EIGHTH CHAPTER. SPECIAL DISCUSSION OF CERTAIN SUBORDINATE DOGMATIC QUESTIONS. IN the preceding chapters we have been considering the Pauline doctrine as a connected and organic system, in which one idea rose logically out of the other, till the whole stood before us. We have still to consider some questions which may serve to throw light on individual points of the apostle's system, though they do not materially affect its main positions. The question of greatest importance under this head is, how the apostle conceived of the higher nature of Christ. His doctrine of Christ is not indeed a key to his system; that system can be quite well examined and described even before this question is discussed; yet we must of course devote some attention to it, and we may dispose of several other points at the same time. 1. The conception or the essence of religion. If it be asked what is the apostle's conception of religion, or what he held to be the essential element of religion, we must, of course, answer-Faith. This is man's part in religion; what is to put man in a right relation towards God is faith and what springs out of faith. The chief proposition of the apostle's doctrine of justification, ó av pwπος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται, contains his definition of religion. Religion is essentially faith. Faith is taken here not in its contracted, but in its widest sense; it is faith in that which God must have in himself in order to make man blessed, confidence in his omnipotence. With regard to faith in Jesus, faith, that is, in its more specific sense, when the apostle means to exhibit that element in it which belongs to religion generally, he uses the expression TσтEVEL ÉTÌ τὸν ἐγείραντα Ἰησοῦν τὸν Κύριον ἡμῶν ἐκ νεκρῶν (Rom. iv. 24). And the distinguishing feature of Abraham's faith is that he believed in God as the ζωοποιῶν τοὺς νεκροὺς καὶ καλῶν τὰ μὴ ὄντα as ovтa (ver. 17). This faith, that God can bring about what seems impossible, contains, on the one hand, an expression of absolute dependence on God, and, on the other, an attitude of mind, in which the standard of possibility is not taken from what actually is, which surmounts the present reality, and takes account not only of the visible, but also of the invisible. Faith here means, to abstract from self and from one's own subjectivity, and to cast one's-self on the objective by which the subject is determined. It is the trustful surrender of the whole man to God. The ground of this confidence is not only God's omnipotence, but also his love; but first of all it must be his omnipotence, because if God is to be the object of confidence, he must, first of all, have the power to do what love suggests. The most essential element of religion is thus, that man feel his dependence on God, and place an unlimited trust in him. The apostle, however, counts not only faith and confidence to be of the essence of religion, but also a certain amount and kind of action. He says, Rom. ii. 13, that not the hearers but the doers of the law are just before God; the difference between circumcision and uncircumcision is given up, but is replaced by that between the observance and the non-observance of the law. For circumcision profits if one keeps the law, but if one be a transgressor of the law then circumcision is made uncircumcision. If then uncircumcision observes what the law pronounces to be right and good, then uncircumcision is counted for circumcision. And the uncircumcision that is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judges him who with the letter and with circumcision is a transgressor of the law. it does not matter what one is outwardly, but only what one is inwardly in regard to the spirit with which he keeps the law (Rom. ii. 25). Compare 1 Cor. vii. 19: Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing; the main point is the Tnpnois Évtoλâv coû. This view of the essence of religion rests on the idea that justification by works of the law is abstractly a possible road to attain that salvation which is religion's ultimate end. If we omit, For what the apostle teaches further, that this road does not actually lead to that end, then the essence of religion must be the doing, the observance, of the commandments of God. But works and faith are related to each other in respect of the essence of religion as δικαιούσθαι ἐξ ἔργων νόμου to δικαιοῦσθαι ἐκ πίστεως; works, as distinguished from and separate from faith cannot but be imperfect, and can only be the essence of religion in one of its lower stages. At a higher stage that essence is faith. There are, however, some indications that the apostle regarded knowledge as the highest region in which religion moves, and placed knowing above both doing and believing. He draws a contrast between dim and obscured seeing in a mirror, and seeing face to face; between his piecemeal knowledge now, and that which was to come, the knowing perfectly as he was known (1 Cor. xiii. 12). These last words may be understood either generally, thus: I shall be both the subject and the object of the knowledge of the future world, where all is clear and transparent; or they may be taken of the knowledge of God: my knowledge of God will be as immediate and absolute as God's knowledge of me. In any case the highest stage and form of religion is to the apostle that in which it is an immediate relation of spirit to spirit; if man's knowledge of God be as absolute as God's knowledge of man, then it is nothing but a knowledge identical with itself, the identity of subject and object in pure knowledge. Of the same knowledge the apostle says, 1 Cor. viii. 3, If any man love God, the same is known of him. The context of the passage is not satisfied by the interpretation Deo probatur. The apostle is speaking, verse 2, of the γνῶσις which φυσιοῖ, of the γνῶσις which is disjoined from love; and says that this is not the right knowledge, that there can be no right γνῶσις without the καθὼς δεῖ γνῶναι, which nothing but love can supply. Then he takes up the converse, verse 3, referring yvwois to ayán, and here he cannot mean anything but this,—that in the true άyámn the true yvwois is also contained. In such a man the conception of yvŵois is realized through his being known by God in loving God. This passive, being known, implies the active, knowing: as the object of the absolute divine knowledge he is also the subject of it, in so far as it is in him, as he, the object of it, has it in himself. Thus he is not only the object, but also the depositary, the subject of this divine knowledge of him. Thus religion is also knowledge—the highest absolute knowledge on man's part, as on God's part. God is known by man in the same absolute way as man by God; in this same absolute knowledge God and man are one. 2. The doctrine of God.1 What is most remarkable in the apostle's doctrine of God is how he seeks to remove from the idea of God everything particular, limited and finite, and to retain nothing but the pure idea of the absolute. The final result of the whole world-process is that God may be all in all, and this point of view is consistently adhered to throughout. Whatever subject he happens to be considering, its reference to God is always an essential part of it; and the more he labours to grasp the subject in all its various aspects, and exhibit the whole system of its parts and connexions, the more does the whole train of thought seem to carry him at last by a natural attraction to the absolute idea of God, to find there his conclusion and resting-place. As everything proceeds from God, so everything is to be referred to him. The one God is the Father, et où Tà Távта kaì ýμeîs eis avтòv (1 Cor. viii. 6), or in the more comprehensive expression of Rom. xi. 36, ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ δι' αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ Távra, all things proceed from him, all things come to actuality through him, all things have in him their final purpose. in this absolute sense, he is further the Father of Jesus Christ, by whom the whole work of redemption was ordained: тà πávта ÈK τοῦ Θεοῦ, τοῦ καταλλάξαντος ἡμᾶς ἑαυτῷ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (2 Cor. v. 18). This constant reference to the one and universally efficient causality of God, and the consequent feelings of gratitude and wonder at God's greatness and goodness, causes the apostle to break out in direct doxology, as in Rom. ix. 5, 2 Cor. i. 3, xi. 31. This view of the absoluteness of the idea of God is the root of the 1 Cf. Neutest. Theol. 205 sq. As God apostle's universalism; he declares repeatedly that God is as much the God of the Gentiles as of the Jews, and that in this matter there is no respect of persons with God (Rom. ii. 11, iii. 29, x. 12). Christianity indeed is simply the negation of all particularism to the end that the pure and absolute idea of God may be realized in humanity. The barriers which divide Jews from Gentiles are removed in the justification that is by faith, because faith is the freest way of justification, and the only way that answers to the absolute idea of God (Rom. iii. 30). But God has proved himself from the very beginning to be the God of the Gentiles; he did not leave them without a witness; he could not do so, for it belongs to the idea of God that he should manifest himself. Τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ φανερόν EoTi év auTois, the apostle says (Rom. i. 19),-for God has manifested it to them, for the invisible things of him are spiritually beheld since the foundation of the world, both his eternal power and his divinity. This sentence implies, on the one hand, that it belongs to the essence of God to reveal himself, and, on the other, that his absolute nature cannot be revealed by any revelation. Invisible as it essentially is, it became visible so far as the invisible can become visible, through the creation of the world and all that God has been doing since then, through all God's works in nature. But then this is brought about only through the instrumentality of thought: τὰ ἀόρατα... νοούμενα καθορᾶται : it is only through thought that it comes to presentation. This knowledge of God through the works of nature is not immediate but mediate; nature may be made the subject of thought and contemplation, and, from the operations that are visible there, we may infer an invisible cause. The apostle thus indicates that the conclusion from effect to cause is the natural way to the knowledge of God. That which is known of God in this way is his power, and in general the divinity of his nature. Whether Ocióτns be understood specially of the goodness of God as a further element in his nature, and different from his power, or, more accurately, of the sum of his divine attributes in general, in any case the apostle places the power of God before all his other attributes. It is the property by |