interchangeable with apokatastasis. Under these circumstances the
regeneration, when the Son-of-Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, also sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." In this saying the word cannot be restricted to the more or less individualizing application of the resurrection; it covers the resurrection as a whole and even the renewal of the universe as is shown from the parallels in Mark and Luke which have as its equivalent descriptions of the final state, Mk. 10:29, 30; Lk. 22:29, 30. Thus also Josephus understands the term, making it interchangeable with apokatastasis. Under these circumstances the eschatological reference in connection with baptism in Tit. 3:5 can create no surprise. It made itself so naturally felt that Origen on Matt. xix. 28 declares baptism to be the prooimion (prelude) to that palingenesia (i.e., the great palingenesia of the resurrection). Even Clem. Rom. still says that Noah preached a palingenesia to the kosmos. The familiar soteriological sense appears first with Clem. Alex.
The second idea in the handling of which the close nexus between present and future appears is that of salvation. Owing to the eminently practical concern attaching to this matter, it could hardly be expected otherwise than that here the soteriological present usage should more easily detach itself from the earlier eschatological meaning of the term. In the Pauline teaching, however, this was not accomplished by a clean-cut separation of the present experience from its original setting. What happened was the emergence of an idea in which without clear distinction present enjoyment and joyful anticipation of the final deliverance mingle. The sense of salvation was never entirely deëschatologized. Even the most practical religious consciousness found it impossible to think of the one aspect without more or less clearly remembering the other. The mind of the early Christian reveals a constant oscillation from the one pole to the other. Only the multitudinousness of concerns with the world that is, has somewhat deflected the religious interest from that beyond. The movement of thought and the movement of aspiration have both somewhat changed their original point of departure and their
habitual direction. Believers followed the chronological order, which after all appears so largely the normal one to time-circumscribed minds. Paul and his converts by a sort of reversion thought themselves saved as in the future so in the present. Precisely because the two states of consciousness, that of being destined to an impending salvation and that of having the prelibation of the same each day, so naturally coälesced, the necessity for sharp distinction was less strongly felt. Hence there are a number of passages, which it is easy to construe as referring to the simple sense of possession in the present, whilst in all probability the mixture of feeling just referred to is voiced in them, and in consequence half their shade of significance is obscured through an overlaying with our own color of piety. Fortunately statements are not lacking which embody the pure futuristic manner of conceiving the thing in its original force. According to Rom. 5:9, 10, after and because being justified by Christ's blood, the readers shall be saved from the wrath of the judgment through Him, and that particularly through his (resurrection-) life. The Christian is saved "by hope," 8:24, 25; here the past tense (Aorist) joined to the idea of "hope" strikingly portrays the mixed mental attitude towards the idea of salvation; how strongly present and active the ingredient of hope is may be felt from the appended remark: "hope that is seen is not hope," a remark which might seem to deny, if not explicitly the pre-potency, at least the visual actuality of salvation. The strongest passage is Rom. 13:11: "for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed." The representation of 1 Cor. 3:15 places both the destruction of the bad builder's work, and his personal salvation "as through fire" in "the day," i.e., the day of judgment, cp. vs. 13. The much-mooted exhortation, Phil. 2:12: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" is most easily relieved of its difficulty through allowing "salvation" its future reference. At any rate the verb "work out" does not as a rule bear the sense, so frequently given it in the exposition of this text, of unfolding through strenuous effort the potentialities contained in something, but rather that of achieving, accomplishing a thing: the readers are exhorted to fit themselves through the diligent practice of obedience
for and assure themselves of the salvation at the end with its varying degrees of glory; cp. 2 Cor. 4:17; 5:5; 7:10, 11. His own salvation Paul makes dependent on his own affliction and that of the readers on theirs, and in so far assigns it to the future, 1 Thess. 5:8, 9; in the believer's armor "the hope of salvation" is figuratively described as the helmet. God has appointed believers unto the obtaining of salvation and that this is said with reference to the end appears from the opposite "not unto wrath," the latter term having eschatological meaning throughout with Paul. The foregoing quotations do not prove, of course, that the obtaining of salvation was placed by Paul entirely in the future. There are not a few instances where the application to the present life lies plainly on the surface. The most unequivocal of these are Eph. 2:5: "By grace are ye saved ones (Perfect Tense)"; cp. vs. 8: "For by grace are ye saved ones through faith"; Tit. 3:5: "According to his mercy He saved us (Aorist Tense); 2 Tim. 1:9: "According to the power of Him who saved us" (Aorist Tense). The mere use of Present or Future does not have the same convincing force as that of Perfect, because the Present can be void of chronological significance, expressing only the fact that God performs or will perform the act and the Future can be a Future of logical sequence; consequently in some passages the question cannot be answered with certainty to which of the two rubrics they belong: Rom. 10:9: "If thou shalt confess … and shalt believe … thou shalt be saved." In 2 Cor. 2:15 the idea seems to stand midway between the "having been saved," and the "being destined to be saved," for here the Apostle declares: "For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God in them that are being saved (in process of salvation) and in them that are perishing (in process of being lost); to the one a savor of death unto death; to the other a savor of life unto life."
A survey of the facts registered leaves little doubt but that between the two aspects of the matter, the priority belongs in the Apostle's mind to the eschatological aspect. If the starting-point had lain at the other end, we might surely expect some qualifying phrase to appear in the futurity-passages to intimate that not salvation as
such, but only its perfection or consummation was associated with the end; the opposite is the case: salvation at the end is spoken of in an absolute way, as though it were the only conception customary; it is "ἡ σωτηρία." In fact, the phenomenon furnishes a strict analogy to the manner after which in our Lord's teaching such things as "the Kingdom of God" and "the Parousia of the Son-of-Man" are referred to as future things in an absolute way, as though no other Kingdom, no other Parousia were reckoned with. There is a continuity in the writings of the New Testament of this way of speaking: the feeling expressed in the word of our Lord, "the hour comes and is now" reëchoes everywhere. The lower air was so surcharged with the sense of what great things had already come to pass and what greater things were on the wings in the upper air ready to come down, that the precision in speaking of the several parts and phases of the whole was for the moment in abeyance. Keen hope had projected itself into the future, and there the habit of speech about salvation had been to no small extent acquired. Afterwards it required some effort to translate such language back into the more sober dialect of the life of a protracted waiting on earth. How unfortunate that we, after waiting so long, seem to have forgotten the semi-celestial accents of Christianity's childhood!
In the matter of justification it requires closer scrutiny, perhaps, to discover the eschatological origins that have shaped it at the beginning and the interdependence with the outlook into the future life characterizing it in continuance. The controversial history through which the doctrine passed and the anti-Judaistic stamp as a result put upon it tended to make it more than aught else a truth of present generally-religious importance. It became in the Pauline type of teaching the very foundation of all Christian belief and experience. And Protestantism, especially of the Lutheran kind, has certainly not been wrong in making its true interpretation, over against Romanism, the comprehensive basis of Christian truth generically conceived. And yet, with the large place occupied in the early-Christian consciousness by the thought of the life to come, it is easy to see, that two such all-covering planes could not fail to
intersect. There exists, however, sufficient evidence for the eschatological stamp borne by the idea of justification even at that controversial stage. It is sometimes alleged that Paul was the first to frame the concept of a comprehensive adjustment of all sins in the accounting of God. In this form the thought is not correct, because Judaism had already worked out the doctrine of a daily balance struck by God taking into account the works performed up to the point of reckoning, both as to merit and demerit, and not omitting to introduce the element of imputed righteousness from the fathers, who had a surplus of merit. Only this formal similarity overlooks the specific difference between the two schemes compared. Under the Judaistic scheme the balance struck is unstable, subject to constant modification, each new moment introducing new items to be reckoned with changing the momentary credit or debit from day to day. For this relativity and uncertainty Paul substituted absoluteness and certainty. And here lies precisely the point where eschatology and justification intersect. By making both the negative element of the forgiveness of sin and the positive element of bestowal of the benefits of salvation unqualified, the Apostle made the act of justification to all intents, so far as the believer is concerned, a last judgment anticipated. If the act dealt with present and past sins only, leaving the future product in uncertainty, it could not be regarded as possessing such absoluteness, and the comparison with the last judgment would break down at the decisive point. This interpretation of the Pauline doctrine as bearing a purely-retrospective significance has been actually advocated of late. It has been contended that in the Apostle's view justification is in the main a missionary doctrine, it enabling the convert to begin with a clean record, but with the clear understanding that the question of salvation in the end shall be by no means prejudiced by it, the final issue no longer made dependent on the forgiving grace of God, but on the holiness of the post-baptismal life. The Christian cannot be saved unless successful in his striving to stand blameless before God in the judgment-day. At bottom Paul's teaching so interpreted would have as much, if not more, in common with the Romanist than with the common Protestant doctrine. The main
proof for this is said to lie in the fact that the Apostle nowhere consoles the readers of his Epistles, when fallen into sin, with the free, abundant pardon of justification, but requires instantaneous conversion, and in the opposite case insists upon their excommunication from the fellowship of believers. Both his personal practical experience and his doctrinal conviction were that the Christian can and ought to be sinless. Hence his doctrine of the new creature under the control of the Spirit. There is a grain of truth in this representation, but taken as a whole it bristles with impossibilities. True, the pastoral practice of the Apostle does not seem to make as abundant use of the consolatory aspect of justification for allaying the consciousness of sin as from the Protestant standpoint might have been a priori expected. In seeking to explain this, however, it should be remembered that the Pauline converts had been to no small extent in their pre-Christian state gross pagan sinners, with whom special caution had to be exercised, lest the doctrine of free grace should become an occasion for antinomianism. When Paul speaks of sin such as ipso facto excludes from tolerance and is inconsistent with the Christian state, consequently falling outside the pale of the church, he has in mind these gross types of sin. A scrutiny of the catalogues of sins in 1 Cor. 5:11; 6:9, 10; Gal. 5:19–21 immediately reveals the pertinence of this observation. But surely, Paul did not consider anything remaining below these terms of excessive and persistent and Christianityexcluding sins as negligible and exempt from the reach of justification. The Apostle not seldom does speak of the consciousness of justification as needful for those who, within the Christian sphere, are subject to a daily sense of sin. In Rom. 5:2 he affirms that believers through Christ have received and now are in actual possession of (ἐσχήκαμεν) access to the grace wherein they stand, i.e., the grace of peace through justification; cp. also the Present Tense ἔχομεν in Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14. According to Gal. 2:20 the life which the Apostle now lives in the flesh he lives through the faith of (in) the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him. In Phil. 3:7–9 he represents it as his constant striving to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of his own … but that
which is through faith in Christ. It is also extremely doubtful whether the forgiveness of trespasses spoken of in Eph. 1:7 and Col. 1:14 refers to sins of the pre-Christian state only. The argument, therefore, derived from scanty recourse to justification in pastoral practice does not prove that Paul excluded sins committed after conversion from the scope of the justifying pronouncement of God. To be sure, were Wernle's view correct and justification purelyretrospective, then the vital nexus between it and the final judgment would be broken. But in favor of the intimate connection between the future and the present, and the backward movement in thought from the former to the latter much more may be said than is directly affected by this controversy. The language of Rom. 8:33, 34: "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies; who is he that condemns" could not be more absolute than the sentence rendered in the last judgment; in fact it is so absolute as to be indifferent to the categories of present, past or future. In this respect the fact of justification is only the reverse side of the facts of prognosis and predestination and it would be out of place in the catena salutis of vs. 29, if its scope were less unlimited and unconditional than that of the other conceptions enumerated. Justification is a "δικαίωσις ζωῆς" (justification of life), and the "life" thus declared to be its consequent is the endless life, that of which it is promised that the saints "shall reign" in it, Rom. 5:18–21. In general the certainty of salvation so emphatically affirmed by the Apostle with regard to the Christian as such would not be possible, if the central act of the divine saving procedure bore with regard to the future an aspect of relativity. Instead of being, what it actually is, the backbone of the sureness of the religious consummation, it would become the one weak point exposing all the remainder to uncertainty, and in so far worse than void of value. Ultimately the absoluteness of the divine self-committal inhering in this one act of justifying the sinner is due to the feature of its being a "Godinteresting" act in the strongest sense of the word. It is the act in which religion celebrates its triumph, and therefore the act in which the religious and the eschatological are inseparably united. But for this same reason it is in principle incapable of being an
eschatological act in the exclusive sense of the word, an act incapable of anticipation. An experience which was lacking in the foretaste of the ultimate enjoyment of God would be to that extent lacking the innermost core of religion itself.
The fourth line along which an influence of the eschatological teaching upon the Apostle's soteriological doctrine can be observed is that of the significance and function of the Spirit. As this subject will afterwards at various points in our investigation obtrude itself, we here content ourselves with a mere sketch of the argument. As is generally recognized, the specific character of Paul's doctrine of the Spirit lies in the universal and equable distribution of his operation over the entire circle of believers, and within the life of every believer over the entire range, subconscious and conscious, religious and ethical, of this life. In this particular the Pauline pneumatology is clearly marked off from the phases of Revelation preceding it, not only in the Old Testament, but also from earlier New Testament types of teaching, not even the Johannine type of our Lord's teaching excluded, although in the last-mentioned a certain preformation of Paul's doctrine may be found. The problem is how to account for this immense widening out of the subject. It might be answered, and not unjustly, that the extraordinary bestowal of the Spirit at Pentecost, or to use more strictly-Pauline language, the new phase of the Spirit's influence connected with the resurrection of Christ, are sufficient to account for this, the practical enlargement being merely the inevitable result of the speeding up of the factual progress of events. Still this will not wholly account for the peculiarity in question, for the main peculiarity consists in the enveloping, circumambient, one might almost say atmospheric character of the Spirit's working, a feature first clearly emerging with Paul, and that so strongly as to give at times almost the impression as though the personal character of the Spirit's mode of existence were obscured by it. To recur upon what the Old Testament teaches about the Spirit's universally distributed influence in the sphere of natural life does not help to a solution, because this idea of the quickening power of the Spirit in nature,
while nowhere denied in the New Testament, and by no means entirely absent from Paul, has nevertheless to a large extent been eclipsed by the soteric pneumatology. And particularly, so far as Paul himself is concerned, this soteriologizing aspect of the Spirit's working has been carried to a point, where it can scarcely be understood as a simple prolongation of the line of his working in the sphere of nature. The "pneumatic" with Paul is practically equivalent to the "supernatural." It is consequently rather the opposite to than the analogue of the natural, after the manner of the antithesis expressed by Jesus in Jno. 3:8. A natural solution offers itself by supposing that the "Pneuma" was in the mind of the Apostle before all else the element of the eschatological or the celestial sphere, that which characterizes the mode of existence and life in the world to come and consequently of that anticipated form in which the world to come is even now realized in heaven. As pervading this sphere it would cease to exercise a spasmodic activity to be confined to certain groups of phenomena; its presence and operation would of necessity appear constant and universal within the sphere of redemption. The detailed phenomena pointing to the actual existence of this point of view will be investigated later. If their presence may be taken for granted here, they prove that in a very large aspect, second to none in its importance for the Pauline system of thought, the eschatological appears as predeterminative both the substance and form of the soteriological.
What has been found is important not merely by reason of the light it throws upon the genesis of Paul's teaching on its intellectual side, it likewise helps to answer the charge of the absence of systematic coherence brought particularly against the eschatological teaching. It were far more accurate to say that the eschatological strand is the most systematic in the entire fabric of the Pauline thought-world. For it now appears that the closely interwoven soteric tissue derives its pattern from the eschatological scheme, which bears all the marks of having had precedence in his mind. Among all the other factors usually reckoned with as sources or determinants of the Apostle's theological system, there is none that can lay equal claim
to self-evidencing character with this. No doubt Paul's mind had by nature a certain systematic bent, which made him pursue with great resoluteness the consequences of given premises. No doubt also some influence should be attributed to his Jewish scholastic training. As to the latter, however, the influence of the Rabbinical cast of mind has, if we may believe Jewish writers, been greatly overestimated. The Rabbinical teaching was not particularly systematic. Even where it tended towards logical correlation, it contented itself with more or less superficial attempts at harmonizing, and did not feel disturbed even by serious antinomies. It is safe to assume that far more than all this counted the eschatological mould into which the Apostle's thought had been cast from the beginning. What gives dogmatic coloring to his teaching is largely derived from its antithetical structure, as exhibited in the comprehensive antitheses of the First Adam and the Last Adam, sin and righteousness, the flesh and the Spirit, law and faith, and these are precisely the historic reflections of the one great transcendental antithesis between this world, and the, world-to-come. It is no wonder that such energetic eschatological thinking tended towards consolidation in an orb of compact theological structure. For in it the world-process is viewed as a unit. The end is placed in the light of the beginning, and all intermediate developments are construed with reference to the purpose a quo and the terminus ad quem. Eschatology, in other words, even that of the most primitive kind, yields ipso facto a philosophy of history, be it of the most rudimentary sort. And every philosophy of history bears in itself the seed of a theology. To this must be added that the Pauline outline of history possessed in the Messianic concept a centralizing factor of extraordinary potency, an element whereby the antitheses above named were dissolved into an exceptionally harmonious synthesis. Only one thing more, and that of supreme importance, needs to be remembered: all eschatological interpretation of history, when united to a strong religious mentality cannot but produce the finest practical theological fruitage. To take God as source and end of all that exists and happens, and to hold such a view suffused with the warmth of genuine devotion, stands not only related to theology as
the fruit stands to the tree: it is by reason of its essence a veritable theological tree of life.
CHAPTER III: THE RELIGIOUS AND
ETHICAL MOTIVATION OF PAUL'S
ESCHATOLOGY
The eschatological part of the Pauline teaching has not escaped the general opprobrium cast upon the teaching as a whole, that of being un-modernly theological, and hence partaking of all the blemishes and inadequacies, which the flesh of all theology is heir to. There is a difference, however, between the general dislike attaching to the whole fabric and the special attack made against this one piece in particular. The offensive carried on along the line as a whole is of a more formal, theological nature, and, as a rule, disavows antagonism on principle to the religious spirit pervading the teaching as such, provided only the substance be thoroughly divested of its antiquated form. The polemic against the eschatology is of a different kind. Here a positive ethico-religious blame is believed to attach to the animus and content of the ideas considered in themselves. At the outset, in view of what we have found concerning the close interweaving of eschatology with the entire structure of the soteriology, it would seem preposterous to praise in one and the same breath the evangelically-religious and highmindedly ethical Paul, and yet to make bitter charges against his doctrine concerning the end of the world. It is a priori probable that in the circles where such dualistic appraisal appears, either the
general trend of Paulinism has been profoundly misunderstood, or the motivation of the eschatology misapprehended, or both defects are present in equal degree. The charges against the eschatology find various forms of expression. Foremost stands the revulsion from the supernaturalism in the eschatology, for with Paul, as elsewhere in Scripture, eschatology is supernaturalism in the nth degree. Most uncompromising, further, is the fault found with the other-worldliness of the Apostle's eschatology. To be sure, this is a fault found not with Paul only, but with every type of New Testament eschatology at any point. Paul may have carried the matter to an extreme, but no one of the other writers of the New Testament, not even the Evangelists or the Jesus speaking through them, is exempt from this criticism. At bottom the disagreement here is not one between two types of religion and theology; it concerns the health of religion over against its decline. It is inherent in religion to seek the highest and closest approach to God; where this has become a matter of indifference, to however small a degree, there the genuineness and vigor of the religious impulse have suffered impairment, and been replaced by interests of a lower nature, religiously considered; the change of outlook is symptomatic of a movement away from God, though this may not be always consciously realized. Where the extreme of the tendency in question has been reached it deserves to be qualified as in principle anti-religious. A so-called Christianity proving cold or hostile towards the interests of the life to come has ceased to be Christianity in the historic sense of the word.
A second factor working for the disparagement of Biblical Eschatology, and of the Pauline type in particular, springs from the modern striving after autonomy in ethics and religion. Here again the element criticized is not confined to Paul but covers the entire range of Biblical religion, and, in common with the tendency just discussed, points to a deep-rooted perverseness in the religious mind. There sometimes enters a "too proud to receive" in the relationship between God and man, after the same manner as it appears in social human intercourse. Only in the latter case the
fault is more excusable than in the former, because in religion the giver and the receiver are so inevitably unequal in position, as to lift the whole question of what the proprieties allow and forbid above the sphere of reasonable consideration. In our Lord's teaching the two great principles of the sovereignty of God, and of the fatherhood of God, at one stroke rule out the impious concept of human autonomy in deciding the terms on which man shall deal with God. The one who has given all is still at the close of the process (sub specie juris divini) an "unprofitable" (not a "useless") servant, since the master has gotten out of him no more than he was at the outset entitled to or, to speak in terms of the slave-market, than had been paid for him at the beginning. Everyone feels that in a relationship thus construed the problem of what is consistent or non-consistent with the dignity of human nature to offer, or to receive, loses all significance. The same regard for divine sovereignty appears likewise in the insistence upon the principle that God without injustice can give the same remuneration to those who labor less than to those who labor more. At best this could be a question of equity; the idea that "the pride of labor" were justified in denying the more to the others, beyond what these have strictly earned, remains entirely out of the question. Apart from the element of the divine sovereignty, however, our Lord appeals likewise to the idea of the divine fatherhood, which as such is incompatible with the enforcement of inherent rights. The child refusing to do for its parents aught else than a spirit of autonomous choice may allow it to, acts from the very opposite of filial piety, which amounts to saying that the action would be irreligious and unethical in principle. In this matter grace intertwines with justice, but the recurrence upon either one to the exclusion of the other implies that the autonomous desire of the creature is made the regnant principle in intercourse with God.
The above said holds true in general. It is, however, in the province of eschatology that the two ideas of autonomy and heteronomy stand out in sharpest contrast. The web of biblical eschatology is shot through with the strand of reward. In the teaching of Jesus,
where one might least expect it, it is particularly in evidence, to such an extent indeed, that its authenticity has been called in question, on the mere ground of the irreconcilableness of such ideas with the ideal ethics of the Great Teacher of Nazareth. Where the presence and authenticity of the element admit of no denial, the issue is glossed over through declaring all such utterances a lingering remnant of Judaism, which Jesus had not been able to throw off completely. Were the thought confined to isolated contexts, an attempt to this effect might perhaps be made with some approach to plausibleness, but even then the fact would remain that in certain recurrent figures, taken from the sphere of labor in the harvest field or elsewhere, the idea is irremovable. If one so choose, he may consider it tares of teaching, but to weed it out from the grain is impossible. Sometimes it occurs in the most tender religious setting, as where a reward is promised for prayer in secret. Plainly this is not an outworn fringe of Judaism; it belongs to the innermost core of Jesus' religious consciousness.
With Paul particularly Jesus' reward-concept shows striking, mostly eschatological, affinities. If there be any reward at all, then the great epoch of summing up and allotting destinies must be pregnant with it. Nevertheless the idea is by no means confined to eschatology, no more than it is with Jesus. How deep-seated an idea it is appears especially from the circumstance that it has succeeded in maintaining itself upon the background of the Apostle's insistence upon the principle of absolute grace in redemption. In spite of the doctrine of justification through faith alone, the factor of works does not cease to play a rôle in the teaching on the Last Judgment, not even so far as the Christian is concerned. How far these two apparently discordant notes are capable of being reduced to harmony we shall have to consider at a later point. Here we simply note that the conflict most stubbornly obtrudes itself at the high points of Paul's eschatological teaching. That the idea of eschatological reward can be made to render service as a powerful incentive towards religious and, in particular missionary, zeal, the grand climax of the resurrection argument in 1 Cor. 15 proves:
"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." That a similar sequence exists between eschatological reward and the endurance of persecution and affliction in the present life, is shown by 1 Thess. 1:4–7: "For your patience and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions which ye endure (is) a manifest token (endeigma) of the righteous judgment of God, to the end that ye may be counted worthy of the Kingdom of God for which ye also suffer; if so be that it is a righteous thing with God to recompense affliction to them that afflict you and to you that are afflicted rest (relief) with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven," etc. The same axiom underlies the argument of Rom. 2:6, 7: "Who will render every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in welldoing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life," etc. The reasoning here is not dialectic, nor a species of argumentum ad hominem, employed to drive the Jews into a theological corner; it is a hypothetical argument, to be sure, but none the less, e mente Pauli, perfectly serious, and immutably valid from the standpoint of the divine procedure. Neither here nor elsewhere does the Apostle assert on principial grounds, that the bestowal of eternal life on the basis of fulfilment of the divine law would militate against the dignity of religion either from the side of God or from the side of man. It should be noticed that the terms in which the Apostle speaks to denote the reward are specifically-eschatological terms: glory, honor, immortality, eternal life. The passage proves that the eschatological principle is so deeply embedded in the structure of the biblical religion as to precede and underlie everything else. Even the procedure of "grace" and "faith" on which the entire Pauline Gospel is staked, does not, when correctly apprehended, so far as the objective divine procedure is concerned, abrogate it; it only exempts man from its direct operation, and that for the twofold reason that when applied to sinful man it must prove futile, and moreover, that it must, when put into practice by the sinful subjectivity of man, inevitably carry with itself that mood of "boasting" and "self-glorying" which is not merely deficient in
religious value, but pointedly anti-religious, the negation in principle of what is the core of religion itself. The fact therefore remains, that Paul admits and retains the principle of reward within his eschatological scheme. As to the compatibility of this with the principle of a law-free gospel, the present connection is not the place for a thorough discussion of that problem. Our interest for the moment lies in the registering of the fact as such, not in the evaluation of it as something either to the discredit or the credit of the Pauline eschatology.
Attacks of still a different kind have been made upon the eschatological teaching of the Apostle. The difference from the foregoing lies in this that here not the injection of eschatology as such is on principle condemned, but the quality of the Apostle's mental attitude in embracing its ideas and associations is subjected to sharp censure. The content of Paul's mode of thinking as to tone and coloring not merely but likewise as to moral and religious spirit is represented as an inferiority complex scarcely worth classifying under the head of religion at all. The charge is a charge against the man Paul; it is meant to cast a stigma upon his character. We are told that in his eschatology Paul was largely dominated by egotism to the serious injury of the altruistic element in his religious makeup. Seeing how prominent a place the eschatological strands of thought occupy in the teaching the seriousness of the charge lies on the surface. Altogether apart from the ethico-religious flaw, the abnormal proportion would interfere with the symmetry of the Apostle's faith. This, however, is by no means as yet the worst. Stunted and deformed characters have sometimes accomplished great things in the Kingdom of God. Nay even a sanctified egotism, provided it be intensely conscious of its vocation for the service of the truth, is not an uncommon phenomenon in the annals of religion. In the present case, however, the issue reaches out beyond such self-concentration of service. What is found fault with in Paul is egotism per se. It was something that sprang from a most intense desire for life, and that physical life. Nor was this purely negative, viz. the instinctive protest of human nature against death as a
monstrous thing; it had assumed the character of an unquenchable thirst for bliss and glory. From this point of view the Apostle's entire eschatological "obsession" has been with great sharpness interpreted by Kabisch. The Paul of Kabisch might be properly called the gluttonous man and wine-bibber among the eschatologists of the New Testament. Under this author's treatment almost all conceptions and processes are physicized. The fire by which the products of a man's work are destroyed, and from which he himself is narrowly saved at the last day (1 Cor. 3:13–15), Paul is supposed to have understood as literal physical fire; the insistence upon the value of his body and the eager longing for its preservation and restoration, so as to avoid an intervening period of nakedness between the moments of death and resurrection, are but symptoms of a vulgar interest in such delights as the possession of a future body alone could render possible. This would be the extreme form of the idea of reward viewed from its reprehensible subjective side. It goes without saying that such a type of belief did not, according to Kabisch, spring chiefly from the Old Testament but rather from the Rabbinical and Apocalyptic ideas of later Judaism. Notwithstanding the distorted and extravagant features of Kabisch's book, it may serve as a caution against certain hyper-"spiritualized" interpretations of New Testament religion, to which all occupation with the body as of religious interest has virtually become indifferent or even repellent. In the store set by the body Paul reveals himself, not in the first place, the pupil of Apocalyptic, but a true heir of the Old Testament tradition. That to the latter, so far as it had attained an outlook into the future life, the body could have in no wise appeared unimportant, hardly needs proof; the question would rather lie the other way, whether the idea of a purely spiritual, unembodied entity had, as concerns man, as yet entered within its purview. All that is related in the Messianic prophecies concerning the enjoyments of the future age is inseparable from the existence and functioning of the body. It is not otherwise with Jesus, who likewise associated with the resurrection the reëndowment of the heirs of the age to come with a true body. The correct interpretation of the passage Matt. 22:30; Mk. 12:25; Lk.
20:30 leads to the same conclusion, for, although in the abstract the idea of a resurrection without a body is not unthinkable, and actually occurs in the Apocalyptic literature, yet from the discourse of Jesus in the passages cited such an idea is plainly excluded. The being "like unto angels" (Lk. 5:36 ἰσάγγελοί εἰσι) does not express similarity to the angels in every respect, but only in regard to the absence of the faculty of procreation; for conveying the idea of bodiless existence not ἴσος but ὁμο͂ιος would have had to be employed. A comparison of the passage with other utterances of Jesus leads to the same result. The two classical contexts 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 5 are explainable only from the standpoint of one to whom a bodiless existence in the world to come would have fallen short of the ideal of supreme blessedness. There must have been some powerful motive underlying such a state of mind. Mere emotional shrinking from a condition of nakedness, while to some extent involved, will not completely account for it. But to say that the Apostle loved his body, and loved it for specific eschatological reasons, is by no means equivalent to saying that this love sprang from hedonistic desire. Other things might very well have come under consideration. For one thing the wish for redemptive consummation should be taken into account. Paul was not a man easily satisfied with half-way attainment in the redemptive sphere. He was governed by the absolutistic impulse, which is in the same manner characteristic of the teaching of our Lord. Nor should we dismiss in such a connection the ideal of a fuller measure of glorification of God through the completely restored organism of man than would be possible in a disembodied state. Not the slightest evidence, however, can be produced of an anticipation of, far less of a legitimate, eschatological satisfaction cherished by Paul apart from God and the enjoyment of communion with Him. Had he been animated by an irreligious interest in the things of the future life, then the inevitable accompaniment of this would have been a pronounced individualism. In reality the eschatological interest attaches with Paul to the large collective happenings rather than to the destiny of the individual, although, of course, the latter can never be wholly kept separated from the former. In 1 Cor. 15 the
center of gravity does not lie in vs. 58 but in vs. 28. The intense Christ-ward bent of the Apostle's piety also is irreconcilable with the type of hedonism laid to his charge. If hedonism be principially individualistic, then the inclusion of additional egos would be bound to break its force. The climacteric consolation extended to the Thessalonians in connection with their ultimate deliverance is that they shall "be forever with the Lord," 1 Thess. 4:17. Where the note of joy and glory enters it is not seldom produced by the sense of pride arising from the presentation of believers in holiness and blamelessness at the parousia rather than from any hedonistic prospect opening up for the Apostle himself, 1 Thess. 2:19, 20.
A thorough discussion of the alternative of self-interestedness or altruism in the Apostle's eschatological consciousness can not be given except in the closest dependence on the two fundamental realities which make up for him the content of the eternal state. These two realities are that of "life" and of "glory." The investigation of these two, however, belongs to the concluding chapter of our treatise, that dealing with the future world. Before reaching that subject of "static" eschatology, we shall have to deal with the preceding dramatic developments. It is to the consideration of these that we now proceed.
CHAPTER IV: THE COMING OF THE
LORD AND ITS PRECURSORS
The two overtowering final events in the drama of eschatology are the Resurrection and the Judgment. As we shall presently see they are the points where the rivers of history issue into the ocean. There
are numerous subsidiary streams, but, regarded from the standpoint of the ultimate basin as a whole, these are but minor affluents whose waters do not reach the sea except by way of the two principal outlets. That of the latter there are two, and only two, is due to the inherently religious, and partly remedial, character of the process of which eschatology is the consummation. The Judgment is, of course, the inevitable summing up of a world-process that has fallen subject to the moral abnormalcy of sin; the Resurrection, after a parallel manner, serves for restoring what has become the prey of decadence and death. Where both purposes have been accomplished, their accomplishment makes ipso facto provision for whatever else in detail is disordered in the present age. Only in regard to the resurrection an additional factor must be taken into account. What pertains to it can not be exhaustively deduced from the remedial necessity created by sin and death. For the eschatological process is intended not only to put man back at the point where he stood before the invasion of sin and death, but to carry him higher to a plane of life, not attained before the probation, nor, so far as we can see, attainable without it.
This double-faced aspect of the final issues of history and redemption is in itself conceivable without a specifically-Messianic complexion. Many a time in the Old Testament the conclusion of things, both by way of judgment and of transformation, is connected with the epiphany of Jehovah without Messianic assistance. In fact the characterization of the great double event as a "coming" of the Messianic figure is very rare in the Old Testament. Even at the first opening of New Testament revelation in the disclosures made to the family of John the Baptist, and subsequently through the latter himself, the other mode of representation, that of the Lord's (God's) coming still maintains itself. In the teaching of Jesus and particularly with Paul the terminology undergoes a deep change in this respect. While the description of the end-crisis as a signal interposition of God is never entirely in abeyance, we may say that on the whole it gives way to that of the coming of Christ. This is highly significant, because the term "coming" had in certain
connections become practically a technical term for eschatological eventuation, just as we are accustomed to speak of the "parousia" meaning without explanation that of Jesus. Now this whole complex was bodily shifted from Jehovah-God to the Messianic circle of thought. The great and uniformly expected "coming" is henceforth a coming of the Messiah. Perhaps no more sweeping and in its effects more momentous transfer of a fundamental Old Testament concept and its reincarnation, as it were, in the New Testament frame of thought than this can be imagined. It should not be forgotten, of course, that the transference was facilitated by the attribution of the Kyrios-title to Jesus, which made it almost unavoidable to identify the "coming" of Jehovah-Kurios with the advent of the Messiah. Nevertheless the significance of the phenomenon remains. It lies not so much in the frequency of the association of Jesus with the eschatological crisis, but rather in the simultaneous disappearance of more or less similar eschatological terms once connected with God.
First we deal with the Pauline use of the term "parousia." This occurs of Christ in the following passages: 1 Cor. 15:23; 1 Thess. 2:19; 3:13; 4:15; 5:23; 2 Thess. 2:1, 8, (9). Being originally an appellative, in course of time the word tended to become a proper noun, the advent of Jesus at the end to such an extent monopolized its usage that other connections were lost sight of. This had for its further result, that in the later stage no determinative Genitive was required any longer, "the parousia" being in Christian parlance referable to one event only, and therefore not in need of closer specification. But such was not the original employment of the word; the specific de-genitivized use lies beyond the New Testament and the early Christian period. In the Pauline Epistles there are half a dozen passages where the Apostle speaks of his own parousia or of that of his own fellow-workers in the Gospel, in each case, of course, with the necessary personal determination: 1 Cor. 16:17 (of Stephanas); 2 Cor. 7:6, 7 (of Titus); 10:10 (of the body of Paul); Phil. 1:26; 2:12 (of Paul). It is true, even in such cases the word carries a certain stress of solemnity or importance, due to the consequences
associated with the arrival of the person in question. Of the advent of the Messiah "parousia" does not occur in the Jewish literature. With an approach to eschatological meaning it appears in "The Testaments of the XII Patriarchs," where Test. Jud. xxiii. 3 we read of "the parousia of the God of Righteousness," which certainly sounds as if a degree of affinity between it and the eschatological manner of speech had begun to be felt. In its secular as well as in its religious-eschatological use the word expresses the two closely connected ideas of arrival and presence. Parousia signifies "becoming present" and "being present" for a longer or shorter period. Somewhat of an analogy to this is furnished by the double sense of the English word "visit." It has been surmised that in parousia the static significance was the original one, out of which the other developed. This, however, is not certain. In the New Testament the idea of occurrence, arrival, plainly stand in the foreground.3 Of chief importance to note is the absence of the notion "again" from the word considered by itself. The noun means "arrival," not "return." It can not correctly be rendered by "second coming." When the Christians spoke of the parousia of their Lord, they were, of course, aware and mindful that the event spoken of was in point of fact a second arrival, duplicating in a certain respect that of the incarnation. Still there did not develop out of this consciousness the phrase "second parousia." That this did not happen is only explainable from the intensively prospective outlook of the early Church. So many things and such absolutelyconsummating things had become associated with the parousia of the Messiah, that only the catastrophe of the last days seemed capable of attracting and retaining the word for itself. This undoubtedly differs from the gravitation of present-day Christianity towards the historical life of Jesus in the past. The New Testament believer felt that while the Messiah had entered the world and been present in it, nevertheless the epochal coming, the one fully worthy of that name, the actual parousia of the Lord, belonged to the future. While the centering of Christian contemplation upon the nativity is both justified and understandable, yet it is more in the line of doctrinal perspective than in the line of instinctive,
immediate apprehension of things. Paul in this respect occupies the same standpoint as Peter and James, whilst in the Synoptics, if not the term "parousia," at least a past "coming" is predicated of Jesus, and that in words spoken by Jesus Himself.
The parousia taken as an event is with Paul catastrophic. Of a development within the limits of the concept, or a duplication or triplication of the event there is nowhere any trace. It is a point of eventuation, not a series of successive events. About the question, whether it ushers in the "millennium" or the eternal state, nothing can, of course, be decided by this in itself. Only, if it should be found to refer to an "interregnum," then this by stress of usage would be apt so closely to bind it to the chiliastic complex of hope, as to dim the eternity-prospect beyond. It designates the momentous event, and consequently that which it opens up must needs carry a supreme, absolute weight to the religious consciousness. To conceive of Paul as focusing his mind on any phase of relative consummation, and as tying up to this the term "parousia," inevitably would involve his relegating the eternal things to a rank of secondary importance. It would have meant a repetition, or perhaps a continuation, of the Judaistic scheme of thought. Whether the evidence bears out the conclusion here anticipated (and in a certain sense "prejudiced") the subsequent discussion of the chiliasm-problem in Paul's eschatology will have to determine. A chiliasm-parousia tends to make for a chiliasm-complexion of the final state as a whole. And this would be worse than the Judaism of 4 Ezra and the Ap. of Baruch. What appears there as a compromise between the temporal and transcendental strands would with Paul have become a principial appraisal of the former above the latter. The vista of the transcendental world of heaven would have become all but effaced by the concrete shapes moving in the temporal foreground.
A second term descriptive with Paul of the eschatological coming of Christ is the term "revelation," ἀποκάλυψις. This occurs 2 Thess. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:7; 3:13; (Rom. 2:5; 8:18). The idea of a "revelation" of
the Messiah is older than Christianity. It did not first grow out of the belief of the present hidden life of Jesus in heaven which began with his withdrawal at the ascension and will come to an end through an open reappearance in the last day. The older eschatology had already learned to conceive of a twofold sense of this revealing. In some cases the conception moves entirely within the terrestrial sphere, both the hiding and the unveiling (revelation) taking place on earth, whatever place or time of existence might be further put back of that. The belief existed in certain circles that the Messiah, after his birth into this lower world, would for some time be kept hidden in some unknown place on earth, and that not until the appointed moment He would leave this hiding-place, and show Himself in public to the people, to perform his specific task, cp. 1 Ap. Bar. xxix. 3; xxx. 1; 4 Ezr. 7:28; Test. Lev. 18. An instance of his Jewish belief is recorded in Jno. 7:27: "When the Christ comes, no one knows whence He is," although the idea thus suggested is in no wise countenanced by Jesus or the Evangelist. Apart from this the Scriptural passages are all framed on the principle of a direct translation from the heavenly into the earthly regions, so as to impart to "apocalypsis" a technical (theological) sense, applied frequently to the transfer, or coming down, of great things, from the supernal to the terrestrial sphere. In this sense we meet with it already in the vision of Dan. 7 which depicts one like unto a son of man (= man) as coming with the clouds of heaven, words which certainly assume a previous existence, although giving as yet no information, how far the preëxistence was understood to reach back in time or into eternity. This general background, however, of a revelation from heaven, could not but assume a quite different complexion through becoming correlated with the visible disappearance of Jesus into heaven, and thus coupled with the promise of a likewise visible movement in the opposite direction, viz. his appearance in the future. That, rather than the incarnation, now become his "revelation" par excellence.
The flavor attaching to the term "apocalypsis" differs somewhat from that carried by the term "parousia." The latter concerns
believers chiefly, the former the enemies of God's people, though in neither case exclusively so. In 2 Thess. 1:7, 8 the militant revelation is described in the following terms: "At the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power, rendering vengeance to them that know not God, and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus." To believers the appearance of Christ will partake of the character of a "revelation," inasmuch as his glory has not been visibly disclosed to them before. The idea is in all passages plainly implied, that Jesus' eschatological revelation will bear the features of a strictly momentary, miraculous act. While things preceding and preparing for it do not, of course, lack all gradual and orderly unfolding, yet the event itself is catastrophic in the absolute sense, nay this very idea of suddenness and unexpectedness seems to be intimately associated with the word. Hence of the "Anomos" of 2 Thess. 2:3, 6, 8 an ἀποκάλυψις is predicted; many forces may after a hidden, mysterious manner work towards the ripeness of the time for his activity, none the less he is to be revealed "in his time."
A third term designating Christ's advent is ἡ ἡμέρα. 1 Thess. 5:4; 2 Cor. 3:13; (Heb. 10:25). This is found in various forms, according to the complements added to it. In Paul's writings the following of these enlarged designations occur:
ἡ ἡμέρα τοῦ Κυρίου, 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Thess. 2:2; 1 Cor. 5:5 (Acts 2:20; 3:10);
ἡμέρα τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν, 1 Cor. 1:8;
ἡ ἡμέρα τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ, 2 Cor. 1:14;
ἡ ἡμέρα Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, Phil. 1:6;
ἡ ἡμέρα Χριστοῦ, Phil. 1:10; 2:16;
The first of these forms is a rendering of the O.T. phrase "the day of Jehovah." Hence, in regard to some passages there is doubt,
whether "the Lord" in it be meant as the Greek translation "Lord" = "Adonaj" = "Jehovah," or signifies the Lord Jesus. Where the name "Jesus" is found in apposition, or the pronoun "our" is appended, there can be, of course, no doubt but Christ is meant. Absolutely certain of this we can not be, when the title simply reads "the Lord."
As to the import and bearing of the word "day," various theories are being held, of none of which absolute certainty can be affirmed. Some think the origin lies in the conception of Jehovah as a victorious warrior, who has his day in which He will be the center of the entire scene of battle and victory, the day thus being monopolized by Him and filled with the revelation of his glory. There are certain contexts in Paul which favor this association. According to 1 Thess. 5:2; 2:8 the day brings with it destruction for the enemies of God's people. The O.T. usage is to a large extent in accord with this: Am. 5:18; Hos. 1:11; Isa. 2:12; 10:3; 13:6, 13; 34:8; Jer. 46:10; Ez. 7:19; 13:5; 30:3; Joel 1:15; 2:1, 11, 31; 3:14; Ob. 15; Zeph. 1:14, 15; 2:2, 3; Mal. 4:5.
Others think that the source of the idea must be sought in the terminology of judgment in the forensic sense. A judge or a court have their day on which they are in session. That such usage was not unfamiliar to Paul may be seen from 1 Cor. 4:3: "But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of any man's day." The idea of a judgment-day is plainly associated with the phrase "day of the Lord," wherever Paul by means of the idea urges the practice of holiness: Rom. 2:16; 1 Cor. 2:13; Phil. 1:6, 10; 2:16. It should be remembered, however, that the punitive-realistic and the purely-forensic conceptions cannot in all cases be cleanly separated, as little as this can be done in the Old Testament.
In a couple of passages Paul seems to have colored the word "day" forming part of the phrase with the (not-purely chronological), but likewise physical-pictorial association of the element of "light." "Light" belongs to the day as its characteristic, the opposite of the darkness that pertains to the night. Hence "the day of the Lord" can