our lives, belongs to Him as living and exalted and
using the Gospel picture of His Personal life-work as the
raediura of His present activity in human hearts. " The
Exalted Christ," he says, " is really present to the Chris
tian." " The Lord who has overcome is near us with His
human sympathy." " Faith at its height is in a position
to apprehend the working upon us of the Exalted Christ."
Herrmann and Kaftan and the disciples of Ritschl gener
ally recognise that the historic Figure of the Gospel shows
no trace of the possession of omnipotence, omniscience,
omnipresence, and maintain that these are inconsistent with
the being of the historical man, and that it is the holy
love of God that constitutes the proper nature of God, and
is revealed in the human life of Jesus.
When we inquire as to the views of the school of
Ritschl with respect to the Transcendent Being of Christ,
or His hyper-historical relation to God and man, the
answer is more difficult to give. Ritschl himself held a
somewhat extreme opinion on this subject, in which he is
not followed by the majority of his followers. The predi
cate of Godhead applied to Christ is exhausted, he held,
when we have recognised Him as the Revealer of God and
the Archetype of spiritual sovereignty over the world. The
question of how He stands, in that relation, to God and to us
is set aside as an idle one, as lying outside the limits of
knowledge ; conceived of under the attribute of Pre-exist
ence, Christ is not revealed but hidden, and has no religious
value in that capacity because it suggests a relation of
Christ in which He is separated from, and is inimitable by
us. H. Schultz, Harnack, and Wendt occupy the same
position as Ritschl here, insisting that that which constitutes
the inraost essence of Christ's Godhead is not anything that
separates Christ from His own, but a something that con
nects thera with Hira, and which they receive from Him.

o

1 8 APPENDIX

But most of his disciples refuse to go the length of limiting
the application of the predicate of Godhead to what is
recognised as characterising His earthly historical Hfe, and
is participated in by His people. Kaftan, Kattenbusch,
Loofs, and others, while hesitating to assert the personal
pre-existence of Christ, go a long way in claiming for Him
an essential Godhead that raakes it possible for Hira to be
to us what He proves Himself to be in our spiritual con
sciousness. Kaftan recognises truth in the doctrine of the
Pre-existence of Christ in so far as it ascribes to Him,
the Personal Bearer of the Perfect Revelation, a relation
to the Father that is unique and incomraunicable. Again,
he speaks of the Incarnation as an " event in the Divine
life." Kattenbusch speaks of Him as the " Messianic
King in virtue of His unfathomable but personal-essential
relation to God the Father." Loofs, referring to Thoraas'
confession, says that he who makes it " must know that
the mystery before which he bows in worship must be
on God's side conditioned in a way that completely sur
passes our understanding " ; and Bornemann, in speaking
of Christ as distinguished frora others, says : " while we other
men are all created by God and are His creatures. His work,
Jesus alone is born of God, that is, is like Hira in His proper
nature. Between us and Hira there is all the difference
that exists between the works of an artist, that reflect the
spirit, mind, and character of the artist, and the only son
of the same artist, who alone can be the peculiar, real, and
perfect image of his father in nature and character."
Herrmann regards the thought of Christ's personal pre-
existence as a self-contradictory expression, but still the
only one at our coraraand to set forth an important truth,
" that the Person of Christ is independent of the world
which represents the dependent sphere of His rule.
The contradiction would be removed if the problem of
time in which we now behold our existence were solved.
The supposition of an ideal pre-existence seems to sur
render what was originally intended, as much as the
ecclesiastical Christology does when it thinks of the pre-
existent One, not as the Lord of the Church, but as the

APPENDIX 319
Logos-subject, destitute of content." He forbears all
speculation concerning the personal pre-existence of Christ,
holding that we have here a final and conclusive thought
of faith, and will have nothing to do with attempts to
explain the raystery of the personal life of Christ by defini
tions of the relation of His essential Godhead to His true
Huraanity. The fresh point of view from which the whole subject
is regarded under the scheme of thought that I have
sketched, has beyond all doubt given a new impulse not
only to the theology of Germany, but to the popular teach
ing and preaching of the Church. Unbiassed witnesses
speak of the earnest evangelical tone it has imparted to
the pulpit in many parts of the Church, and the fresh
interest in the practical work of the Church that has been
awakened ; and as an instance of the use of its leading ideas
in the popular exposition of New Testament truths, I shall
give two or three quotations from a little work on the Christian
Faith by the late Theodor Jess ^ of Kiel. The work is pre
faced by a notice of Jess by Prof Nitsch, who tells us it is
but a fragment of a larger work which it was the intention
of the author, had he lived, to publish. Jess was cut off"
prematurely, and is spoken of by Nitsch as a man of
singular power as a preacher. The work consists of five
lectures. I quote frora the last, in which he treats of Christ
as God, Mediator of the New Covenant, the Archetype of
Humanity, and the Image of God : " The place where
Jesus Christ lived on earth, suffered, died, and was buried,
is now empty : we look up to the glorified Lord. But in
asmuch as He who is exalted to the Right Hand of God
is one and the same with the historical Christ who walked
this earth. His earthly life is of as great importance to us
as His heavenly. A perverted picture of Christ is always
the result when we take account of either the exalted or
the historical Christ to the exclusion of the other. The
purely historical handling of the life of Jesus that is in
different to the recognition of Hira as the Eternal Head of
the Church is far from doing justice to Him — the evidence
1 if ber den Christi. Glauben Vortrdge, von M. Jess, 1892.

320 APPENDIX
of this is not wanting. It is an equally defective treatment
that He has sometimes received in Christianity when the
life and work of Christ are ignored, and one inquires into
the special manner of His existence and rule in heaven.
We learn to know Hira as He is and lives in eternity, only
as ' clothed with His word,' that is, in His historical words
and works in this world. In these He is intelligible to us ;
and hence all depends on our combining the historical with
the religious estimate of His Person. This object is not
attained when one forms thoughts of His heavenly glory
that ignore the manner of His appearing in the state of
humiliation; we as certainly fail to attain it when we do
not succeed in discovering in His earthly appearing the
marks of the glory that is now peculiar to Him. If we
found in His Hfe on earth nothing but humiliation. His
eternal glory would be concealed from us and be a mystery.
But He raakes it raanifest in His life and death in the flesh,
and we raust learn thus to apprehend it " (p. 68).
Again, in speaking of Christ as the Lord of the Church,
and of the Church as the organ of Christ's Rule, by which
He is subjecting all things to Himself: " Christ works on
no one without means : personal as must be the relation
between Him and those who are brought by Him to God,
the relation is not unmediated. If Scripture attributes such
importance to the fact that Christ is come in the flesh, that
God has revealed Himself in this appointed Man, then the
maintenance and diffusion and deepening of the Christian
Church is bound up with its connection with the historical
Christ. The Personal continuance (Bestand) of His human
life is regulative for the religious life of all. In this
respect He occupies an entirely Unique Position among all
who are born and die in the world, and He continues to
occupy this position notwithstanding all who come to God
by Him and obtain Eternal Life. What we become, how
high soever we rise, is all through Him. That is the per
manent difference between Him and all perfected righteous
ones. Christendom is held together by the fact that it
hangs on Him who is the Head, and that it is His Body.
For us, this Man, who was crucified in Jerusalem, and

APPENDIX 32 1
God, who helps us in our need and caHs us to Eternal Life,
are bound up together inseparably. We know God only
in Christ, we know about God only in Him. God's final
aim is revealed to us in the life-aim of Christ. God's
purposes are disclosed to us in the Mind of Christ. From
Him we learn that God's aim is to receive human beings
into His Kingdom, that His motive is Love, that He has
the same aim as Christ. The latter is in the world free
and supreme over it, as God is : these are the marks of His
Godhead. And in all these relations that hang so closely
together. He is unique among His brethren, as God is, the
only Begotten of the Father in the great company of God's
children. However many there be who enjoy the Christian
Good and realise its Ideal of Hfe, they are unlike Him in
their dependence upon Him. And not only in this respect,
but He is the unapproachable Ideal by whom the impulse
is stirred in us to walk in His footsteps. This unlikeness
remains to all Eternity, because Christ is unique.
" Experience shows that the Good and the Ideal of
Christianity suffer in their distinctiveness as soon as the
connection with the historical Christ is undervalued and
neglected. The character of our whole life is to-day, in
every movement, conditioned by that of this Man ; there
fore we must realise Him as continually present. What
His Will is we can learn from His historical working, and
from the words recorded by the Evangelists. But the
manifestations of His Spirit mediated by the word of the
Gospel are certain and of universal validity. Luther was
aware also of the claims to a so-called direct relation to
Christ, but He condemned them as fanaticism. The Living
and Risen Lord has intercourse with us only as clothed
with His word: it is phantastic to speak of influences that-
go beyond His word. Only then are we really in contact
with Him, when the movements of our own minds die away
before His purpose made plain and intelligible in the word
of His Gospel. The Mediator between us and God is
hence the Historical Christ.
" But for us He is not to be separated frora God — to
separate between Hira and God is unbelief To believe in
21

32 2 APPENDIX
Him means to find God in Him, my Lord and ray God.
All men must honour the Son of God, who, like the Father,
summons into life with creative power, even as they honour
the Father. He is the Perfect Revealer of God, and the
Original of Humanity. What is to be brought together
through Him, God and Humanity, is united in Him "
(pp. 104, 105).
" Christ is then really the Mediator of the Covenant
between God and man, for He belongs to both — God's
perfect image and man's antitype, Jesus Christ, the histori
cal Christ, He of whora the Gospels tell us. Does reason
object? do these things appear perfectly irreconcilable?
let us be assured that is due to the representations of so-
called reason about God and man. If we hold by the
notion of God (coming to us from heathenism) as Infinite
Being in antithesis with man, who is mere finitude and
limitation, we cannot indeed see how they can be recon
ciled. But the fact that we see in Christ the God-man
should lead us to form and shape our thoughts of God and
man according to Him. We seek to learn to know God
and human nature nowhere else save in Jesus Christ. That
is the way by which one really finds God.
" No man hath seen Hira at any time : He dwells in
light that no man can approach unto. Therefore one learns
really to know Him only through the Revelation which we
have in Christ. To know and possess God, that is, to trust
in Him, and to know that we may leave ourselves with
Him, that He cares for us, that we are of value in His eye,
— that conflicts with what Hellenic heathendom regards
as His majesty. Even learned men among Christians are
afraid to confess that human beings can be of value to
God. Such assertions, they think, touch too closely the
sublimity of the Creator ; it accords better with His Great
ness to regard human beings as something He could do as
easily without, had He chosen not to create them. But such
thoughts are not born of Christ. The proper view of the
world is not got by means of scientific proof, but is a con
tribution of the Christian religion. The Christian view of
God is the solution of the problem of life, how we are to

APPENDIX 323
bear ourselves as Christians in relation to nature. Under
the influence of Christianity one has learnt to view nature
with new eyes. If we abandon our Christian faith in God,
there is found in the many tendencies that are at work in
the universe absolute aimlessness ; Nature appears to be
irrational alike in destroying and bringing into being : the
dice seem to fall without aira. We trace powerful and
destructive forces as well as benevolent ones. There is
retribution, but it is not nicely adjusted. Without Christ
one sees not whither it all tends. The history of the
Hellenic religion shows that men began with the honest
intention to believe in the righteousness of their gods ; but
they ended with the feeling that human beings were noth
ing to the Immortals, and they despaired of faith in the
gods. It is a mistake to wish to go back to a natural and
universal knowledge of God that embraces all matters about
Him and His omnipotence and retribution, adding more
precise and definite information from Christianity. No, the
trust in God that comes of faith, that enables us to comfort
ourselves in Him, the confidence it begets that we are
really of some value to Him — this is not to be got till God
is seen in Christ. How often does Dr. Luther insist on this :
' To look at the majesty of God leads to terror and despair,
and raay take a man to Hell itself, but to cherish confi
dence in God is possible when one seeks Him in the face
and in the walk of Jesus Christ'" (p. 107).
Note D, p. 254. — Beck on "Intercourse with the
Christ of the Gospels " {from Gedanken aus und
nach der Schrift. Neue Folge).
Der Hauptmangel bei uns studirten Leuten ist aller-
dings der, der Ihnen klar geworden, dass alles fiir uns raehr
Begriffsleben ist, wenn es uns auch erfasst hat, und sich
immer wieder zersplittert in Reflexion. Entscheidend ist
fiir uns wie fiir andere Menschen, dass die Wahrheit in per
sonlicher Gestalt an uns herantritt und in uns personliche
Gestalt gewinnt, und dazu ist eben der Sohn Gottes Mensch
geworden, hat die uns rettende Wahrheit gerade in den

324 APPENDIX
Knotenpunkten und KrLsen unseres ausseren und inneren
Lebens so personlich durchgebildet und uns vor Augen
gestellt, dass er taglich vor uns treten und bei uns sein
kann mit den Worten : ich bin der Weg, die Wahrheit und
das Leben. Er hat dabei so herzgewinnend mit Wort und
That und mit den aussersten Opfern sich uns nahe gebracht,
dass er eben damit als personlichster Magnet die person-
lichste Regung der Liebe in uns hervorrufen und so eine
Person-Verkettung zwischen ihm und uns bewirken will.
Eben desshalb muss es von Aufang bis zu Ende unsere
Hauptbeschaftigung bleiben, dass wir die Evangehen lesen,
und da taglich zu ihm kommen, so schlicht als moglich, ihn
horen und beschauen, und so die unmittelbarsten Eindriicke
seiner eigensten Person erapfangen, im Gebete sie vertiefen,
unter dem Tagleben erneuern, und so einen personlichen
Verkehr rait Jesu einiiben. So fiihrt er uns wie seine
Jiinger nach und nach dahin, dass wir nicht nur durch ihn
zu Gott Kommen, ura seinetwillen ihn als Vater glauben,
sondern in ihm Gott als den Vater finden und haben.
Diess ist eben der Mangel der menschlichen Darstellungen,
dass sie Gott und Jesum Christum zu sehr ausser einander
halten, dass sich Gott iiber dem Christus wie verliert fiir
uns und liberfliissig erscheint, oder wie ein schreckendes,
immer zur Strafe bereites Wesen ira Hintergrund bleibt.
Dagegen der Christus der Evangehen zeigt uns von Au
fang an des Vaters Giite in der Natur und seine erbar-
mende Liebe in der Sendung des Sohnes als das, wodurch
er eben die, die ihn fiirchten, aufsucht und an sich zieht, um
ihnen zu helfen, damit wir dann am Ende (und so in den
Episteln) nicht einen zu versohnenden oder nur versohnten
Gott neben dem Siihnopfer haben sondern im Sohne selbst
den versohnenden und rait der Versohnung alles Weitere
nach seiner weisen Ordnung uns raittheilenden Vater (Rora.
viii. 3 1 ff.). Werfen Sie nur das Vertrauen nicht weg, dass,
wenn Sie die vom Herrn selbst uns aufgegebenen Grund-
functionen, wie Bitten, Suchen, Anklopfen, Ringen, nicht
lassen, Sie auf dem von Gott versiegelten Weg zum Ziel
sind.

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

Abbott, The Spirit on the Waters
quoted, 96, 229, 273, 294.
Amiel, Journal, 214.
Angels, worship of, in Jewish theology,
157 ; Christ's work in relation to,
165, 172, 297, 299.
Angelology of St. Paul, 296.
Antichrist in St. Paul's teaching, 137.
Apollinaris' Christology, 211.
Archetypal Man, Christ the, 50, 160.
Arnold, M., on Paul's doctrine of faith,
104.
Atonement, nature of Paul's statements
concerning, 80 ; theories of, 81, 84,
89 (see under Reconciliation').
Baldensperger, on the Messiahship of
Jesus, 13 ; the angelology of the
Jews, 157 ; on pre-existence, 195.
Barnabas, Epistle of, its characterisa
tion of Christians, 61.
Baruch, Book of, on Adam's sin, 288.
Baur {N. T. Theologie) on the Person
of Christ, 26.
Beck, J. T., on truth and life, 180,
303 ; on the Christ of the Gospels,
254, 323- ,^, .
Beyschlag; on the pre-existence of Christ,
185, 193 ; on Phil. iii. J-II, 191.
Biederman, view of, on pre-existence of
Christ, 198.
Biographies of Christ in modern times,
241, 246.
Bornemann on the Person of Christ,
318.
Bruce, Dr. A. B., on 2 Cor. v. 16,
267 ; Davidic descent of Jesus, 42 ;
the Kenosis of Christ, 206 ; the
historical Christ, 248.
Calvin on the humanity of Christ, 49.
Candlish, Dr., on Sonship of Christ
and of believers, 44.
Catholic Church, its conception of the
God-man, 205.
Clialcedon, formula of. Council of, 22,
204.

Ch-rist the natural Head of all men,
192 ; the Son of God, 41 ; the
Spiritual Man, 35, 232 ; His pro-
plietic work ignored by Paul, 236 ;
the mystical Christ, 122 ; indwelling
of Christ, 123, 128, 130; His lord
ship, 134 ; Vicegerent of God, 142 ;
the "end" of creation, 176; His
historic life and His religious signifi
cance for us, 245 ; continuity of His
life in pre- and post-incarnate state,
199 ; Paul's idea of, before his con
version, 266 ; conception of, in
Middle Ages, 239 ; prayer to, 144.
Christology, Greek Church, 21 ; uses
of study of, 208 ; modern view of,
242.
Church, the Body of Christ, 127; idea
of, in later Epistles, 162, 164.
Church, Dean, on the example of
Christ, 62.
Clement of Rome on Person of Christ,
217.
Colossians, Epistle to, general charac
ter of, 152 ; authorship, 154 ; its
Christology, 156, 159, 165, 170.
Cone : The Gospel and its Interpreta
tions, on the term "Second Adam,"
229.
Dale, Dr. , on the death of Christ as a
revelation of God's love, 77 ; eternal
humanity of Christ, 210 ; the proofs
of Christ's divinity, 146, 220 ; the
Christ of history, 247.
Death, its causal connection with sin
the presupposition of Paul's doctrine
of the Atonement, 88.
Death of Christ, its supreme signifi
cance with Paul, 16, 233 ; its connec
tion with his life, 87 ; virtue of, in
relation to redemption from sin,
87.98. . ^, .
Deissman on the Pneumatic Christ,
119; the phrase "in Christ,"
293-
Denney on 2 Cor. v. 21, 280 ;

325

326

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

the historical and Exalted Christ,
308.
Diognetus, Epistle to, reference to, 313.
Divine and hu7nan in Person of Christ
not in antithesis, 47, 203, 213.
Dogmatic idea of Christ, 21.
Dorner on the Person of Christ, 208 ;
the idea of Christ in the Middle
Ages, 307.
Drummond on Messiahship of Jesus, 13.
Dual consciousness of Christ, theory of,
207.
Dualism removed by Christ (see under
Reconciliation) .
Dyke, Dr. van, the Gospel for an Age
of Doubt, 250.
ECKE on the theology of Ritschl, 310.
Ed-wards {The God-man) on Person of
Christ, 210.
Emerson on the exalted terms applied
in New Testament to Christ, 179.
Enoch, the Book of, its Christology,
194.
Ephesians, Epistle to, its leading ideas,
151, 162, 163.
Equal with God, the being, meaning
of, 189.
Esdras, Apocalypse of, on the sin of
Adam, 287.
Essenes, their doctrines, 156 ; references
to, in Epistle to Colossians, 153.
Everling on angelology of St. Paul,
297.
Evil'\n the world, problem of, 173.
Ewald on Paul's Epistles, 34.
Experience, Christian, the source of
Paul's Christology, 14 : what his
experience of Christ was, 34.
Fairbairn, Dr., on the Death of
Christ, 83.
Faith, in Paul's religious system, 94.
Fall of Man, Jewish opinion on, 83,
287 ; view of modern science on, 96.
Fatherhood oi God, Paul'sdoctrineof, 45.
Final cause of creation, Christ the, 177.
Flesh, the, in Christ, 38.
Forgiveness of sin, connection of with
the Death of Christ, 78.
'"Form of God," meaning of, 189.
"Fulness of God," Christ the, 156.
Gess on terms "Son of Man" and
"Second Adam," 230; his Christ
ology, 212 ; his Person and Work of
Christ, 26 ; the love of God in the
Death of Christ, 76 ; wrath of God
and Death of Christ, 283.
Gifford on Phil. iii. 5-1 1, 189.

Gladstone, W. E., on Christianity and
Theism, 136.
Gloel on the Holy Spirit in the natural
man, 36 ; the Pauline pneumatology,
"3-
' ' Glory," meaning of, in Paul's Epistles,
41.
God-man eternal, theory of, 209.
Goethe on the Person of Christ, 226.
Gordon, General, on the Indwelling
Christ, 131.
Gore, on the Church as the extension
of the Incarnation, 127 ; the Catho
licity ofthe Church, 162 ; the Inward
Christ, 131 ; the Humanity of Christ,
23 ; the Kenosis, 25, 207 ; on the
historical Christ, 237 ; on gradual
apprehension of the Christian ideal,
274.
Gordon, G. A., the Christ of To-day
quoted, 211.
Gospels, Picture of Christ in the, how
far affected by PauHne bias, 225.
Gottschick Qxi.\hs divinity of Christ, 315.
Grafe, E., on Paul and the Book of
Wisdom, 118.
Grau quoted, 17.
Greek Philosophy, influence of, en
Christian ideas, 195.
Green, T. H. , on the Immanent Christ,
131-
Gunkel on the Holy .Spirit in Paul's
teaching, 115.
Haring, on forgiveness and penitence,
90 ; the love of God in the Death of
Christ, 278 ; on Death of Christ as
demonstration of evil of sin, 286.
Harless on phrase iv XpiffTu, 121.
Harnack on resemblance between
ApoUinarian and Pauline Christ
ology, 212.
Haupt o-a Phil. ii. 5-8, 200, 216.
Hausrath on references to the historical
Christ in Paul's letters, 263.
Headship of Christ over Church, 167 ;
over principalities and powers, 170.
Heavenly Man, Christ the, 51 ; idea
of in Jewish theology, 201.
Hebrews, Epistle to : its Christology,
18 ; echoes in it of Paul's doctrine of
the Archetypal Man, 63, 172.
Herrmann on Paul's faith, 29 ; Jesus'
self-assertion in Gospels, 228 ; God
in the historical Christ, 252 ; Person
of Christ, 316, 318.
Historical Christ, the, 6, 238.
Hofmann, von, on Sonship of Christ
43 ; I Cor. X. 4, 187 ; the Gospels
and Epistles, 257.

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

327

Holiness of God revealed in the Death
of Christ, 88 ; of Christ, 37.
Holy Spirit, Paul's doctrine of, 113.
Holtzmann on dif&cult passages in Paul,
29 ; on the doctrine of the pre-existent
Heavenly Man, 201.
Hort on worship of angels in later
Judaism, 157 ; on imitation of Christ,
289.
Hutton on Paul's teaching on the pre-
existent life of Jesus, 187 ; on the
Kenosis, 207.
Ideal, Christ the, of humanity, 60.
Idealism of'^z.sA, 105.
linage of God, Christ the, 48, 159 ; in
what sense shared by believers, 160.
Imitatio C/iristi, Christ's doctrine of,
103, 286.
Immanence oi C\ins,i, 112.
Immortality, Paul's hope of, 130.
Incarnation, without a Fall, 54 ;
different views of, by John and Paul,
236.
Intercession of Christ not a Pauline
doctrine, 142.
Jess quoted, 231, 319.
Jesus, frequency of name in Epistles,
10 ; relation of the Jesus of history
to the Christ of experience, 223, 236.
John, St., Christology of, 19.
Jo-wett, B., on the ethic of Christianity,
103; Paul's knowledge of the his
torical Christ, 265.
Judais-m, belief in angels in later,
166, 171.
"Judgments of value" in Ritschl's
theology, 311.
fiilicher on the Epistles of the imprison
ment, 28.
Kahler, on the sinlessness of Christ,
38 ; on the pre-existence of Christ, 197.
Kaftan on the Person of Christ, 316,
318.
Karl o-n. phrase "in Christ, 294.
Kattenbusch on Person of Christ, 318.
Kenosis, doctrine of, 24, 205.
Ker, Dr. J., on the Christ of the
Gospels, 244.
Klopper, his Commentary to Epistle to
Colossians referred to, 153.
Kno-mling on Witness of the Apostles to
the history of Jesus, 263.
Ku/Jios use in Septuagint, 295.
La THAMES Pastor Pastorum quoted, 42.
La-w, the bearing of, on the Death of
Christ, 82.

La-w, William, on the Second Adam in
us. III.
Lietzmann on the " Son of Man,'- 230.
Lightfoot, Bishop, on Phil. ii. 5-1 1, 189.
Lipsius on the pre-existence of Chrisl,
198.
Logos, incarnation of, in the Lutheran
and Reformed systems, 207.
Loofs on Person of Christ, 318.
Lordship of Christ, 134 ; over His
people, 138 ; over the world, 139 ;
in relation to God, 140.
Love of God, how viewed by Paul, 75.
Luther on the Immanent Christ, 123;
Christ's lordship, 138 ; the man
Christ Jesus, 147; Phil. ii. 5-11,
191.
Lutheran doctrine of the Person of
Christ, 205.
Marshall, W., on the Nature of
Christ, 305.
Mary, Virgiii, substituted for Christ in
the Middle Ages, 239.
Matheson, Dr. , on the historical Christ,
6 ; on the spiritual development of
Paul, 266.
Max Reischle on relation of Exalted
Christ to the Christ of history, 244,
254.
Messianic consciousness of Jesus, 226.
Monothelite controversy, 22.
Mudie, Kev. F., on "knowing Christ
after the flesh," 266.
Miiller, Dr. J., on the supernatural
birth of Christ, 273.
Mysticism, dangers of, 132, 244.
Natural laws and faith in Christ, 173.
Nosgen on the term "Second Adam,"
S2.
"Not Paul but Christ," 224.
Ne-wman, Cardinal, on angels, 302.
Owen, Dr. John, on the atoning ele
ments in the death of Christ, 90,
284.
Paret, his article on Paid and Jesus,
263 ; source of Paul's doctrinal con
ceptions, 16 ; the Indwelling Christ,
128.
i'aj^i'rfl/ Epistles, Christology of, 267.
Person of Christ as known to us, 25 ;
mystery of, 218.
Pfleiderer on the Pauline doctrine of the
Holy Spirit, 115.
Pliarisaic theology, bearing on for
giveness, 81 ; on origin of sin, 288.
Phil. ii. 6 explained, 215.

328

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

Philo on the heavenly and earthly man,
51-
Po-well on the principle of the Incarna
tion, 203.
Prayer to Christ, 144.
Pre-existence of Christ, explanations of,
194. 197. 317-
Rade on the Divinity of Christ, 316.
Rainy, Principal, origin of Christian
doctrine, 152; the pre-existence of
Christ, 199.
Reconciliation, Christ's work of, be
tween God and man, 78 ; between
man and man, 163 ; between man
and angelic powers, 165.
Recapitulatioii of all things in Christ,
176.
Redejnption not an afterthought of
creation, 177-
Reformation, the Christ then preached,
240.
Reformed Church, doctrine of Person
of Christ, 2o5.
Resurrection oi Christ, its significance
in the Christology of Paul, 1 7 ; con
nection with His Function as Second
Adam, 55, 65 ; relation to His Death,
loi.
Return to Christ, the, I.
Ritschl, A., on Christian perfection, 125;
justification and its consequences, 78 ;
Phil. ii. 6, 202 ; service to Christ
ology, 246 ; his Christology, 309.
Rothe, R. , on the holiness of Christ, 38 ;
humanity the medium of a Divine
revelation, 49 ; his doctrine of the
Second Adam, 65 ; on angels, 302.
Sabatier, 18 ; on Christ and the Spirit,
119; on the historical Christ, 263;
on supernatural birth of Christ, 272.
.Sacramental acts in reference to the
benefit of Christ, 102.
Sacrifice and the Atonement, 84, 277.
Sanday and Headlam, Commentary on
Romans, 41, 143, 282.
Schleiermacher's doctrine of the Second
Adam, 64.
Schmidt, R., on the Death of Christ,
99 ; Christology, 26.
Schenkel, on the Christology of Pastoral
Epistles, 269 ; on Phil. ii. 5, 191 ;
on the supernatural birth of Christ in
Paul, 272.
Schneckenbtirger quoted, 205.
Schweizer, on relation of Christ's Death
to Law, 83 ; on Sonship of Christ, 46.

Second Adam, Christ the, 52 ; three
fold function of, 1 1 1 ; idea of, in later
Epistles, 161 ; relation to the repre
sentation of Christ in Gospels, 230.
Seeberg on Death of Christ, 79.
Shorter Catechism, its Christology, 22, 47.
Self-emptying oi Cia'ist, 191.
Simon {Die Psych, des P.), 36, 300.
Sin in believers, 129.
Solidarity of mankind, 86, 97.
Son of God, Christ the, 41, 140, 217.
Son of Man : meaning, 229 ; history of
term, 230.
Sonship to God : Christ's Sonship and
believers', 45 ; stages of, 46 ; Christ's
teaching regarding Sonship, 232.
Sovereignty of Christ in Ritschl's teach
ing, 314-
Spirit, Holy, Paul's doctrine of, 120 ;
absence of mention of, in later Epistles,
158 ; Sonship and flesh, 35, 123.
Stanton on the idea of a suffering
Messiah, 13.
Strong ( Christian Ethics) on the teach
ing of Christ, 10.
Supernatural birth of Christ in Paul's
Epistles, 271.
Supremacy of Christ, grander view of,
in later Epistles, 152.
TEiCHMANon the PauUne faith in Christ,
130.
Thikotter on Ritschlianism, 309.
Transcendence oi Chx'ist, the, 112.
Type, Christ, new t. of manhood, 57,
58, 61.
Union of the natures in the Person of
Christ, 205.
Universalism oi Paul, its connection
with his idea of Christ as Second
Adam, 56.
Weiss, J. (Gottingen), on the preach
ing of the Risen Christ in primitive
Church, 251; Paul's doctrine of the
Spirit, 119.
Weiss, B., on the Gospels, and the per
manence of the Christian faith, 247.
Weizacker, on Death of Christ, 98 ; his
translation of New Testament quoted,
41, 135, 280; on the importance of
the Christ of history, 248.
Westcott on Incarnation without a Fall,
54-
Wisdom, Apocryphal Book of, its doc
trine ofthe Spirit of God, 118, 292.
Wrath of God and Death of Christ, 282.

INDEX OF TEXTS

Figures in heavy type signify that the text is

discussed at length

Matthew.

PAGE

PAGE

PAGE

V. 19 . . .87

i. 9

. 141

X. 10 .

7

V. 20 . . . 107

i. 13-17

• • '23

xii. 28 .

231

vi. 3 . . . 125

i. 18-25

. 236

xii. 27, 28 .

294

vi. 3-6 . 99, 264

i. 31 .

¦ 139

xvi. 25

lOI

vi. 10 . . 100, 102

ii. 8 .

. 41, 264

XX. 28 .

234

vi. 23 . . . 141

ii. 6-8 .

. 300

xxii. 43, 44 .

43

vii. 17 . . . 300

ii. 16 .

. 124

xxvi. 28

234

vii. 21-25 . . 125

iii. I, 4

. 126

vii. 25 . . . 141
iii. 5 .
• 114, 135
Mark.
viii. 1-5 . 125
iii. 23 .
. 140
viii. 2 . . 125, 126
iv. 2-5 .
. 125
ix. 4 .
7
viii. 3
iv. 5 .
. . 138
X. 12 .
xii. 35, 37 •
7
43
29, 39, 75, 100. 185
viii. 9 . . 116, 126
iv. 16
iv. 17
. 125
. 124
Luke.
viii. 10, II . . 130
viii. 12 . 41
iv. 19
V. 7
. 135
. 277
iii. 21, 22
231
viii. 13 . . 126
vi. 17
. 117, 126
iv. 18 .
231
viii. 14 . .116
vi. 19
. 127, 129
XX. 41 .
43
viii. 18-25 . 125
vii. 10
7
viii. 23 . . 46
vii. 17
• '35.141
John.
viii. 29, 30 . 139
viii. 5, (
) . . 18S
i. 45, 49
273
viii. 34 ¦ -143
viii. 6
142, 186, 192
vi. 42 .
273
viii. 38, 39 . . 171
ix. I
9
vii. 41 .
273
ix. I . . . 124
ix. S . 29, 42, 143
ix. 15
ix. 21
. 125
. 290
Acts.
^. 5 . . .264
ix. 27
. 264
A. 9 . . 95, 13s
A. 2
ii. 36 .
134
A. 13 . . . 144
A. 4
. 186
vii. 56 .
230 8
xii. 4, 5 . . 168
X. 33
290
XX. 35 .
xiv. 4 . . .135
xi. I
125, 133, 139
xiv. 8 . . .139
xi. 3
. 140
Romans.
xiv. 9 . -. .135
xi. 10
. 298
i. 3 . .26
4, 268
xiv. 14 . . 124
xi. 23
7, 264
i. 4
41, 46
XV. 2-7 . . 289
xii. 3
• 13. 137
i. 5
• 141
XV. 3 . . . 264
xii. 5
. 135
u. 16 .
• 141
XV. 6 . . . 140
xii. 10
. 264
iii. 23-26 75, 84, i
58, 280
XV. 18-29 . .114
xii. 12
. 127, 168
iv. 25 .
¦ 95
xvi. 20 .141
xii. 28
. 264
V. I .
. 141
xii. 29
. 264
V. 6 .
¦ 37
I Corinthians.
xii. 31
: : : "?
V. 8 .
. 76
xiii.
V. 12 .
• 29
1. 2 . . .144
xiv. I
. 115
V. 14 .
V. 16 .
86
i. 3 . . .141
XV. 3
• 79, 264
. 86
i. 4 • ¦ -141
xv. 5
. 264
329
330

INDEX OF TEXTS

PAGE

PAGE
PAGE
XV. 22 .
• 55
V. 16 .
. 129
ii. 16 .
. 166
XV. 24-28
136, 178
V. 17 .
. 125
ii. 18 .
166, 300
. 166
XV. 28 .
• 139
V. 18 .
. 126
ii. 20-2J
XV. 40 .
. 298
V. 22 .
. 128
iii. 3 •
. 163
XV. 45-47
51-53
V. 24 .
99, 126
iii. iv. .
. 168
XV. 45 . 29
XV. 47 .
. 41
5°.
, 50. "7
186, 201
vi. 3 .
vi. 8 .
. 290
. 129
I Thessalonians.
XV. 49 .
41, 50
vi. 14 .
76, 253
i. 6 .
. 125
XV. 57 .
• 141
ii. I, 12
. 125
Ephesians.
ii. 12 .
. 141
2 Corinthians.
'• 3
. 140
iii. II, 12 . 142
i. 2
¦ 141
i. 10
176
iii. 12 .
. 138
i- 3
i. 12
140
i. 10 ,11
• 152
iv. 15 .
7. 265
¦ 125
i. 18-20
• 41
iv. 16
. 138
ii. 12-14
. 124
i. 23
. 162
V. 9 .
. 141
iii. 3 .
. 127
ii. 5 .
. 163
. 163
2 Thessalonians.
iii. 17 .
40, 117
''¦ '3 •
iii. 18 41,
"7,
127. 139
11. 13-18
152
i. 9
. 138
iv. 6
49
ii. 14-16
. 164
ii. 14
• J39
iv. 7 .
. 124
iii. 17 .
. 168
!!!¦ 3 „
. 138
iv. 10 .
loi, 124
iii. 19
158, 162
in. 7, 8
. 125
iv. II
V- 3
• 125 29
iv. 5
iv. 13 .
135
. 161
I
Timothy.
V. 10
138, 141
iv. 15 .
. 167
i. I
. 267, 271
V. 14 .
. 124
V. I
• 277
i- 5
. 268
V. 15 .
94, 264
V. 2
289
ii. 3
. 269
V. 16
. 265
vi. 8 .
. 138
11. 4
. 268
V. 19 .
V. 19-21
• 75
¦ 95
Philippians.
ii. 5
ii. 8
. 268
. 268
V. 21 .
39. 278
i. 8
124, 264
iii. 16
. 268
vi. 3 .
• 125
i. 21
'39
iv. 10
. 269
viii. 9 .
. 186
ii. 3-10
29.
[36, 188,
V. 21
. 270
X. 7
125
202,
215, 216,
vi. 3
. 268
xi. 10 .
. 124
264,
290
vi. 13
. 26S
xii. 8 .
xii. 12 .
144
. 264
iii. 8 .
iii. 13 .
• 33
• 125
2
Timothy.
xiii. 3
• 114
iii. 21 .
40, 41
i. 7
. 269
-xiii. 4 .
124, 264
iv. 10 .
. 124
i.9
. 269
xiii. 14 .
• 145
iv. 13 .
. 124
i. 10
i. 18
. 268
. 142
Galatians.
Colossians.
ii. 8
. 268
i. I
. 114
i. 3
. 140
iii. 12
. 269
i- 3
• 141
i. 8
. 158
iv. I
. 270
i. 12
¦ 15
i. 10 .
• 139
Titus.
ii. 20 .
258, 264
i. 14 .
¦ 163
. 269
iii. 5 .
iii. 13, 14
. 264
i. 15 ¦
155
159, 172
i. 3
. 83
i. 1S-18
. 191
i. 4
. 269, 270
iii. 19 .
• 297
i. 16 .
176, 177
ii. II
. 269
iii. 20 .
29
i. 18 .
167, 169
ii. 13
. 270
iii. 22 .
. 60
i. 19 .
155, 157
ii. 14
. 269
. 269
iii. 26, 27
. 103
i. 20 .
• 177
iii. 4
iii. 28 .
56, 128
i. 19, 20
. 163
iii. 5
. 102
iii.
. 298
i. 24 .
. 124
I
Iebrews.
iv. 4 .
75.
1S5, 271
ii. 9 .
155. 157
iv. 5 .
¦ 45
ii. 10 .
. 170
ii. 5-10
63, 172, 298
iv. 6, 7
iv. 6
• 46
ii. II, 12
• 163
. 116
ii. II .
. 264
Rl
;VELATION.
iv. 19 .
. 126
ii. 13-15
163
165, 264
iii. I.
. 159
V. 10 .
. 124
ii. 15-18
. 172
xii. 24
. 268
ERRATA
Page 17, no-ce, for " crap^" read " adp^" ; for "auferstehung" read " Auferste
hung " ; for " Schrifthums " read " Schriftthums. "
„ 23, nth line from foot, delete "that," also " they " in 5th line from foot.
, , 29, 2nd note, for ' ' Intercourse " read ' ' Communion. "
,, 39, 3rd line from foot, for " he '' read " He."
,, 41, note 3, and wherever it occurs,/,?- " Weizacker " read " Weizsacker " ;
also delete hyphen in "mit-Macht."
,, 45, I Ith line from foot, for "distinction " read " distinctions."
,, 48, line 5, for " than " read " that."
,, 51, 13th line from foot, before "it" insert "but."
,, 66, 5th line from top, for " affecting " read " effecting.''
,, 81, 3rd line from foot, for " Gal. iii. 12 " read " Gal. iii. 13."
,, 94, 4th line from top, for " penetential " read " penitential."
,, 98, note 2, for " Paulinsche " read " Paulinische."
,, 120, Sth line from foot, after "same" insert comma.
„ 123, 8th line from top, /or "Gal. ii. 10" i-ead " GsiX. ii. 20."
,, 125, 9th note, /or " Ueberzengung " read " Ueberzeugung " ; for " Bewuss
tein" read " Bewusstsein " ; and for "anstrengungen" read
" Anstrengungen. "
„ 135, 1st note,/,?- " Vater" read " Vater.''
,, 138, 7th note,/)?- "Gesicht" read "Gericht."
,, 142, Sth line from top, delete comma after "other."
,, 18S, Sth line from top, for " Phil, iii." read " Phil, ii." ; and in note,/,?-
"vol. t," read "vol. i."
,, 195, 4th line from top, for " Baldensberger " read "Baldensperger."
,, 202, IsX nott, for " fiopcpT)" read " ixopcpT)."
„ 229, note,/,?- "Abbot " read " Abbott."
,, 257, 4th line from top, for " effects" read " effect."
,, 273, 1st line, delete " of God " ; in 7th and 6th lines from ioot,for "glaube "
and " welt" read "Glaube" and " Welt."
,, 274, 17th line from top, for "Bedentung" rrarf " Bedeutung, " and delete
comma between religiose and Werth.
,, 276, 4th line from foot,/,?- "brundgibt" read "Kundgiebt."
,, 277, 1st line, 7%?- "Anfechung'' rearfAufechtung."
,, 300, 5th line from foot,^;,?- "he" read " He."
309, Sth line from top, for "iXKovac " read " fXKouo-i " ; i6th line from top,
for "drexvchs" read "arexrujs. "
313, l6th line from foot, delete " displayed" and recul "exhibited."
325, for " Deissman " 7-ead " Deissmann."

331

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