Antichrist, and in the First and Second Epistles of John this name

Antichrist, and in the First and Second Epistles of John this name

CHAPTER V: THE MAN OF SIN

"The Man of Sin," also called "The Son of Perdition," "The Lawless One," is an eschatological person described by Paul in 2 Thess. 2:1– 12. In ordinary eschatological parlance he bears the name Antichrist, and in the First and Second Epistles of John this name occurs. So far as we are able to ascertain, Antichrist is not a Pauline term, although the possibility must be reckoned with, that Paul may have been acquainted with it and simply not used it. Even the Johannine Apocalypse, with all its abundance of eschatological imagery, does not employ it. What lies back of 2 Thess. in early Christian literature or tradition, whether written or unwritten, does not know "the Antichrist" as a formal title. Going back still farther to the pre-Christian literature of the apocryphal or pseudepigraphical kind or to the Old Testament, we still look in vain for the later so familiar technical term.

To say that the name Antichrist is scarce in or absent from early documents by no means implies that the real person or the real thing called by other names but resembling to a larger or smaller extent the conception, is equally non-existent in that period. Paul himself is a striking example for the fact that a reality-complex of great religious or historical moment can exist for considerable time prior to its finding significant, unifying designation in the theological and eschatological vocabulary. The time-distance between Thessalonians and the Johannine Epistles is scarcely long enough to permit the working out of such an extra-important and far-reaching complex of ideas. Whatever may be true of the sudden emergence of names, whole blocks of religious thought with all their psychological associations are not so suddenly upheaved. John certainly deals with it as something not then first made known to his readers, but avowedly familiar, and the same manner of introducing it is seen in Thessalonians. The attention called to it was for an eminently practical purpose, viz. to warn against the

delusion, as though the day of the Lord had already arrived. But for correcting that the simplest reference to a well-established eschatological program would have been sufficient. When instead of this the Apostle launches out into a somewhat detailed exposition of the entire subject, it becomes difficult to escape from the impression that Paul took a certain personal delight in drawing the figure at full length. And what he says seems to be derived from a fixed fund of knowledge. In the pre-Pauline tradition of the N.T. there is but one thing that could throw light on this. We refer to the phrase of our Lord in the great eschatological discourse βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως, translated in the English text by "abomination of desolation": "When, therefore, ye see the abomination of desolation, spoken of through Daniel, the prophet, standing in the holy place (let him that reads understand)." The Daniel-context refers proximately to a desecration of the sanctuary in Jerusalem expected, it seems, from the sacrilegious hand of Antiochus Epiphanes. That Jesus shaped the matter in his mind after the same fashion is plain; only he projects the horrible event from the past in which it had once taken place into a future beyond his own point of speaking. The monstrous concept is neither by Daniel nor by Jesus clothed directly in the form of a personal antagonist to God; in this respect the technical terms of the Antichrist-tradition do not yet appear, but as ominous shades they hover already in the background. In our later treatment of the prophecy we shall endeavor to make clear that the same phenomenon observable in Paul and with Jesus already characterizes the representation in Daniel. Already there things are spoken of and not explained; there lies a world of not unknowable, and yet only half-known mystery beyond what is disclosed. Thus we are enabled to draw through the line from Paul to Jesus and from Jesus to Daniel and from Daniel to something already an object of knowledge, be it as yet only vague, to an older generation. This continuity is of great value to all Christian scholars who seek to deal with the Antichrist-subject. At bottom it furnishes the main scriptural justification for dealing with the subject on a typical basis. The modern mind may scorn this as one more instance of the unscientific, "rabbinical" treatment of the Old

Testament by the New. Whatever maltreatment may be charged, it is a comfort to know that the crime was committed before by both Jesus and Paul.

Some have thought that evidence of an older Antichrist-tradition could be discovered in the name Beliar occurring repeatedly in the O.T. There is in itself nothing objectionable in tracing such connections. Were Beliar actually connected with the Antichristgenealogy, this would prove his origins to be exceedingly ancient. In the only passage where Paul introduces the name, 2 Cor. 6:15, Beliar is naught else but a duplicate name for Satan. The whole meaning centers in the ethical exhortation that righteousness and iniquity and light and darkness can have no more communion with each other than Christ can have with Beliar. Examining the Old Testament we find that Beliar nowhere appears as a name directly given to a person, but always in the company of prefixes for the purpose of attaching to the persons or things referred to an evil connotation. Thus we read of "sons," "children," "daughters," "men," even of "brooks" of Belial, Deut. 13:3; Judg. 19:22; 20:13; 1 Sam. 1:16; 2:12; 10:27; 25:17, 25; 30:22; 2 Sam. 16:7; 23:6; 1 Ki. 21:10, 13; 2 Chron. 13:7.

Surmises and speculations about this O.T. Beliar are somewhat precarious precisely because of his appearance in a composite indirect form. Undeniably there hides behind these phrases a real demonic name which largely must have gone out of use, being replaced by Satan or some such name. It had ceased to perform further service than that of a term of opprobrium, varying according to the intent with which it was hurled at somebody in mere desire to tease or with the more serious purpose of inflicting real harm through an assumed magical force inhering in it. It is plain that Beliar is not in canonical Scripture a precursor or duplication of Antichrist.

But Beliar has not been allowed to rest in his O.T. oblivion. His name reëmerges in the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings

and through the methods applied by the religionsgeschichtliche school has from there been thrown back into the olden times and that with a much more pronounced Antichrist-physiognomy than was his before. This school makes its great principle the substantial identity and continuity of all Oriental, especially Babylonian, religion. Much material concerning Beliar in the non-Canonical literature and in the earlier unwritten tradition is freely dated back into hoary antiquity, and thus a quite novel Antichrist-tradition is constructed.

The modern writer who has done most in this line of throwing back the late post-Christian material into a large pre-Christian traditionreservoir is Bousset. Following the ideas of Gunkel a.o. Bousset assumes that the conception of a Great Adversary is very ancient.5 Its ultimate origins are traced back to the ur-Babylonian myth of the contest between Marduk and the Chaos-dragon. Through anthropomorphisation of this primeval myth arose the figure of a human opponent of God, used by Satan as his instrument. Then this again was changed into the image of a Jewish pseudo-Messiah. At a still later point of development the pseudo-Messiah became a political oppressor arising from the sphere of paganism. This is an abnormally long development, but Bousset thinks this feature need not tell against the hypothesis, because tradition in the eschatological sphere, and particularly so in the Antichrist-sphere, has always borne a rigid character enduring like a once set block of concrete. Therefore, in his opinion, the existence of the much earlier can be proven from even its sporadic emergence in certain beliefs at later points. Another observation is supposed to lend help to the same effect. It is believed that the material was largely transmitted through secret oral tradition, not in written form such as would be accessible to a greater number of readers.

It does not lie within our plan to criticize these views in any large way. The Antichrist-complex, it is true, forms part of them, but they comprise much more that is not of our direct concern. As to the fixity of the tradition, a single glance at the series of

transformations which Bousset believes it through the course of the ages to have undergone is certainly not adapted to impress us with its alleged rigidity. And, so far as the manipulation of the material by Bousset and his followers is concerned this bears all the bad features of extreme arbitrariness. There is constant unwarranted combination and equation of names and features lying not only decades but ages apart, and a persistent effort to supply the lacking intermediate links from unevidenced hidden strands of popular belief. Furthermore, denying to the patristic writers the capacity of producing such things, even through an over-heated imagination, does injustice to their mentality, as though they had been entirely sterile in the power of eschatological production. It hardly agrees with what we know of some of them. Papias certainly was not under-endowed with fecundity in this line. Nor should one overlook the stupendous proportions this hypothesis has assumed, covering with its wings almost the whole compass of what is called sacred history. Both Gunkel and Bousset are driven to assume that this sinister tradition of the Arch-enemy is older than the Messianic tradition. The Antichrist has here eaten the young Christ-child after some such fashion as the Christian Apocalypse depicts in one of its visions.

We must not, however, let such observations turn us aside from our proximate purpose, which is to examine the alleged precedents of the Antichrist-concept in the Apocalyptic writings and their backward projection from thence into the pre-Christian literature. The following may fairly illustrate the method by which the results are obtained. In the Ezra-Apocalypse (4 Ezr.), a work dating according to Schürer a.o. from about 81–96 A.D., a realistic description of a human monster is given, in connection with which, however, the name Beliar does not appear. It is different in the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs, usually dated from the first Christian century. Here Beliar is actually introduced. The references are as follows: Test. Rub., 4: "whoredom brings upon a man the derision of Beliar and of men"; Sim. 5: "whoredom separates from God and drives to Belial"; Lev. 19: "the choice lies between the

darkness and the light, the works of God and the works of Beliar"; Dan. 4: "when the soul is continually worried, the Lord departs from it, and Beliar obtains dominion"; Napht. 2: "the alternative rule of conduct for man is either a law of the Lord or a law of Beliar"; Iss. 6: "his descendants will leave the commandments of the Lord and cleave to Beliar"; Zeb. 9: "God will deliver all captive men from Beliar"; Jos. 20: "after Joseph's bones have been brought up to Canaan, God will be in light with the Israelites, and Beliar will be in darkness with the Egyptians"; Benj. 3: "the spirits of Beliar incite to every kind of wickedness and oppression."

It seems clear that there is nothing in the passages cited compelling to think of an Antichrist figure differentiated from Satan. All that is said admits of easy derivation from the influence of the latter. And negatively the absence of the eschatological element is difficult to account for, if Beliar in those former times passed as a technical name for Antichrist. Still another writing bearing on the problem is the so-called Ascensio Isaiae, particularly in its later part, Chaps. vi– xi, apparently of Christian origin, whilst the preceding Chaps. i–v seem to be of Jewish provenience. The Jewish section is somewhat indefinitely dated after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. In iv. 2 occur these words: "And after the consummation has arrived, the Angel Berial, that great King of the world, over which he rules since it exists, will descend from his firmament, in the form of a wicked human matricidal king; he is the king of this world …; this angel Berial, in the form of the said kingdom, will come and together with him will come all the powers of this world, and they will obey him in whatsoever things he shall desire." This passage does not form part of the central section of the Jewish core of the book. As standing in the text, it contains clear references to the rôle played by Nero in the Antichrist-expectation, and consequently must be later than the time at which Nero could have been expected to return as a supernatural figure, either from the Orient, still alive, or from Hades through a resurrection. On the other hand, his being called a wicked angel, the ruler of this world, having his habitation in the air, and the chief of the powers of this world, all this closely

identifies him in character with Satan. There are things here scarcely predicable of Nero. Bousset, recognizing this, suggests that the Nero-references are a later insertion. This, it must be admitted, makes the passage harmonious within itself, but at the same time dispenses of the necessity to think of an Antichrist-Beliar. What is said of Beliar as to his being the king of this world is identical with what Paul affirms of Satan.

In the Book of Jubilees we find ourselves according to the best critical judgment, in the first century of the Christian era. Beliar appears in i. 20 under the strangely deformed name "Belchor." God is invoked, that He may create in his people a right mind, and that the spirit of Belchor may not dominate them, so as to enable him to accuse the people before God. The last-mentioned thought plainly reminds us of the O.T. conception of Satan as "the adversary," the one who slanders and opposes man in the judgment. The second place where the figure appears (here in the ordinary form "Beliar") is xv. 33; of the apostate, heretical, antinomian Israelites it is predicted that in the excess of their wickedness they will abandon the rite of circumcision, and leave their children such as they were born. It needs no pointing out that Beliar is here entirely void of eschatological associations. The statement would fit far better into the scheme of Friedländer, to be considered presently, according to whom Beliar is the head of a Jewish-Gnostic, antinomian heresy.

We now come to the one context in the Apocalyptic literature, where the distinction between Satan and Beliar seems to be clearly drawn, each being invested with his own attributes and functions. This is the prophecy in Orac. Sib. iii. 46 ff. In this, according to Bousset one of the oldest ingredients of the document, the prophet (or quasi-prophetess) declares: "But when Rome shall rule over Egypt also … then the greatest kingdom of the Immortal King will appear to mankind … thereupon from among the Sebastēnoi will come Beliar and will cause high mountains to rise up, and will cause the sea to be silent, the fiery great sun and the shining moon, and also will cause the dead to be raised, and perform many signs

among men. But no consummation will there be in him, only leading astray; and so he will cause many men to err, both believing and elect Hebrews and likewise other lawless men, which never yet heard the speech of God. But when thereupon the threatenings of the great God approach and a power of fire comes to the land through the water wave and burns Beliar and all overbearing men, who have yielded faith to him, then the entire world will be ruled under the hand of one woman and obey her in all things … when the ether-inhabiting God rolls up the heavens, as the scroll of a book is rolled up … when no longer will exist the shining balls of the lights of heaven, neither night, nor morning, no longer many days of care, no longer spring nor winter, likewise neither summer nor autumn. And then the judgment of the great God will appear in that momentous time when all this has come to pass." Not a few elements in this description remind of N.T. eschatological items, and the possibility cannot be a priori denied that these may be older than the N.T. both in their written form and in the tradition lying farther back. Absolutely complete and clear, to be sure, even here the distinction between Beliar and Satan is not: in fact Satan has no place in the whole prophecy: the conflict is purely between Beliar and the "great God." We are not told in so many words that Beliar is or will be a man; the fact of his being burnt with his human followers does not compel that assumption. His coming "from the Sebastēnoi" speaks somewhat in favor of human nature on either interpretation usually given to this strange phrase, which according to some designates the Samaritans (from the name of their city "Sebaste"), according to others is connected with "sebastos," a predicate of the Roman world-rulers. We must at this point agree with Bousset in his opinion that heterogeneous elements mingle in this strange composition. While the final stupendous worldupheaving events are ascribed to the intervention of the great etherinhabiting God, yet certain preliminary things named in the line of nature-catastrophes scarcely fall within the power of a mere man however supernaturally endowed. The trait of the error-spreading activity of Beliar reminds vividly of the same element in the description of 2 Thess., although with Paul it is more stressed and

elaborated. The idea of seduction in belief has some basis in the O.T. references to Belial. For the feature of the reign of the woman there is no point of contact in N.T. eschatology, for what the Apocalypse of John contains in this line is of a different nature. Here in the prophecy of the Sibyl an actual female ruler is meant.

This recurrence upon the Apocalyptic and Pseudepigraphical literature to discover the antecedents of the Antichrist figure does not carry much convincing force. Of course, it cannot a priori be denied that an amount of superstitious folklore was current in Jewish circles before the Pauline Epistles were written. Only that these current beliefs of such gross and rudimentary form were the source from which the N.T. Antichrist doctrine was drawn and from which it can be satisfactorily explained is hard to believe. A writer like Cheyne seems to have felt this, when by the application of a far more radical method he seeks to identify Belial with the Babylonian "Belili." On the other hand Hommel asserts that the Babylonians borrowed their Belili from the Western Shemites.

A second, and widely different attempt to supply the Antichristconcept with an extra-biblical origin is connected with the name of Friedländer. This scholar, a liberalizing Jew of wide learning, has worked out the hypothesis that there existed from comparatively early (pre-N.T.) times a specifically Jewish type of Gnosticism. The days are past in which Gnosticism was supposed to be of hereticalChristian origin. Students find many references in ancient Jewish lore to a sect or party called "Minim." It was at one time customary to identify these Minim with Jewish-Christians. Friedländer gives the term a far wider and differently-oriented significance. He goes so far as to exclude the Jewish-Christians from its range altogether. The Minim are in Friedländer's opinion a product of the Alexandrian-Jewish philosophy which had Philo for its chief exponent. Their tendency, religiously considered, lay in the direction of antinomianism. What Friedländer quotes from his sources as bearing out the equation Belial-Antichrist is of a decidedly legalistic complexion. It is this uniformizing point of view

that enables the writer to give the figure of his Antichrist such a large and comprehensive range. But, and this is our chief criticism of the hypothesis, into the figure of the Man-of-Sin drawn by Paul the construction will not fit. In Thessalonians the Antichrist appears far different and far worse than merely "antinomian." Even from an orthodox-Jewish point of view laxness in the legalistic mode of life or a degree of (conscious or only unconscious) infidelity to the law, tending through allegorizing to apostasy, could scarcely ever have produced the features of the Apostle's lurid description. It must be admitted, however, and in this respect Friedländer has called attention to a sometimes neglected element, that through the second half of Paul's prophecy in Thessalonians in what is predicted of the great error-produced and error-producing activity of the Enemy there runs an "antinomian" strain. In the first half the aggressive formidable traits are more in evidence. But on the whole Paul's relation to "antinomianism" as gatherable from his Epistles was of a far different, in certain respects even opposite, nature than that implied in Friedländer's construction. To the Judaizers Paul appeared as himself the great "antinomian"; had Paul had the sin of antinomianism specifically in mind when penning his great prophecy, he could hardly have been so entirely oblivious of the slanderous way in which it had been used by his enemies to defame himself as not to indicate by a single word his own interest in the matter.

Since then no clearly traceable and safe road leads back into the past to discover the Man-of-Sin except that via the prophecy of Daniel, we must now, in greater detail examine what are the points or features through which certain Danielic characterizations have become incorporated into the Pauline prophecy without meaning to suggest by this that the scattered elements in Daniel furnish a complete account, either as to substance or form, of all the outstanding features in Thessalonians. "The mouth speaking great things" Dan. 7:8, 20, is a striking pre-analogy to all the blasphemy with which the Apostle in advance charges the Man-of-Sin. Thess. vs. 4 "he that oppposes and exalts himself against all that is called

God or is worshipped; so as to sit in the temple of God setting himself forth as God" reminds of vs. 24 in the same chapter of Daniel. The "doing according to his will" and "magnifying himself" Dan. 8:4 finds its echo in the trait of anti-divine overbearing, which has so vividly set its impress upon the Pauline description. The "little horn," that came out of one of the four "notable horns," into which the "great horn" of the goat was broken, likewise proceeds to blasphemous acts, so far even as to take away from the Prince of the Host the most sacred religious apparatus, and to cast down the place of the sanctuary (Dan. 8:14), and bears a striking likeness to the Apostle's description in Thessalonians. "The abomination that makes desolate" above commented upon (Dan. 11:31), is entirely in line with the features named. Closely corresponding to Thess. vs. 4 is Dan. 11:36, "he shall do according to his will and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god and speak marvellous things against the God of gods," anticipating the realistic description of Thess. It must be acknowledged, that the Danielic vision and the Pauline apocalypse cannot be so laid one over the other as a transparent paper is laid over a map in clear colors, so as to be able to trace for every detail a clear corresponding double underneath. With much likeness there is much unlikeness, or rather much lacking in close resemblance. There may be no exact resemblance in the behavior of the pagan tyrants to Antichrist's setting himself in the temple of God as a self-deifier, but as between type and antitype the correspondence is close enough. The only aspect in regard to which a somewhat pervasive difference remains lies in this that the element of perversion of revealed truth, so striking in Paul, remains in Daniel more or less in abeyance. But this is what one might a priori expect from an Old Testament visionary delineation.

In all these respects the latter part of Daniel is steeped in the colors not of the supernatural only, but the figures arising and walking across the scene of its visions are supernormal, gigantic, colossal shapes. The absolute, the unsurpassable, the excess of blasphemous behavior are written in large letters on the face of these exponents of unique wickedness to come. Nor need doubt be entertained as to

the personal condensation which these bulks of evil receive in the process of forecasting the evil fortunes of the people of God. It is true, the complete unification imparted to the godless movement in Thessalonians, wherein Antichrist is made to stand out as a living sculptured personality, is in Daniel not yet attained. The stormclouds have not that far opened their gaps to let him step forth as the personal spirit of the tempest. It should be remembered, however, that the ideas of the massal and of the individual, of the power in the abstract and its wielder in the concrete are not always sharply distinguished in such types of apocalyptic representation. This does not mean that the personal equation is ignored or ever entirely left in the background. That a wicked and oppressive and blasphemous world-power employs a king of the same characteristics is simply taken for granted. Let us notice, how, after the description of the beasts in Dan. 7:1–8, which is adapted to make us think of kingdoms merely, the interpreter says (vs. 17): "These great beasts which are four, are four Kings." Hence also one is quite warranted to think in the theophany of the "One like unto a man (son-of-man)" of an actual single being and not merely, as nowadays so many would like to have us do, of a mere symbol of the kingdom of God. This interchange between power and head of the power regularly returns throughout the visions and their interpretations. In 8:10–12 things are predicated of "the little horn" conceivable of some individual only; the noun "horn" is feminine, and the feminine verbs of the sentences agree with this; in 8:22–26 the first king of Greece is represented by the shaggy goat, and also by the great horn between his eyes; here at first the forms are feminine, but in vs. 23 "a king" is said to stand up, because, in accordance with this, the wickedness is brought to a climax through a concrete person. So it is represented in 7:8 ff., where the fourth beast resolves itself into ten horns. Of the little horn, coming up from among these, it is said, that it had eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things. Because of the supernatural coloring of this description it has been assumed that a vision of the personal Antichrist must be contained in it, the more so since the description immediately precedes the episode of the judgment, vss.

9–14. In the interpretation of the vision given by "one of them that stood by" the same close conjunction between the fierceness of the prosecution inflicted upon the saints and the judgment is noticeable; here likewise the picture given of the horn rising from the ten partakes of supernormal features: he speaks words against the Most High, vs. 25. To be sure, here this element is not so strongly stressed and by themselves the words might be understood of some human political force or its representative king. He "changes times and the law." But the vision of the judgment and the dominion of the saints following thereupon is again no less steeped in eschatological colors than the one standing at the close of the original revelation itself, vs. 14.

In Chap. 8:10 similar phenomena present themselves. In some respects even stronger terms are used in the description of the doings of the "little horn" (here growing out of the four horns of the ram) as in the preceding account: "it waxed great, even to the host of heaven, and some of the host and of the stars it cast down to the ground and trampled upon them." Here, be it noted, we seem to be in the midst of the fortunes and afflictions of the Syrian war, and time-reckonings as to duration of the oppression are given; moreover, the account issues not into a scene of absolute consummation; the goal set is rather the cleansing of the sanctuary, which is in accordance with the fact that the wickedness of the tyrant had culminated in the sacrilege done to the holy places and things. None the less in the subjoined interpretation a king of fierce countenance appears, understanding dark riddles, mighty, but not by his own power, causing craft to prosper in his hand, magnifying himself in his heart, broken in the end without hand. In 11:36 ff, the king is described as doing according to his will, exalting himself and magnifying himself above every god, speaking marvellous things against the God of gods, not even regarding the god of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor any god, magnifying himself above all. In reading this we cannot help feeling strongly that such terms would not be naturally applied to any average human enemy, however much in the hysteria of excited religious patriotism the

physiognomy of such a tyrant might tend to acquire a sort of supernatural monstrosity. It has been assumed that where these phenomena emerge the Apocalypse makes a sudden leap of vision out of its forecasts of politico-historical setting, into the remoteness of the absolute end, so as to bring upon the scene the actual individual Antichrist. In order to make this to a certain extent intelligible we should have to fall back upon the law, not unfamiliar in the exposition of prophecy, of the foreshortening towards the end of the prophetic perspective. Even in regard to the most striking passages in Chap. 11 and Chap. 12, where the injection of the idea of the resurrection proves that the seer deals with downright eschatological values there is no clean escape from this, because in 12:1 the words "and at that time" mark, as it were, the hopping-off point for this flight out of the nearer present into the rarer atmosphere of the end. The view referred to is in some ways attractive. It yields a direct, realistic picture in the O.T. Scriptures of the veritable Antichrist without need of recurring upon the intermediate process of typical prefiguration. What is taught in literal terms about the Antichrist in the N.T. thus acquires a direct continuity with the O.T. predictions. This avoids abrupt, violent breaks in the development of the idea. True, it keeps the eschatological Antichrist closely entangled with personages or events of contemporary history. A suggestion has been offered to obviate at least part of this difficulty. Much has been theorized in the last decades concerning the ancient existence in several quarters of the ancient world of a fixed body of eschatological lore, in which, among other ingredients, also the figure of a personal supreme wicked power held its place. Revelation transferred the features of monstrosity that had gathered around this "Antichrist"-complex to any malign enemy of the nearer or more remote crisis, thus serving the double purpose of adding to what was previously known of this mysterious person and of rendering its central significance applicable to the practical needs of the time being.

But where are we to look within the Old Testament for a body of belief or revelation substantial enough to have created a fixed

nomenclature of the character thus postulated? Were it a matter of eschatology in general, it might be more feasible to trace back the later beliefs to earlier beginnings, to which the later elaborations could attach themselves. But it is quite a different thing to assume such a process with regard to the figure of an individual Antichrist, even if discounting the etymology, we were to confine ourselves to the general idea of a supreme impersonation of malignity and hostility. In that field the stream of folklore derived from ancient sources flows but scantily, or even trickles down to nothing, so that at last we are driven back upon the dire dragon contending with Marduk in the ancient Babylonian cosmogony. From Daniel to these ur-Shemitic myths there is a far cry, and in the territory spanned there would remain little enough of continuity from span to span to be of much importance.

The "Gog (and Magog," or "from Magog")-prophecy in Ezekiel might at first sight seem to afford some help here. Closely looked at, it presents rather a parallel of somewhat older date than, strictly speaking, a precedent of the Danielic vision. The prophecy of Ezekiel differs from the description in Daniel first through its warlike complexion and next through the absence of the directly Godward, blasphemic element; it also, however, falls out of the frame of the ordinary prophetic threatenings against the enemies of Israel, present or future, through the stupendousness of its proportions. Still this is a matter of degree rather than of principial difference. It has one feature not common to ordinary threatening prophecy: the attack of Gog and of his hordes is distinctly described as occurring after a period of rest and felicity enjoyed by the people of God subsequently to a previous redemption and return to their land, Chap. 38:7–12, 14. Even this also, however (the second attack on a world-wide scale and the gigantic victory over the assembled hordes), has its preformation in the earlier prophecy, notably so in Isaiah 24–27 and Micah 4:2 and its context. In these earlier texts it proves more or less difficult to establish beyond doubt the particular point in question, viz. the time of succedence of the second all-comprehensive attack. Attention is called to such earlier

utterances as Ezek. 38:17. The chronological definition of the great events as belonging to "the latter days," 38:16 is not of itself sufficient to mark the piece as consummatorily-eschatological, for, as observed in a previous connection, the phrase named has in the prophetic perspective a movable position. It is not so much something in the content of the Ezekiel-prophecy, that secures it its prominence in O.T. eschatology, but rather something added to and brought into it from the New Testament, viz. the reproduction of it in Rev. 20:7–10, where the context allows of no other than the reference to the absolute issue of events.

After all, what we are chiefly concerned with are the antecedents in the earlier Scriptures of the Pauline Antichrist pericope. So far as this is concerned, it is plain at a single glance, that Paul is not to any large extent dependent upon the Ezekielian source, for in the one feature in which the latter might seem to go beyond Daniel, through the mention of a specific name, and the summing up in it of the entire complex of the final enmity, Paul has not availed himself of this, but confined himself to qualitatively descriptive designations, a trait entirely in keeping with the un-military, un-political tenor of the Pauline prophecy. And, on the other hand, it is in Daniel that the general tone and atmosphere of the pictures and visions are more unearthly and transcendental, so that no one need wonder at finding precisely in these respects the O.T. and N.T. epochal prophecies intentionally and intimately connected. Though Ezekiel may furnish us with the interesting names of Gog and Magog, it is Daniel who unrolls for us the scroll of the resurrection, something in the wake of which, with or without interval, the final consummation must ensue.

That Paul in 2 Thess. 2 is dependent on Daniel hardly requires pointing out. The "falling away" (apparently a technical apocalyptic term) of vs. 3 reminds strongly of Dan. 11:32 ff.; 11:39; the predestinarian strain in Dan. 11, 12 finds its reflection in 2 Thess. 2:11–13. Particularly the anti-religious, blasphemous trait in the description of the enemy must have been copied after Daniel: "He

opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he sits in the temple of God setting himself forth as God"; cp. Dan. 5:20–23; 7:20, 21; 8:11; 11:31; 36–40 with 2 Thess. 2:4.

But, however striking these prophetic antecedents and literary dependencies may seem, the chief question remains how Paul for himself conceived of this mysterious power. First of all its personality, while not explicitly affirmed, is throughout assumed. It is true, the collective, abstract movement connected with his appearance, teaches that more than a single powerful person is involved. But most assuredly a personal leader of the movement, and that a human personality is suggested. The easiest way to prove this might at first sight seem to point to the phrases "the man of sin," "the son of perdition," were it not for the commonness of the idiom to prefix "son" or "man" to a certain attribute or characteristic in order to mark the person meant as the supreme manifestation or exponent of the quality spoken of. In such a case "son" would not necessarily determine the species of the person referred to; a superhuman, demonic leader of the forces of sin and the issues of perdition it could be properly called "man" or "son" of that with which he is identified, cp. Jno. 17:12 (of Judas) "the son of perdition." This idiomatic way of speaking does not even exclude Satan from the field of possibilities. And there are not a few features in the description reminding vividly of the nature and ways of Satan, that supreme antagonist of God. Nevertheless the whole tenor of the passage implies that a visible historically conditioned episode, playing in the clear light of human history, is thought of. Besides this, we are explicitly told in vs. 9 that his "coming is according to the working of Satan." What is according to Satan's working cannot be identical with Satan himself. On the other hand, for an evil superhuman spirit under Satan, the stage set and the drama unrolled, if once placed in the historic sphere, would seem almost with necessity to require the visible interposition of him who is chief in the kingdom of evil, in association with that of the intermediate, be it superhuman, demonic agent. We may take for

granted, then, that the Antichrist will be a human person. Into this view also best fit the developments and events connected with his appearance and activity. That his whole figure is steeped as it were, in the atmosphere of the supernatural, cannot alter anything in this respect. He certainly stands at a far remove from the purelynaturalistically human; wonders and signs are attributed to him, vs. 9; the "lying wonders," are not characterized by the attribute "lying" as inherently false, spurious, of mere fictitious make-up; they are so called because they go with the propaganda of error as the revelation-miracles accompany the proclamation of the Gospeltruth, The supernatural environment is truly present; only it serves the sinister purpose of accrediting the Satanic instead of the Divine. This close conjunction between the supernatural and the Man-ofSin has led certain writers to the extreme view, that the conjunction is of a hypostatic character, "Antichrist" appearing and acting as a veritable Messiah-Satan incarnate. Such a view is rendered impossible, not merely by its monstrous nature, but even antecedently through the inherent, subordinationistic function of the Messiahship as such. Who sets himself up as a Messiah, thereby, at least ostensibly, recognizes that there is One higher than himself. To the "Man-of-Sin" Paul ascribes the denial and abnegation of every other superior divine power. He deifies Himself in the most absolute sense; the Antichrist-idea and the Messianic idea are at this point mutually exclusive. Antichrist might choose to operate by means of a Messiah under him, as his instrument, himself he cannot pretend to be the Messiah, because that would involve abdication of his pretension to being God. When Jesus in the third temptation is offered a Satanically controlled Messiahship, through accepting which He would have to transfer His Messianic allegiance from God to the Tempter, the principle just stated is clearly brought out; the new relation proposed is instantly recognized as an idolatrous one, and for that, if for no other reason, repudiated. What Satan there suggested was nothing less than that he himself should figure as God and Jesus as his Messiah. One who receives worship and dispenses power over all the kingdoms of the world is, conceptually, equal to God; he who accepts such power in

feof can be nothing else than inferior to God in office. Had Jesus reacted upon this truly blasphemous suggestion, He would have been an equally subordinated agent as He was in reality; only the relationship would have existed between Him and the false god, and thus partaken of illusoriness instead of reality from beginning to end. According to Paul's description the Man-of-Sin stands at the extreme opposite to this: he is one for whom to present himself as Messiah would have meant to disavow himself. If the two cases, that of the temptation and that in Thessalonians are perforce to be compared, we shall have to say that they agree in the extreme unholy pretensions displayed in both (exclusive claim to deity), but differ in the rôles postulated in each case for Jesus as MessiahApostate and the future Man-of-Sin. In both Satan subject to the true God aspires to deity; in the Gospel he endeavors to carry this out by means of the prostituted Messiahship (under himself) of Jesus; with this method, at least so far as the explicit statements of Paul lead us to infer, he will dispense in the future. His own claims will lie in the sphere of the divine, not of the Messianic.

On the grounds thus generally formulated we feel bound to reject the one concrete form in which the Messianic construction of the Antichrist-idea has been worked out. It has been suggested that the Apostle conceived of the coming Man-of-Sin as the pseudo-Messiah of the Jews, about to set himself up sooner or later as the abnegator and repudiator of Jesus, the Christian Messiah, and as on principle opposing the latter by his whole activity. According to this view the Antichrist meant for Paul, at the date of 2 Thess., the person whom the Jews would recognize as their Messiah, and who would in reality be the supreme embodiment of the spirit of disobedience and unbelief with regard to the true Christian Gospel as centered in the Messiahship of Jesus. The figure would stand for the Satanic corruption and prostitution of the Jewish Messianic hope. From the circumstances under which the Epistle was written, it is believed, the entire situation is easily explainable. Direct opposition and persecution the Apostle had, up to that time, experienced from the Jews only. Where the Gentile population had molested him, it had

done so at the instigation of the Jewish populace. Precisely at Thessalonica the latter had happened during Paul's preaching in that city; likewise in Corinth, whence our Epistle was written, the same enmity had confronted him. Both First and Second Thess. speak of the Jews in the terms of strongest malediction. When "the mystery of iniquity" is said to be "already at work" (vs. 7), this, we are told, is most naturally understood of the enmity of the Jews even then plotting in secret for Paul's destruction. At bottom this enmity, while ostensibly confined to Jesus and his Apostle, was disobedience to God, and would therefore issue into downright apostasy with such open manifestations of godlessness and blasphemy as are subsequently depicted. It is even believed, that the blasphemous claims of the "Lawless One," opposing and exalting himself against all that is called God or that is worshipped, so as to sit in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God (vs. 4), can be explained on the principle of the Messiah's being the absolute representative of God, whence falsely claiming Messiahship amounts to falsely laying claim to divine honor and worship. The very fact of the enthronization in the temple at Jerusalem proves, we are told, that none other than a pseudo-Messiah of the Jews can be thought of, because by resorting to that place he recognizes the sanctuary as the habitation of God. The pseudo-prophecy mentioned in vs. 9 is likewise believed to favor this solution of the problem. The two features combined of usurped power and false prophecy are especially supposed to prove that the malign enemy must be a Jew, whilst elsewhere, when a pagan potentate impersonates the Antichrist (as in the Johannine Apocalypse) the false prophecy appears as a separate movement, working in connection with, but not identical with, the antichristian principle in its highest potency. Still further, on the view under discussion Paul anticipated that the Jewish pseudo-Messiah would attempt to overthrow the Roman Empire, and seek to establish a universal (not "universalistic") Jewish kingdom. Finally, on this interpretation the technical terms "the restrainer" (ὁ κατέχων masc.) and "the restraint" (τὸ κατέχον neut.) are supposed naturally to refer to the Roman power and the Emperor. By the Roman authority Paul had

been more than once protected from the machinations and persecutions of the Jews, so that he could easily think of it as restraining for the present the fiercest and final flaring up of the Jews' hostility against the cause of Christ represented by himself.

When the Jewish-pseudo-Messiah-Antichrist theory is thus concretely put before us, we immediately begin to feel how impossible its implications are. It is not necessary now to dwell upon the fact that, if actually ascribed to Paul after such a bald fashion, it would most certainly fall under the rubric of mistaken and therefore unfulfilled (perhaps one should say unfulfillable) prophecy. What has most given popular support to it is the name "Antichrist" itself, reminding as it does of "the Christ," who is antagonized or opposed not only, but in very fact supplanted through usurpation of his office. But it ought to be remembered at the outset, that the word "Antichrist," or the predicate "Antichristian" do not belong to the Pauline vocabulary. They are Johannine terms within the New Testament. And further, even where they occur in the Epistles of John, it is by no means certain that the preposition "anti" is meant to bear the pointed meaning of "in the place of." In the passages in John's Epistles the sense "Opponent of Christ" appears perfectly plain and natural. Still it is far from impossible that in the popular mind the distinction between one who antagonizes Christ and one who seeks to supplant Christ was not always sharply felt. Of course, the supplanting involves the antagonizing, but the reverse does not hold true, because there are other modes of antagonizing than by ursurpation of the enemy's office. All we may attempt to affirm here is the larger generic conception, and then, proceeding from this, to seek to discover what elements, if any, and of what precise nature, enter of the more particularized conception, so as to ascertain whether the sense "in the place of" for "anti" unmistakably appears.

For the sake of precision a distinction should be drawn between the two concepts of a pseudo-Jewish Messiah, and that of an Archenemy of God, who, without meaning to exhibit himself as a Jewish

Messiah, or professedly being recognized as such, none the less adopts or imitates certain methods put into practice by the genuine Christian Messiah, always, however, keeping his inner spiritual mentality and attitude, together with those of his followers, outside of the focus of the Messianic subordination to God. That the semblance of Messianic method and procedure will not be lacking may be safely affirmed a priori. After all, since we are here dealing with two supreme world-organizing forces, both operating on the same immense scale, there must needs be points and surfaces, where, formally considered, they will touch and in result of this to some extent resemble each other. The same wide folds of cosmical drapery are thrown over both; no wonder that, as they stride in gigantic shape over the field of prophecy and world-history, the impression is created that rivalry in the pursuit of the same supreme goal animates the onward march of each. There is a largeness in the construction of programme, that inevitably puts them in parallelism. Thus an "apokalypsis" is ascribed to the Manof-Sin, vs. 6: "to the end that he may be revealed in his own season; vs. 8: "and then shall be revealed "the Lawless One"; in vs. 9 we read of his "parousia": "whose parousia is according to the working of Satan with all powers and signs and lying wonders." His whole manner of working is described in terms that compel us to think of something parallel to the Gospel propaganda carried on by the servants of the true Christ. All these things, however, though apparently confirming the theory of pseudo-Jewish-Messiahship, fall short in the one vital respect: they neither imply, nor, taken together with vs. 4, permit of the consciousness or recognition or pretense of Messianic subordination to the supreme God. The Manof-Sin is bent upon, and driven by Satan into reproducing and exploiting for his wicked ends certain grandiose concomitants of the Christ-epiphany, but is unable to sum these up under the supreme category of Messiahship, for the simple reason that such would defeat his innermost, and public, aim of absolute emancipation from all that is divine or quasi-divine. If a term be wanted to mark off sharply the one frame of mind and method of working from the other, it may be defined as that of "plagiarizing" certain exceedingly

effective Messianic methods, and making the most of these, whilst all the time taking care lest they should be construed by his followers in such a way as would frustrate his un-Messianic, nay directly contra-Messianic intent. In reality no two things could be more opposite than this openly irreligious, antichristian state of mind, and the profoundly religious subordination, bordering upon self-effacement of Jesus to God. The plagiarisms adopted are in their very complexion but tools towards the setting up of an openly professed un-Messianic program, a program not only void objectively, but meant to be void of all Christian religious acknowledgments and aspirations. The Man-of-Sin is the irreligious and anti-religious and anti-Messianic subject par excellence.

It must be admitted, that among the patristic writers, from Irenaeus onward, the Antichrist appears not unfrequently as a Jew. The tracing back of his genealogy to the tribe of Dan is an instance of this. To Bousset this furnishes sufficient reason for declaring it part of the alleged ancient pre-Christian doctrine concerning the Man-ofSin in Jewish writings or traditions, lost to us but still accessible to the Church Fathers. The tribe of Dan came under consideration by reason of what is related concerning it in Gen. 49:16, 17: "Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel; Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, biting the horse's heels so that his rider shall fall backward." According to Deut. 32:22, "Dan is a lion's whelp, leaping from Bashan," viz., a rival or enemy of the Messianic tribe of Judah. Jer. 8:16 depicts, how the snorting of the enemy's horses shall be heard from Dan, and the whole land tremble at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones. Lev. 24:10, 11 was likewise called into requisition, because the man who blasphemed "the name" is there said to have been the son of a Danite woman. There was still further the fact, that, according to Jud. 18:30, 31, the Danites had from early times practised idolatry, and that, later on, Dan had become one of the two centers of bull-worship introduced by Jeroboam. But probably the main motive for this patristic judification of the Man-of-Sin lay (apart from the Apocalypse), in what Paul prophesies concerning his setting up his throne in the

temple, which many could not conceive on any other basis than that of his affiliation with the Jewish religion. There is no reason to believe that for all this there was any other ground than allegorizing exegesis.

The above takes issue with the view that Paul, or as is asserted the author of 2 Thess., ascribed to the Man-of-Sin a Jewish provenience and modelled him after the image of the false Jewish Messiah. Another illustration of "zeitgeschichtliche" interpretation is afforded by the opposite view, that his is a pagan figure embodying in itself the wicked essence of paganism carried to its utmost intensity, and directed with intensest malignity against the true God and his people. Both Daniel and the Johannine Apocalypse contain much that, at least as a phase in the history of Antichristianism, seems to favor this. When, however, thus narrowed down to its "zeitgeschichtliche" interpretation, the process from which Paul expected the end of the world becomes no more than a piece of the drama of Roman imperial persecution inflicted upon Jew and Christian and in its far-reaching import long since discredited. In its most popular form it is believed to have attached itself to the at one time current belief, that Nero, the arch-persecutor would, notwithstanding his disappearance from the scene by flight or death, soon return, and then, with the help of Satan, through supernatural influences and activities, set up a new phase of his wicked reign, conducted with an unparalleled virulence of Antichristian persecution. This view has been ascribed to the writer of 2 Thess. and the Apocalypse, both of which on that view being denied to the cononical writers under whose names they stand. Considering only the question of dating, it is plain that the Apostle Paul could have had on such a theory nothing to do with the writing of 2 Thess. The piece thus interpreted presupposes the death of Nero, which happened 68 A.D. And although the same charge of anachronism could not be brought against the (allegedly composite) Apocalypse, yet here the phantastic and in many respects conflicting scenes, derived, it is held, from the most various, to a large extent mythical, sources, would deprive the last book in our N.T. Canon, at

least in its visionary part, of well-nigh all religious value. With the application of this hypothesis to the Book of Revelation we have here nothing to do, because we desire to keep strictly within the limits of the Pauline Eschatology. 2 Thess. particularly, as a unicum in the Pauline Epistles in its teaching on the last things, deserves to be treated by itself with undistracted attention. Only after the contents of it shall have been ascertained, so far as this is possible, does the law of the "analogia fidei" demand of the student that he shall endeavor to correlate and harmonize the one with the other.

Modern criticism has not always kept sufficiently in mind this methodical principle. Starting with the Neronian form of the Antichrist theory, too rashly forced upon the Apocalypse of John, it has caused the little prophecy of Paul to become darkened and dwarfed by the huge shadows of its larger companion. Under the obsession that the Nero story must be the chief source of ancient Christian occupation with and dread of the last things, it was regarded a self-understood maxim, that Paul's "Man-of-Sin" was cradled in the same circle of superstition. The Tübingen school lent to this Romanization (or rather Neronization) the aid of its prestige. Such champions of Hegelian N.T. Criticism as Kern, F. C. Baur, Hilgenfeld and many others strenuously advocated it from the first. The pictures of both Chaps. 13 and 17 of the Apocalypse were explained on this basis of the Nero-return-belief. In the former context it is related that one of the seven heads of "the beast" was smitten unto death, and his death-stroke healed, and that after this the beast received authority from the dragon, and acted and was worshipped after an Antichrist-fashion. The famous number of the beast is given as 666, and as lending support to the theory, the opinion arose that this number was the result of addition of the number-values of the Hebrew characters composing the name "Neron Kesar." In Chap. 17 it is related that the seven-headed and ten-horned beast upon which the woman sits: was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition, and again, that he was and is not and shall come (πάρεσται). Further, that the seven heads are seven kings, of which the five are fallen,

the one is, the other is not yet come, that the seventh, when come, must continue a little while, and that thereupon the beast will appear as the eighth, it being added that the beast is also of the seven. The seven kings are on this theory identified with the seven first Roman Emperors, among which Nero holds the fifth place. This piece, then, it is believed, was written after Nero's death, under the sixth Emperor, and it embodies the expectation that after a brief reign of his next two successors Nero will return from the dead in the rôle of Antichrist.

We have given a brief survey of these several attempts in order to make plain how unfeasible it is to fit into the lock of 2 Thess. 2 the key of the Johannine Apocalypse. These are two, not one, prophecies, and each has the right to be exegeted on its own merits and within its own context. There is absolutely nothing in Paul's description of the Man-of-Sin to remind of Nero. True, the Man-ofSin has his parousia, and, combining with this the idea of a double parousia ("second coming") of Christ, an intimation might be found in the introduction of this term to the effect that the Man-of-Sin will likewise appear twice, first in his historical emergence, and afterwards, having withdrawn from the scene, be it through death or through flight to the Orient, in a highly demonic, supernaturalized form, to play out his complete anti-Christian rôle. Surely a weak support to hang the overrash identification of the happenings in 2 Thess. and in Revelation on. This formal distinction between "first advent" and "second advent," so familiar to us, had not at that time been drawn, at least it had not acquired any such fixed meaning as to become of itself suggestive of a duplication of the Neronic appearance. If Jesus' epiphany was one only, and that a future one, then the chronologically-innocent use of the term "parousia" could never suggest the idea of a Nero revenant, far less of a Nero redivivus. Moreover Nero had been the great persecutor of the Christians, and precisely to this character of persecutor he owed his eschatological reputation. In Thessalonians his activity lies fundamentally in the sphere of religious and moral seduction. He proceeds, not by applying violence, but through estranging and

leading astray his followers from the truth of the Gospel. Of political organization and activity, though in reality the antecedents of the Antichrist tradition made it difficult to dissociate him wholly from this, nothing is said by the Apostle in so many words. The theme is, as it were, lifted above this plane by the general tenor of Paul's teaching which was wont to seize upon large principles of religious development, either for good or for evil.

This latter feature of Paul's treatment of the great enemy is plainly reflected in the names "Man-of-Sin," or, according to a much adopted variant reading, "Man-of-Unrighteousness" and the "Lawless One." As has been observed above, these are Hebrew idioms; they designate one in whom sin and unrighteousness have become concentrated, yet not so as to make him entirely identical with Satan in Paul's conception. The words had acquired peculiar associations ever since the time of the Syrian crisis foretold in the prophecy of Daniel. It has been suggested, that "ἀποστασία," vs. 3 "the falling away" is likewise meant as a proper name to be coordinated with the others, so as to represent the Enemy as "Apostasy Incarnate." That later patristic writers have made this formal identification (so Chrys. and Thdt.) proves nothing for Paul's intent here. The change of the word into a proper name was probably favored by the occasional rendering of Belial by "Apostasis," and the consequent identification of Belial with Antichrist. While for Paul this usage cannot be substantiated, the immediate injection of the idea in the prophecy from the very outset proves the importance attached to it. The blasphemy against God constitutes to the Apostle the supreme wickedness. The selfdeification, so elaborately set forth in vs. 4, is felt as the inmost sinfulness in the sin of the Man-of-Sin. The transition from vs. 3 to vs. 4, by means of the mere article strikingly brings out the nexus of thought: precisely because he goes to the non plus ultra of sin, he deserves fully the name "Man-of-Sin," and the doom announced by "Son-of-Perdition." Among the terrible things reserved for the proximity of the end, the most terrible to Paul's mind, is this negation of God in his very existence, this wilful insult to the divine

majesty. In it the very foundations of religion are shaken. The "sitting in the temple of God" only sums up in one terse image that unholiest offense offered to the Holiest of Beings. Nor is this selfdeification conceived as a purely passive attitude; it energetically asserts itself against all deity as such, pretended or true. The participle ἀποδεικνύντα implies the thought of intensified, positive assault upon God: deeds, not mere assertions, are meant by it. In this, as in every other strand of his teaching, Paul shows himself thoroughly theocentric.

In order still somewhat further to determine the character in which the Apostle represents this impersonation of wickedness, it will be conducive to raise the question, what inner connection there is between the "apostasy," this moral and religious débacle on the grandest of scales and the appearing and activity of the "Lawless One" up to its catastrophic finale at the end. The "Man-of-Sin" is not without more identical with the apostasy, which rather like an ominous cloud of blackest darkness, enwraps his appearance. The "falling away" is one of the attending phenomena in the infernal outbreak, but not entirely identical with the latter's explosion. It has, if only in a premonitory way, its sure connection with the arrival of the Enemy. The "Man-of-Sin" has his hand in fanning the flame to its fierceness as a world-conflagration. Such is the explicit affirmation of vss. 9–12. But the reverse relationship can be affirmed with equal warrant. In vs. 3, the sequence indicates that the apostasy comes first, and that on the waves of its tempest the Wicked One is lifted up and carried on to his ultimate destination. One might even infer, that not merely the falling in upon itself of the fabric of the world of evil, but likewise the first beginnings of its ominous origin, are due to him. The highly enigmatic words of vs. 7: "The mystery of lawlessness does already work," whatever in the concrete they refer to, certainly leave with us the impression of some preliminary, gradual, secret activity behind the scene, as it were, of what is impending. The "Lawless One" comes when the moment is ripe for placing himself at the head of a movement that has already gained impetus not without his initiative. Of course,

such a movement stands from the outset under the influence of that same superhuman power, that will also bring the Man-of-Sin into the open. The two not merely follow each other in time, but are also internally connected through the Satanic influences working back of each. On the other hand, according to vss. 9–12 the appearance of the "Anomos" becomes the occasion for a more widely extended and systematically organized apostasy. He deceives those that are being lost (i.e. condemned to and on the way towards perdition). God through him sends them a working of error, so that they believe a lie. His deceptive and misleading methods lead to a culmination of that doom, which through the interaction of unbelief at the beginning, and the punitive hardening of God has been made inevitable. The whole representation reminds vividly of what is narrated in Exodus concerning Jehovah's dealing with Pharaoh. The phrase "not having received the love of the truth," seems to indicate, that not merely through neglect of the truth in the abstract, but that with a pointed antagonism to God the apostates have disdained his manifestation of love which formed the central substance of "the truth" revealed and offered to them in the Gospel, and which tended to their salvation. The excessive sinfulness of this attitude towards the gospel appears from the extreme reaction it provokes on God's part: "for this cause God sends them a working of error, that they should believe a lie." Vss. 10–12 show that the self-deification of the "Lawless One" is not something confined to his own conviction; through the spirit of error sent from God, they are made to believe "τὸ ψεῦδος" "the lie," that is the fundamental, all-comprehensive lie, that follows in its totality from the setting up of himself as God by the "Man-of-Sin," for as in God and his position of deity the entire world and system of truth are founded, even so from the selfdeifying spurious God, the counterpart of this, a world of "lying," is inseparable.

While thus sketching in broad strokes the immoral and irreligious character of this opponent of God and Christ, the Apostle has furnished neither the Thessalonians nor us with detailed, concrete information such as we, no less than they, might pardonably crave.

Even the milieu from which all these terrible phenomena will in occurring detach themselves is not clearly designated. Besides this also stands unanswered the more concrete question, whence and how the personal head of this wickedness will enter upon the scene of his activities. Being a man, will he be born as a man, and at a point of ripeness assume his public rôle? Or are we perhaps to assume, that, like the whole manner of his activity, so the mode of his origin will be supernatural? If the latter, can we avoid the idea of a relative preëxistence spent in some mysterious hidden sphere, after some such manner as the Jews pictured to themselves the antecedent state of the Messiah previous to his public appearance? Will the termination of his career, described in words from Isaiah 11:4, be after the manner of "slaying," preserving the personal identity of the enemy slain, or after the manner of annihilation. The words ἀναλίσκειν and καταργεῖσθαι do not necessarily carry the latter implication, but, at any rate, they emphasize both the instantaneousness and the finality of the act: "whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth, and bring to nought by the manifestation of his parousia." The enquiry as to the proximate environment of his arising, whether Jewish or Gentile, savors overmuch of the narrowly-zeitgeschichtlich framing of the problem. It is, of course, easy to argue: if not Jewish, then Pagan. But this does not necessarily follow. In the foregoing discussion we have not aimed at the exclusion of Jewish nationality per se, but only argued against the possibility of Jewish Messiahship; these two are different things. In the same way we have not sought either to affirm or to deny the pagan provenience of the Man-of-Sin. His person is so closely wrapped up with the idea of "the apostasy," and the latter is so generally associated in the New Testament with the Christian Church, that naturally in this connection also our first thought would be of a birth from the womb of an unfaithful Church, profoundly alienated from the rectitude of the true faith. The milieu seems to be one to which the distinction between Jew and Gentile has become indifferent, a milieu dereligionized in principle. Still more interesting and to popular inquisitiveness more attractive, appears the enquiry as to how the Antichrist shall come into the

world. It must be conceded that such an air of supernaturalness, not to say superearthliness, envelopes the figure, that to think of a mysterious origin seems scarcely avoidable. Still his generic humanity remains beyond question, for, apart from the titles examined above, the very sharpness of the antithesis between him and God, the stress on the criminality of his pretense of being God, place him in the category of the creature beyond all shadow of doubt. It is not, however, plausible so to stress his historical emergence as to make him and his work a mere stage, by the side of other preceding stages, in the unfolding of the plan of God. As to a possible preëxistence, not merely as antedating the publicity of his appearance on the scene of activity, but likewise in regard to his entrance into the world, there is in the manner of his portraiture not a little that leads to thinking of this. Finally on the problem of his ultimate disposal it were presumptuous to risk a decisive conclusion. The Apocalypse itself tells nothing more of the Archdeceiver, the devil, than that he was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet, and eternal torment is inflicted upon them, the same lake of fire into which Death and Hades were cast, and which is called "the second death," 20:6, 14. According to some exegetes this "second death" is equivalent to annihilation.

But these problems, already sufficiently obscure to deter the exegete from framing any definite, positive answer, even do not yet constitute the most cryptic part of the prophecy. Strange to say, the latter is found in the practical momentary bearing of Paul's words on the needs of his readers. In vss. 5–7, to be sure, the main purport of the discourse is not quite so opaque as the significance of the single parts and their mutual relations to one another. Their obvious purpose is none other than still further to restrain the Thessalonians in their over-eagerness and excitability with regard to the imminent, or perhaps even in their opinion at that very moment transpiring, advent of the Lord, while yet at the same time detracting nothing from the central value and high seriousness attaching to the matter in itself. The words are intended to compose

and lead back to patience the readers in envisaging the realities of the parousia, both in their terrifying and in their comforting aspect. There is still delay, before the supreme event transpires; a certain process of hidden preparation must run its course; this process is called the ἐνεργε͂ισθαι. Together with the delay organically involved in this, there is also exercised a more positive κατέχειν "restraint," from which the person exercising it derives the semi-technical name ὁ κατέχων, "the restrainer," or τὸ κατέχον, that which restrains, in the neuter gender, vs. 6. The reason given for this is that the Manof-Sin may he revealed in his own (proper) season, and not before that. Consequently the "restrainer" or "restraint" must be removed, "ἐκ μέσου γιγνέσθαι," whereupon straightway (τότε) the Lawless One shall be revealed, and whatever the prophecy has foretold concerning him go into fulfilment. Paul further ascribes to his readers a certain degree of knowledge formerly possessed concerning some of these things, partly derived from his previous presence with them, and a previous knowledge relating not to any peripheral matters, but to the very core of the Man-of-Sin's behavior. Now, at the time of his writing the second letter, he declares them possessed of additional knowledge as touching the "mystery of lawlessness" and the restraint retarding it. This, briefly stated, and with abstaining as much as possible from prejudicial exegesis, is the gist of what the crucial verses in question contain.

It will be observed that the several points named are not entirely independent from one another. That the "working" and the "restraining" mutually determine each other lies on the surface. But how is the mystery working? And where are we to look for the restraint that is being exercised? If the "νῦν," "now" in vs. 6 were to be construed, as is often done, with the increased knowledge of the readers, as differing from a previously relative ignorance, the inference would be plain, that at the time of writing the mystery was to a large extent solved for the Thessalonians. If they "knew" (οἴδατε) about the restraining power, then a fortiori they must have been likewise informed as regards the mystery of lawlessness held back by it. On this construction, however, the question inevitably

obtrudes itself in which way such additional information had reached the Thessalonians. Not through the first letter, for in that no trace of it is to be discovered. Nor in the intervening time after the sending of 1 Thess., for Paul himself warns the readers against lending credence to communications concerning the presence of the day of the Lord, that reached them under the pretense of coming from him. It will be necessary, therefore, to abandon this construction, although the sequence of the words does not forbid it, and a natural contrast found between the words "when I was still with you," coupled with the verb "I told you these things" and the word νῦν lend a degree of plausibility to it: "then I told" and "now ye know." The other interpretation joins the "νῦν" to the participle κατέχον (in vs. 7 κατέχων). This would mean that they were informed about the power that was "now" holding back the outbreak of the ultimate wickedness, and, according to the γάρ at the opening of vs. 7, were informed likewise, through some initiation into secret happenings about the furtherance of the mystery of iniquity. The word "now," thus interpreted links the present knowledge of the Apostle and the Thessalonians to the absolute end of things, so far as the appearance of the Man-of-Sin can be said to precede the latter without further intervening developments at least on a large eschatological scale. Such a prospect overbridging ages is not an unknown thing in Biblical prophecy; the "now" of the reader and the "then" of the consummation not seldom stretch out hands towards one another over vast intermediate spaces. What causes unusual trouble lies not in that but in the fact that the point of departure for that long span is not for us determinable, although it was so for Paul and the readers of the Epistle. Still another difficulty should not be overlooked. The locating of the "restrainer" or "restraint," and the locating of the Antichristian center of wickedness are usually held to determine one the other on the principle of oppositeness. Where the Man-of-Sin is sought in Judaism, there the restraint or restrainer are sought within the pagan, particularly Roman, sphere. And the contrary view also has not been without advocates, viz. that the Enemy was expected from the Roman side, and the power of restraint somehow placed in Judaism. As to the

latter view, the disproportionateness of the two factors is too obvious to deserve serious consideration. As to the former, the obstacles besetting the theory of Jewish provenience have been sufficiently brought out in an earlier connection. Where Judaism is entirely eliminated from the construction, and yet the "zeitgeschichtliche" principle upheld, as is the case with the Neronian hypothesis, it becomes necessary to place Antichrist and Restrainer within the same circle, one being e.g. one Emperor, the other his predecessor on the throne. The objection to this lies in the sharp antithetical character Paul seems to ascribe to the two principles. They are so diverse and antagonistic, that whence the one proceeds it is unnatural to look for the other. How could a relatively better Emperor restrain, or hold back the supremely iniquitous future Enemy, or even seriously hold back the increasing work of the "mystery of iniquity," when in the latter, as we are given to understand, the Satanic principles are making ready for their final assault upon the people of God? How could the temporary successor of Nero, with all the imperial might back of him, prevail for a moment against the onslaught of Nero returning, when the latter was being equipped and propelled by the Evil One himself? Truly, we move here among mysteries within mysteries!

A peculiar view worked out by Von Hofmann may lay claim to a brief notice. It is based on a representation in Daniel as to the successive powers contending against the people of Israel, and the relation of their activity one to the other. It need not be again pointed out, that in the vision of Daniel there is a higher superterrestrial background to the contest the prophet is made to witness in the political devolutions of power. In Chap. 10 the supernatural person appearing to Daniel affirms to have been withstood by another supernatural power, called the Prince of the kingdom of Persia. This lasted for a certain length of time, after the lapse of which Michael, one of the chief Princes (also called "your Prince," i.e., the patron-Prince of Israel in vs. 21) came to help him, vs. 13, to confirm and strengthen him, 11:1. According to this representation the world-power has its Prince, and Israel has its Prince in the world

of superhuman Spirits, and between these fierce, protracted combats are going on for supremacy on an immense, though invisible, field of battle. Thus, besides the Prince of Israel, there is another, who declares, that, after having spoken to the prophet, he will return to the fight against the Prince of Persia. But, when abandoning this further encounter, he goes away, the Prince of Greece will appear on the scene to renew the attack. Von Hofmann thinks that here we have something resembling in general outlines the situation of 2 Thessalonians. The three features of a withstanding of the demonic head of the world-power, of a removal or departure of the one that withstands, and of the immediate appearance after this of a more godless Antagonist of Israel's cause, here meet together. In view of this coincidence between the two prophecies one might, at least hypothetically, be tempted to assume that Paul likewise understood by the κατέχον and κατέχων something supernatural and far superior to all the might of Rome. If this be tentatively accepted, it throws at least some light on one subject otherwise entirely veiled in darkness. None the less the fact remains, that it is impossible for us to form concrete conceptions of how the restraint of the mystery takes place, how its power is organized, whether there is a direct retarding influence brought to bear upon the "Lawless One," or perhaps he is only indirectly affected in his movements by means of the influences brought to bear upon his victims.

One of the objections raised against the genuineness (Pauline origin) of 2 Thess., is that the Apostle, who expected according to Rom. 11:25 the coming in of the fulness of the Gentiles and the salvation of all Israel, and regarded this momentous epoch as a precursor of the end, cannot, in direct contradiction to that, have made the end dependent on such an apostasy as is here predicted. The answer to this is that the coming in of the Gentiles does not preclude the falling away again from the Gentiles of considerable groups. The apostasy of the end had become too much a fixed factor in eschatology long before Paul, than that Paul could have simply ignored it or mapped out a program in which there was absolutely

no room reserved for it. Even our Lord had distinctly predicted it. And in Rom. 11:20 ff. it is hinted at as a possibility. In Daniel likewise it is an important ingredient closely interwoven with the typical Antichristian vision of the prophet. Dan. 11:32.

In what has been said in this concluding section of our enquiry there has entered much that of necessity remains highly problematical, and will only cease to be so in the same degree that the vision hastens on to the end. 2 Thess. belongs among the many prophecies, whose best and final exegete will be the eschatological fulfilment, and in regard to which it behooves the saints to exercise a peculiar kind of eschatological patience.

The idea of the Antichrist in general and that of the apostasy in particular ought to warn us, although this may not have been the proximate purpose of Paul, not to take for granted an uninterrupted progress of the cause of Christ through all ages on toward the end. As the reign of the truth will be gradually extended, so the power of evil will gather force towards the end. The making all things right and new in the world depend not on gradual amelioration but on the final interposition of God.

CHAPTER VI: THE RESURRECTION

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians, although less informative as to the nature of the resurrection itself, furnishes many details concerning the nature of the parousia. The instantaneous conjunction between the parousia and the resurrection is pointedly affirmed: "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven … and the dead in Christ shall rise first," 4:16. It is unwarranted, however, to

appeal to the mention of "the clouds," and "the air" in vs. 18 for constructing the process in this way, that the Lord's descent will be provisionally suspended at some point on high before the earth's surface is reached, then subsequently, after certain preliminary actions have been performed from that higher station, to be continued earthward. It is true that the descent is suspended, only it is not interrupted. The place "in the air" is the nearest the Descending One comes to the earth. There is nothing unnatural or suggestive of mystery in this whole representation. A position of some remoteness from the surface of the earth is after all the most natural to assume in this connection. The far reach and universal scope of the tremendous event here set in motion are in better accord with some central elevated place in the air than a standpoint occupied on the flat surface of the ground. Of course, for the raised and the saints found living at the parousia, who are at first on the earth, a subsequent movement in the air is required, to meet the Lord at the point where He has taken his station. An element of mystery is injected into the situation through a certain exegesis of the statement "to the end He may establish your hearts … at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints," 3:13. When here "the saints" with whom Jesus comes are understood of hitherto unembodied believers making together with Him this unique journey from heaven to earth, the difficulties, not to say inconceivabilities, are much increased. Various questions arise: how can these saints, who have hitherto lived in heaven without a body be suitable companions of the Lord at his embodied visible appearance? It is everywhere stressed by Paul as well as elsewhere in the New Testament (not to go back now to Dan. 7), that the feature of glorious visibility is the most outstanding feature of this supreme event. A large part of the resurrection, viz. that pertaining to the saints arrived from heaven, would then have to be anticipated, in order to endow this group with the appropriate radiant apparel in which they are to follow the Lord in his assumed further movement earthward. At the completion of this final descent the resurrection of all the believing dead would follow, and such believers as are found living would (after a change

corresponding to the resurrection-change) join themselves to those having already brought the substance of the resurrection with them from the air, and thereupon this entire company would join the Lord to the place (or a place) previously selected for that purpose. With the Chiliastic associations of this construction we do not here deal; it will subsequently come under consideration in the chapter devoted to the problem of Chiliasm in Paul. For the present it may suffice to call attention to the phantastic ensemble created by such understanding of the term "saints" of men come from heaven. All this difficulty arising from accumulation of strange features disappears immediately when "saints" is taken to designate angels come with Christ from heaven. It is true, Paul does not in any passage call the angels "saints," and on the other hand, in Matt. 27:52 we do read of the bodies of the saints that were asleep appearing in the holy city at the crucifixion of Christ. Over against this, however, may be placed the words of Jesus Himself, Mk. 8:38: "the Son-of-Man also shall be ashamed of him, when He comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." From this saying it appears that the attribute "holy" could with a special fitness be given to the angels in eschatological connections. There is nothing whatever to contraindicate the angel-reference in a passage so steeped in eschatological atmosphere as 1 Thess. 3:13. From vs. 14, "those who are asleep … God shall bring (ἄξει) with Him," no argument can be drawn in favor of the joint-coming of Christ and the risen saints at the parousia. Here "to bring" (ἄγειν) refers to the introduction of the saints, jointly with Christ, into the Kingdom of God, not to God's bringing them to earth in the movement of the parousia. The statement in 4:17 can be interpreted in the same way, so as to make the meeting of believers with Christ in the air not preparatory to a further earthward descent for judgment, but introductory to an abode with Him in the supernal regions.

More explicit information as to the attending circumstances of the resurrection we obtain in 4:16. Here we learn of the "shout," the "voice of the archangel," and the "trump, of God" as accompanying the descent. The sounds thus described serve the purpose of

summoning from afar, as it were, the dead to arise, in order to render them ready for their share in the event only a little later than Christ has begun his earthward movement.

The preposition used with these three descriptive phrases is ἐν. It describes the attending circumstances of the act. The following queries arise: (1) Who is the subject issuing the "shout" (κέλευσμα), and who are the objects receiving it? (2) What is the relation of the two subjoined terms, the "voice of the archangel," and the "trump of God," to the keleusma? The word keleusma is a forcible term used to describe the word of command given, for example, to soldiers, or to sailors rowing in a ship, or to dogs in the chase. Here, however, its meaning is not associated with any of these particular uses. Bringing in the military idea would represent Jesus as by a shout summoning his forces to the conflict with and final victory over the power of evil. But the power of evil remains entirely in the background in the whole representation. The shout is undoubtedly addressed to the dead as dead, that is, as in a state which would render them, figuratively speaking, deaf to every other impact of sound and require to rouse them all the authority and omnipotence of God. Both the immediateness and the irresistibleness of the power transmitted by such a sound to a sphere where otherwise no sound is able to penetrate are most strikingly expressed.

Now, who is the subject of the keleusma, the utterer of this tremendous command? Is it Christ or God? It has been urged that, since "the Lord" is the subject of the verb "shall come down," He must likewise be the subject of the act which attends his descent. But the second phrase, "with the voice of the archangel," shows that this argument has no force. If Christ can come down with the voice of the archangel, He can also descend with a keleusma proceeding from some one else, which would in this case be God. Still this, while possible, yields no more than a possibility, and falls short of convincing proof. The statement as a whole rather favors the other view, viz., that Christ is the One issuing the keleusma. Especially the emphasis thrown on the fact that Christ Himself will descend

makes us expect the prominence of Christ in the whole transaction, and this would be secured through the issuing of the keleusma from Him. The direct ascription of this to Christ serves the further purpose of rendering the resurrection of believers undeniably certain: being "dead in Christ" they can not fail of participating in the effect of an act or process in which He is the princeps or center. At any rate, whether Christ be the subject of the keleusma, or not, it would yield an incongruous thought to regard Him as the object of the commanding voice. Such a loud summons to Christ who dwells in the immediate presence of God would be wholly out of place; whereas, when conceived as addressed to the dead, it is in entire harmony with the situation.

Assuming then that the keleusma is uttered by Christ, the question next arises, What is the relation to it of the two other terms named, the "voice of the archangel" and the "trump of God"? Are these coördinated or subordinated conceptions? Do they define what the keleusma consists in, or do they name two further and separate items? In the former case the construction would more likely have been that with the genitive (φωνῆς ἀρχαγγέλου), and similarly with the other member (σάλπιγγος θεοῦ). The repetition of ἐν favors the other interpretation. This, however, is not to be so understood as though the keleusma did not take effect until after the voice of the archangel and the trump of God had produced theirs, the latter two wakening the dead, the former summoning the dead already wakened. The three serve the same purpose and their force is cumulative. Who blows the trumpet is not stated; only the voice of the archangel should not be identified with the sound of the trumpet; against this the conjunction καί speaks. It must be granted, however, that the sounding of the eschatological trumpets is elsewhere assigned to the angels, cp. Apoc. 10:7; 11:15, where, the number being seven, the seven archangels must be meant. Michael, one of the archangels, appears already significantly connected with the resurrection in Dan. 12:12. The conception of Michael as having a special task in connection with the last things is found also in the Apocalyptic writings; ancient Jewish traditions make him

particularly the blower of the last trumpet.3 The figure of the trumpet, however, has its root not there but in the Old Testament. Its origin seems to lie in what the Pentateuch relates of a trumpet blown at the giving of the Law: "There were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and a voice of the trumpet exceeding loud" (Ex. 19:16). According to Isa. 28:13, a great trumpet will be blown to gather the scattered people of God from Assyria and Egypt and summon them to the holy mountain of Jerusalem, where they will worship Jehovah. From the standpoint of the Old Testament this is already eschatological. Full New Testament eschatological significance is given the words from Exodus by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who reminds the readers that they are come "not to a mountain that might be touched and that burned with fire, and unto blackness, and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words … but unto the heavenly Jerusalem" (12:19). Here the principle of typology is applied via oppositionis: the setting and the external apparatus are the same, but the significance and effects are opposite. Our Lord, likewise, in eschatological discourse speaks of the great sound of a trumpet wherewith the angels shall gather the elect (Matt. 24:31). Here also, it will be observed, the angels are the trumpet-blowers. Apart from the trumpets in the Apocalypse, the only other reference to the trumpet is found with Paul himself (1 Cor. 15:52). Here it is called "the last trump" (ἐσχάτη σάλπιγξ): "We shall all be changed … at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible." The adjective "last" in this phrase is usually misunderstood. The Apostle's meaning is not that during the ages of the world's history many trumpets have in succession been blown, but that this one, as marking the close of all history, will be the last one to sound. "Last" does not here signify "final" in a chronological sense. It is a technical eschatological term, which does not indicate plurality, but duality; there is one at the beginning, and there will be another, corresponding to it at the end; and between these two trumpets lies the whole content of historical eventuation. Finally the genitive ("of God") added to "trump," does not mean that God blows it, but

simply characterizes it as belonging to the eschatological order of things.

By these colorful features Paul makes for us even more grandiose and impressive what under all circumstances can not help being a scene of intense realism. They furnish practically the only material on which our imagination can draw for filling out the large frame of the canvas. It were wrong undoubtedly to reduce all the things mentioned to the rubric of figurative language, in regard to which the author is aware of painting freely, rather than of copying the solid content of prophecy given him by the Spirit. On the other hand we should not overlook the equally obvious fact, that in painting by words, even with the fullest intent of accuracy, the Apostle had to avail himself of a fixed medium of language, which left room for a margin of over-literalism, and whose interpretation by others, while seemingly in full accord with the words recorded, nevertheless may introduce an ingredient of inadequacy when compared with the actual intent of Paul. We have here before us a striking example of the possibility of over-stressing the literalness of the language and imagery used, and yet, while thus seeming to do justice to the writer's speech, missing in reality the deeper and finer qualities and objectives of his true conception. The literalistic may appear to our human vision nearer the real, and yet, owing to our pardonable craving for the concrete, be more subjective than the spiritualized.

In view of the original literal, physical association of the words forming the resurrection-terminology with the notions of "sleep" or "causing to rise, or stand up," the question is asked whether Paul's idea of the state between death and resurrection is that of sleep or unconsciousness? If God wakes the dead, or if they are roused and made to stand on their feet, what other implication can this have than that they pass out from a sleeping into a waking condition? And, what seems stronger still, the representation of the dead as those who have been put to rest (bed), and consequently now are in that condition, appears inseparable from the phenomena of physical sleep. None the less it would be rash to draw even such theological,

eschatological inferences from this as might seem to lie plainly on the surface. These are all words and modes of speech of mostancient origin. Undoubtedly at the time of their first springing into usage they had clearly associated with themselves a feeling of their etymological significance, viz., that of a state dim consciousness or unconsciousness in the dead. But, like all words, especially like all words denoting universal common processes, they were subject to attrition. While, of course, continuing capable to describe the surface facts, they could not fail to lose part of the coloring and implications of the facts, whose apprehension had once asserted itself in their coinage. Except when particular occasion arose to reflect on their original force, they were handled as so many wordsigns, into whose primordial picturesqueness the average languageuser no longer enquired. Such was undoubtedly the case with words that had no specific revelation-function to perform, being common to the current speech of all. The words for "sleep" (κοιμᾶν, κοιμᾶσθαι, κεκοιμᾶσθαι) are words of this sort. These may have passed through more than one stage of primitive association, but inevitably they suffered the fate of becoming blind words. It is, of course, different with the class of terms that had to serve the purposes of revelation. True, while originally subject to this same attrition-process, Christian thought and feeling could bring back some of the old coloring. But the possibility must likewise be reckoned with that κοιμᾶν and κοιμᾶσθαι had come to mean little more than to be placed in the recumbent position of the grave. At the same time it is likely that among believers a special sense of tenderness accompanied the act, reminiscent of the ordinary act of putting a child to bed, with loving hands.

Nor need we doubt that, as the correlate of physical sleep is awakening, so this latter idea, never existing or at least long since obliterated in pagan language, might, as it were, acquire a new significance. Here a negative pagan concept came to meet the different sentiment of the Christian mind. For the pagan κοιμᾶσθαι is a sleep to which no waking is joined and in this quite important respect the two words were not by any means analogues. In the case

of ἐγείρειν it is not merely a single association that differentiates the Christian from the pagan, in the latter the entire idea of a supernatural, miraculous "bringing back from the dead" is lacking, because the supernaturalistic background as a whole is in paganism absent. Consequently Scriptural usage had to translate the term into a totally new circle of belief and understanding: the ordinary, physical ἐγείρειν, has received a new, redemptive, superlative sense.

All this, and more, it is necessary to remember, before venturing to draw positive inferences from certain terms, and that sometimes even without assuring ourselves that in the later times of paganism a similar drawing of inferences was still a living process. When even pre-Christian paganism does not universally ascribe to the koimomenos or the kekoimemenos a sleep or rest, in the sense of unconsciousness, we may not assume that this ancient, imaginative corollary of the term was saved out of its semi-oblivion into a new literalness for the Christian faith. Though to the pagan poet there was nothing to look forward to but "nox una longa dormienda," a sleep without end, such a prospect was certainly never present to the early Christian; and if the ideas of "una" and "longa" were wholly eliminated for him, why should the notion of sleeping in the sense of unconsciousness have persisted? Moreover we have from Paul explicit statements concerning this "intermediate state," which positively exclude its having been to his mind a state of unconsciousness, such as, apart from dreams, physical sleep ordinarily induces. In 2 Cor. 5 the whole train of Paul's reasoning is based on the thought, that there will be a differentiation in feeling (that is, a perceptible difference in the self-reflexive consciousness) in the state after death. Whether he feels clothed with a body or feels naked will be an object of perception to him. To the unconscious dead there is not and can not be any distinction between the one state and the other: all things are alike to them. Even though only the minimum of what appears desirable to Paul, i.e., to die before the parousia, is in store for him, still he expresses the assurance that to be in an "unclothed" (naked) state at home with the Lord, will be a cause of contentment, and the looking

forward to this provisional minimum becomes a reason for good courage, which it could not be without the expectation of consciousness in the post-mortem state. Similarly, in Phil. 1:23 the having departed and being with Christ is estimated as "very far better." To be sure, the estimate is formed in his present mind, but the whole contrast of "worse" or "better" loses its significance, if consciousness, the only organ of difference in appraisal, be denied. The Apostle, then, continues to make use of the common language of the day in teaching about these things, and there is hardly any perceptible effort on his part to correct or modify the latter. What he does is to fill with vital substance language that had so largely become voided of meaning.

It has been alleged, it is true, that Paul abstained from the use of the word "death" with reference to departing believers, and employed "to sleep" as a euphemism useful in enabling him to do this. This avoidance, it is held, was practised by him with reference to believers only, and not with reference to Christ, where the soteric necessities of the case almost compelled the use of "death." But, even with that restriction, the theory is not borne out by the facts, for in 1 Thess. 4:16 he speaks of "the dead (νεκροί) in Christ"; and if he used "dead," he certainly could have used "death," which is no worse a term. Besides, it is one thing to prefer the use of one word to another on account of aesthetic reasons, and another thing to fill the form of a word with an entirely new content; the latter is what he would have done in forcing upon the then colorless term κοιμᾶσθαι the significance of death-sleep literally interpreted. The state of death is a state of consciousness, and, as already shown, capable of the sensation of comfort or discomfort, according to the presence or absence of the body, such as results from a garment one is accustomed to wear, and which one misses when it is not on him. It would, perhaps, be too much to assert, that, apart from this the death-state of believers is an undesirable experience. That it falls short of the acme of blessedness must be acknowledged, and it may be well to call attention to this fact as over against the error of death-sleep, for to the sleeper there is neither pain nor pleasure, a

consideration which might incline minds, over-enamored with the idea of absolute quiescence, towards that erroneous theory and the erroneous exegesis on which it is based. The average terminology of burial customs is perhaps to some extent responsible for the error, though as a whole, no doubt, it is born out of a morbidly pessimistic appraisal of life, to which may be added the semi-poetic attraction of the language employed.

It has further been urged that 1 Cor. 11:30 and 1 Thess. 4:13 cast a reflection on the state of death even for believers. If this were correct it would furnish one more argument against the theory under criticism. It must remain doubtful, however, whether this is not putting too much into the words. To die is ordinarily a painful experience as such, irrespective of the state upon which it introduces. And possibly those who died in the Corinthian church died under special circumstances expressive of divine disapproval of their conduct, so that their departure was a chastisement in itself, leaving out of account altogether what their death might proximately lead them into. It should also be remembered, that, owing to the prevailing expectation of a speedy return of the Lord, Paul's teaching had not dwelt upon the intermediate state to any large extent, so that his converts in Corinth could more readily regard premature death as a chastisement than we would. In 1 Thess. 4:13 the cause for the "sorrowing" which Paul deprecates does not lie in their regarding the state of death as an evil in itself, but in their apprehension of it as an interminable state. The Thessalonians, it appears, had not yet fully assimilated the resurrection truth. Paul's statements in this passage, with which we hope to deal more fully in another connection, confine themselves strictly to the one matter on which the Thessalonians were disquieted, viz., the presence at the parousia of their fellowChristians who had died before. On the intermediate state this throws no light whatever.

Having now the immediate precedents and the general terminology before us, we next attempt to obtain an insight into the religious

and doctrinal principles underlying the resurrection. As a fact, and that a fact not lacking doctrinal explanation, it is, next to the cross, the outstanding event of redemptive history. But Paul has first made it a focus of fundamental Christian teaching and built around it the entire conception of the faith advocated and propagated by him. In order to gain an insight into how this came about, we must first call to mind, that in the Apostle's construction of Christian truth, two distinct strands show themselves. The first we may call the forensic one. It revolves around the abnormal status of man in the objective sphere of guilt, and deals with all that is to be done outside of man, in order to its reversal, so that instead of an ἄδικος he may become in legal standing a δίκαιος before God. The other, while variously denominated, may here for convenience' sake be called the transforming one. It has to do with everything that pertains to the subjective inward condition of him to whom the grace of God is imparted. The former effects justification, the latter regeneration and sanctification.

The peculiarity of the Pauline system of truth consists in this, that these two complexes of doctrine do not exist side by side in such form as to yield by mere addition of the one to the other the complete body of Paulinism; the situation is rather this, that furnishing along each line a continuous conspect of the gospel, each after a fashion may lay claim to relative completeness. Hence the phenomenon that in the treatment of the Pauline teaching some writers from a sense of personal preference have chosen the one line, and tracing it out, have felt contented that they were offering the student a full-orbed compass of the Apostle's religious thought. All the time they were forgetting, or perhaps with some intentional partiality ignoring, that alongside of it, there runs the other twin strand making up the other semi-cycle of the teaching. Nor was this unfortunate only because it resulted in incompleteness of rendition, the more serious fact was that even in what thus obtained reproduction the proper balance was lacking. For it stands to reason that in a mind highly doctrinal and synthetic like Paul's a loose juxtaposition of two tracks of thinking without at least an attempt at

logical correlation is inconceivable. In such a matter Paul's mind as a theological thinker was far more exacting than theirs who think that with their facile leaning over to one favored side they have done justice to the genius of the greatest constructive mind ever at work on the data of Christianity.

So far this is only looking at the question from the purely human standpoint of the religious thinker. But we dare not dismiss the point without reminding ourselves that the completeness and logical coherence of the truth taught through its organs is a preëminent postulate of revelation. It is for these reasons a priori to be expected that the two strands discoverable shall not be entirely equal in rank within the system of doctrine, for that would yield a dualism hard to put up with. And so soon as the question is raised, through the principial superiority of which of the two spheres the necessary balance and symmetry is safeguarded, the solution can be hardly other than that the forensic principle is supreme and keeps in subordination to itself the transforming principle. Justification and sanctification are not the same, and an endless amount of harm has been done by the short-sighted attempt to identify them. But neither are these two independent one of the other; the one sets the goal and fixes the direction, the other follows. What has darkened the vision of some in this matter was the taking for granted that for superiority in leading position all that is needed is greater bulk and outstanding prominence on either side. It was unavoidable that in practical communications directed to the building up of disciples in the faith, such as the Epistles, the viewpoint of sanctification could easily come to overshadow the more isolated and momentary problem of justification. This would undoubtedly have happened had not the latter principle found such emphatic and ineffacable testimony borne to it, as is the case, for example, in the Epistle to the Galatians and certain sections of Romans.

Coming now specifically to the resurrection, this before aught else would seem to be exempt from displacement out of the transforming into the forensic sphere. It signifies in fact the most

radical and all-inclusive transforming event within the entire range of the believer's experience of salvation. It is equivalent to "becoming a new creation," and what could be excluded from such a sweep of renewal? The one in Christ is καινὴ κτίσις. In Him the old things have passed away, all things from that point on become new. And what is true of the earthly prototype of the eschatological change must ipso facto hold true of the resurrection part of the supreme crisis at the end. There likewise in an absolutely unprecedented manner and to an unprecedented extent the idea of renewal furnishes the light in which all things are placed. And yet it were, from the point of view of Paul's teaching a mistake to confound prominence here with undivided supremacy. To his view the resurrection with all that clusters around it, has behind it a still more potential principle, a principle from which in fact it springs, and in whose depths it lies anchored. And this deeper principle is that of the acquisition of righteousness, a forensic principle through and through, and yet no less than the resurrection a transforming principle also. It is especially by considering the nexus between Christ and the believer that this can be most clearly perceived: in the justification of Christ lies the certainty and the root of the Christian's resurrection. For the supreme fruit of Christ's justification, on the basis of passive and active obedience, is nothing else but the Spirit, and in turn the Spirit bears in Himself the efficacious principle of all transformation to come, the resurrection with its entire compass included. Resurrection thus comes out of justification, and justification comes, after a manner most carefully to be defined, out of the resurrection; not, be it noted, out of the spiritual resurrection of the believer himself, but out of the resurrection of Christ. On the basis of merit this is so. Christ's resurrection was the de facto declaration of God in regard to his being just. His quickening bears in itself the testimony of his justification. God, through suspending the forces of death operating on Him, declared that the ultimate, the supreme consequence of sin had reached its termination. In other words, resurrection had annulled the sentence of condemnation.

This is the simple meaning of Rom. 4:25: "who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification." The preposition διά occurring in each of the two clauses, must have, of course, in each the same constructional force; what this force is the first clause shows beyond all possibility of doubt: Christ was delivered up to death "on account of our trespasses." Our trespasses were the ideally efficient cause of his death (διά c. acc.). If it is to correspond to this, the second clause must mean that He was raised "on account of our justification" (διά c. acc.). Because in his completed death our justification was virtually secured, it needed only the passing of death from off Him, and the consequent substitution of life for death to declare this. Not, therefore, to render our justification more easy to apply, nor even to release in Him forces working for its application, was He raised. There was in his coming to life something far more efficacious than a mere demonstration might have been.

A passage with a similar trend of thought is Rom. 8:23. Here the technical term υἱοθεσία ("adoption") is introduced in close connection with the "redemption of the body," i.e., the eschatological resurrection. It is not merely in the grace of this present life that the believer is given to taste the fruition of his release from the forensic power of sin, the same principle works through to the very end, so long as there shall still remain something to be set right, some sequela of sin even in the sphere of the body to be removed. Here it can be plainly observed how the one thought passes over into the other: "adoption" is by parentage a forensic concept; yet it fulfills itself in the bodily transforming change of the resurrection.

It has been not unplausibly held, that this forensic aspect of the resurrection as a declarative, vindicatory, justifying act, forms a very old, if not perhaps the oldest, element in Paul's doctrine on the subject. To Judaism the belief largely bore this meaning. Paul could later truthfully say, that in preaching the resurrection he defended the Pharisaic position, not merely through insistence upon the fact,

but also so far as this fact amounted to a vindication of the people of God (Acts 23:6). In 1 Cor. 15:30–32 the resurrection is viewed as a reward for the incurring of danger and the daily dying undergone. In vss. 55–57 of the same context it is pictured as the swallowing up of death in victory, and death is here pointedly named as the penalty for sin imposed by the Law, so that the resurrection is the final removal of the condemnation of sin. In vs. 58 it appears even as a recompense for the labor accomplished, hence as an incentive for the more intense prosecution of this labor: "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." After the long disquisition on the raising of the dead the "wherefore" can have no other meaning than that the motive of the exhortation lies in the sure prospect of the resurrection. The "forasmuch as ye know" relates in like manner to the unshakable assurance of this culminating event in which all rewards of the pious will be summed up.

Of course, all this must be understood in harmony with the Apostle's principle of salvation through grace, apart from works, as must his doctrine of reward in the judgment generally. Side by side, therefore, with the resemblance between it and the Jewish doctrine, the vital difference between meritorious and non-meritorious ground of bestowal should never be overlooked. Still it remains worth observing, that the Apostle has incorporated this idea of the resurrection in his forensic scheme. It seems a pity that in the more prominent associations of our Easter observance so little place has been left to it. The Pauline remembrance of the supreme fact, so significant for redemption from sin, and the modern-Christian celebration of the feast have gradually become two quite different things. Who at the present time thinks of Easter as intended and adapted to fill the soul with a new jubilant assurance of the forgiveness of sin as the guarantee of the inheritance of eternal life?.

We hasten on, however, to outline the other, more familiar aspect of the event. That it bears such an aspect so far as the body is concerned lies on the surface. That this is a transformation effected by Christ Himself is likewise plain; and still further that the transformation is analogous to that produced in the body of Christ Himself at his own resurrection. All this is implied in the classical passage Phil. 3:21, where the expressive term μετασχηματίζειν is employed for describing it. The question, whether this transformation of the body takes place in the believing portion of the Church then living, or in all found alive at the parousia may be here left to one side. Nor can it make any difference for our present purpose, whether the change spoken of shall coincide with the raising of believers, or constitute a separate subsequent act.

A far more complicated problem is whether at the parousia this transformation will concern the somatic condition of believers only, or will include a corresponding psychical change, affecting more particularly that side of human nature where the body is most closely interrelated with the soul. A priori it seems difficult to deny this. The opposite would involve a kind of physical construction of the resurrection-principle, such as we may well hesitate to ascribe to Paul. Bodily the resurrection certainly is, and every attempt to dephysicize it, so often inspired by a dislike of the supernatural on its material side, amounts to an exegetical tour de force, so desperate as to be not worth losing many words over. Now, if there be a somatic resurrection, we can not otherwise conceive of it than as a somatic transformation. There is not a simple return of what was lost in death; the organism returned is returned endowed and equipped with new powers; it is richer, even apart from the removal of its sin-caused defects. The normal, to be sure, is restored, but to it there are added faculties and qualities which should be regarded supernormal from the standpoint of the present state of existence. To receive back a body, and to have a body at all is much (2 Cor. 5:1–9), but we may feel sure that it was not to Paul exhaustive of the grace of the resurrection, even considered from the somatic point of view. Nor do we lack information to that effect. According

to 1 Cor. 15:45–49 believers shall bear after Christ the image He Himself obtained in his own resurrection. And this is not a case of mere analogy as to radiancy of appearance through externally imposed glory, it is something deeper and farther-reaching, intensely real, although we may not be able to form a concrete conception of it any more perhaps than could Paul himself. With all the difference inevitably existing between the two cases the ὁρισθῆναι ἐν δυνάμει ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν of Rom. 1:4 must have its counterpart in the resurrection of believers; in their case likewise there must take place an investment with δύναμις.

The resurrection-idea has been too much concentrated upon its somatic aspect per se; it has been taken too much for granted that the bare body is all that is needed for the sake of restoring the completeness of human nature. If we may judge of the resurrection of believers mutatis mutandis after the analogy of that of Christ, we shall have to believe that the event will mark the entrance upon a new world constructed upon a new superabundantly dynamic plane. It is for the body, no less than for the soul a new birth. The resurrection constitutes, as it were, the womb of the new aeon, out of which believers issue as, in a new, altogether unprecedented, sense, sons of God: "They are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection," therefore they neither marry, nor are given in marriage (Lk. 20:35–36). This whole idea of the ἀνάστασις as a genesis into a higher world opens up the largest conceivable perspective into a life of new structure and new potencies for the entire state of the Christian man. There exists a certain analogy at this point between the ἀνάστασις and the cosmical παλιγγενεσία of Matt. 19:28.

Thus far, however, our discussion has confined itself to the resurrection of the body. A continuity has been established between this as it took place in Jesus, and what will take place at the parousia in them that are Christ's, and the securing of this continuity has been found to be due to no one else than to Christ Himself. When desiring to construct from Paul's statements an

organic bond between the entire Christian life here upon earth and the resurrection at the end, we feel perhaps that what has been said above renders us in a degree unsatisfied. The leap we had to make from Jesus' resurrection to the believer's leaves, as it were, the intermediate spaces unfilled, and thus threatens to destroy the true organic coherence. What we desire is to be able to show, that the believer's whole ethico-religious existence, the sum-total of his Christian experience and progress, all that is distinctive of his life and conduct demands being viewed as a preparation for the crowning grace of the resurrection. Only by showing this can the Apostle's teaching be fully cleared of the charge of incoherency between his religion and his eschatology. We believe it is possible to show this. The passages in which the entrance upon the Christian state is represented as a being raised with Christ come here under consideration. As shown before, they are semi-eschatological in import; they take for granted that in principle the believer has been translated into the higher world of the new aeon. Still for this very reason they establish a real, a vital relationship between what is enjoyed already, and what will be received at the end, for it is characteristic of the principle to lead on unto the final fulfilment. Thus, according to Rom. 6:5, the likeness ("the image made like") of the Saviour's resurrection is to be reproduced in the Christian. Even now believers are to reckon themselves alive unto God in Christ Jesus, the Lord (vs. 11). Those who have the vision of the glorified Christ are through it "transformed into the same image from glory to glory." 2 Cor. 3:18. Whatever may be the exact meaning of these mysterious words it is at any rate plain, that a transforming influence proceeds from Christ, such an influence as He could bring to bear upon us only in the capacity of the glorified, i.e., the risen Christ, and which has for its goal the acquisition of the same gloryimage on the part of believers.

In a different form the same principle of continuity between the present spiritual life and the resurrection shows itself, where believers are exhorted to strive after sanctification with the thought and desire in mind that at the day of the Lord's coming they may be

presented to Him in a sanctified condition, which will at the same time cause rejoicing in those who have labored for them and make the event objectively productive of greater grace and joy. On behalf of the Thessalonians Paul gives expression to the hope, that the Lord may make them to increase and abound to the end that He may establish their hearts unblamable in holiness at the coming of the Lord Jesus with all his saints (1 Thess. 3:13; 5:23). Further, we shall have to add to these indications the complex of ideas gathering around the phrase "to be in Christ." It is not Pauline to conceive of believers who are in Christ as enveloped by Him after a quietistic, unproductive fashion. The relation is one that has its intent determined by their destiny to share after their own degree in his glorified state. Even dead believers are in the intermediate period before the resurrection "dead in Christ" (1 Thess. 4:16). The statement is made in order to assure those then living of their certitude of being themselves changed in due time. If Christ gathers to and envelopes in Himself all his own with such comprehensiveness that even the "dead" are never separated from Him, nor He from them, then the conclusion is surely justified, that the entire activity He directs towards them aims at raising them unto likeness with Himself. Their life and lot are so inwrought with Christ's that the general law of happening in the large phases of his experience must repeat itself in them: "If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him."

Finally, in a more un-Christological form the principle of continuity and causal nexus between the growth of the state in grace here and the inheritance of the resurrection has found striking expression in the figure of sowing and harvesting: "Whatsoever a man soweth, shall he also reap. For he that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not" (Gal. 6:7–9). A connection and proportionateness between the future life of the Christian and his conduct here are affirmed in this no less than in the foregoing passages.

The same problem thus far considered in terms of Christology admits of being studied likewise under the head of the doctrine and function of the Holy Spirit. In order to perceive this the reader should endeavor to make clear to himself how intimate a connection there exists between the Holy Spirit and Eschatology. The lack of recognition of this fact, so common among even doctrinally informed Christians is mostly due to the eclipse which the Spirit's eschatological task has suffered on account of his soteric work in the present life. The ubiquitousness and monergism of the Spirit's influence in the gracious processes we now experience have, as it were, unduly contracted our vision, so that after having emphasized the all-inclusiveness of this work, we forget that we have forgotten, or merely counted in pro forma the other hemisphere pertaining to the Spirit, that dealing with the introduction into and the abode in the life to come. Paul has not left us in uncertainty or unclearness in regard to this part of the Spirit's working. In 1 Cor. 15, and other classical contexts the subject is placed in such prominence and the light of revelation so superabundantly focussed upon it, that some have even felt, as though it outshone somewhat the Christ-glory ordinarily so inseparable from the things soteric. But soteriology so long had the priority in the Church's familiarizing herself with the Spirit, that the other part of the subject had little chance left of obtruding itself and so gaining the attention it is by nature entitled to. What makes this relative neglect all the more unexplainable, and up to a certain point inexcusable, is the fact that after all the Spirit's eschatological functions are simply the prolongation of his work in the soteriological sphere. But be this as it may, now that in more recent times the attention of Scripture students has been attracted to the facts, the intensity of occupation with them has more than made up for the shortcomings of former times.

The connection of the Spirit with Eschatology reaches back far into the Old Testament. The fundamental sense of רוח is in the Hebrew, and other Semitic languages, that of air in motion, whilst with the Greek πνεῦμα the notion of air at rest seems to have been chiefly

associated. This rendered the Hebrew term fitted for describing the Spirit on his energizing, active side, which further falls in with his ultimate eschatological function of producing supernatural effects on the highest plane. Thus, the Spirit comes to be linked together with eschatology. We can observe this along several lines of thought.

There is first the idea that the Spirit through certain extraordinary manifestations of the supernatural, in certain prophetic signs, heralds the near approach of the future world. Thus in Joel 3:1 ff. the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh is described as taking place "before the great and terrible day of Jehovah comes."14 It is not excluded by this, that the Spirit will also have his place within the new era itself, but this is not indicated here. The Spirit works these signs, not because He stands for the eschatological as such, for the latter idea has not yet been reached.

Next, the Spirit is brought within the eschatological field itself as furnishing the official equipment of the Messiah. It will be noted that in the passages where this occurs (Isa. 11:2; 28:6; 42:1; 59:21 (?); 61:1) the Messiah receives the Spirit as a permanent possession. In calling this equipment with the Spirit official we do not mean to imply that it is externally attached to the Messiah, not affecting his own subjective religious life, for He is not merely a Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, but also a "Spirit of knowledge and fear of Jehovah." Still the prophet does not mean to describe what the Spirit is for the Messiah Himself, but what through the Messiah He comes to be for the people.

Thirdly, the Spirit appears as the source of the future new life of Israel, especially of the ethico-religious renewal, and thus first becomes suggestive of the eschatological state itself. To this head belong the following passages: Isa. 32:15–17; 44:3; 59:21 (?); Ez. 36:27; 37:14; 39:29. It will be observed that in these prophecies the sending of the Spirit is expected not from the Messiah but directly from Jehovah Himself, although the statements occur in prophecies

containing the figure of the Messiah. The emphasis rests on the initial act as productive of new conditions; at the same time the terms used show that the presence and working of the Spirit are not restricted to the first introduction of the eschatological state, but characterize the latter in continuance. The land and the nation become permanent receptacles of the Spirit. The promise assumes in Ez. 36:26 an individualizing form.

Fourthly, we must take into account that in the Old Testament the word "Spirit" appears as the comprehensive formula for the transcendental, the supernatural. In all the manifestations of the Spirit a supernatural reality projects itself into the experience of man, and thus the sphere whence such manifestations come can be named after the power to which they are proximately traced. This is in harmony with the two-fold aspect of the wind, which is at the same time a concrete force, and a supernal element seeming to come from above. But the Spirit stands for the supernatural not merely in so far as the latter connotes the miraculous, but likewise in so far as it is sovereign over against the creature: it "blows where it listeth." In man the pneumatic awakes the awe pertaining to the supernatural, and exposes to the same danger. Even in his ordinary life the prophet is, on account of his pneumatic character, as it were concentrated upon a higher world, "he sits alone because of Jehovah's hand" (Jer. 15:17).

The idea mentioned in the fourth place is the one which has undergone a somewhat further development in the Apocalyptic literature. Here at least the Spirit is explicitly described as a Spirit of eternal life (Orac. Syb. iii. 771), a Spirit of holiness pertaining to paradise, named in connection with the tree of life (Test. Levi, xviii. 11). Still further goes the Rabbinical Theology when it brings the Spirit specifically into connection with the resurrection: "Holiness leads to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit leads to the resurrection." The impression that the period of Judaism felt itself to be an unpneumatic period is sometimes due to an unwarranted comparison with the following Spirit-filled days of the early Christian Church.

Both the wise men and the Apocalyptic writers of that period feel themselves men of a higher divine rank. Sometimes the pneumatic state vaunted of assumed the form of a translation into the heavenly sphere.

Coming back to Paul we may adopt for guidance the twofold aspect in which the eschatological function of the Spirit appears in his teaching. On the one hand the Spirit is the resurrection-source, on the other He appears as the substratum of the resurrection-life, the element, as it were, in which, as in its circumambient atmosphere the life of the coming aeon shall be lived. He produces the event and in continuance underlies the state which is the result of it. He is Creator and Sustainer at once, the Creator Spiritus and the Sustainer of the supernatural state of the future life in one. As to the first, Rom. 8:11 affirms that God διὰ τοῦ ἐνοικοῦντος αὐτοῦ πνεύματος ἐν ὑμῖν or διὰ τὸ ἐνοικοῦν πνεῦμα shall give life to the mortal bodies of the readers. Πνεῦμα is here not the human spirit, psychologically conceived, as vs. 10 at first sight might make us assume. It is the divine Pneuma that is referred to, to be sure, in its intimate union and close association with the believer's person. Hence in vs. 11 there is substituted for the simple pneuma the full definition "the Spirit of Him that raised Jesus from the dead." In this designation of God resides the force of the argument: what God did for Jesus He will do for the believer likewise. It is presupposed by the Apostle, though not expressed in so many words, that God raised Jesus through the Spirit. Hence the argument from the analogy between Jesus and the believer is further strengthened by the observation, that the instrument through whom God effected this in Jesus is already present in the readers. The idea that the Spirit works instrumentally in the resurrection is plainly implied. This is altogether apart from the interesting divergence in the construction of διά which occurs with the accusative in several important authorities. That would yield the paraphrase: If the Spirit of God who raised Jesus dwells in you, then God will create for that Spirit the same appropriate habitat as He created for Him in the resurrection-body of Jesus. This is a unique idea; it reverses the

relation between Spirit and resurrection-body; usually the Spirit is for the sake of the new body, here the new body would be for the sake of adorning the Spirit. But, interesting though the thought may be, the other reading (διά cum genitivo) seems to have more textual weight in its favor. Adopting this, we paraphrase: If the Spirit of God who raised Jesus dwells in you, then God will make the indwelling Spirit accomplish for you what He accomplished for Jesus in the latter's resurrection. The idea of the "indwelling" of the Spirit in believers, occurring as it does in a train of thought prospective to the resurrection, can hardly help suggesting a process of preparation carried on with a view to that supreme eventual crisis. The Spirit is there as indwelling certainly not for assuring the Christian of his ultimate attainment to the resurrection alone. The indwelling must attest itself by activity also.

It might be said, however, that in statements of this kind the point of departure is the soteriological conception of the Spirit as a present factor in Christian life, and from there it moves forward to the future, so that the eschatological task of the Spirit would not be something peculiar, but only his general task applied to one particular situation. We therefore turn to another train of thought, which clearly starts from the eschatological end of the line, and from that looks backwards into the present life. This is the case in 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14. Here Paul derives the proof for God's having prepared him for the eternal state in a new heavenly body from the fact of God's having given him the ἀρραβὼν τοῦ πνεύματος. The "earnest" consists in the Spirit, the genitive being epexegetical, just as in Gal. 3:14 the "promise of the Spirit means the promised thing consisting in the Spirit. Now the Spirit possesses this significance of "pledge" for no other reason than that He constitutes a provisional instalment of what in its fulness will be received hereafter. The quite analogous conception of the ἀπαρχὴ τοῦ πνεύματος (Rom. 8:23) proves this. Ἀρραβών means money given in purchases as a pledge that the full amount will be subsequently paid. In this instance, therefore, the Spirit is viewed as pertaining specifically to the future life, nay as constituting the

substantial make-up of this life, and the present possession of the Spirit is regarded in the light of an anticipation. The spirit's proper sphere is the future aeon; from thence He projects Himself into the present, and becomes a prophecy of Himself in his eschatological operations.

As indicated above, the Spirit is not only the author of the resurrection-act, but likewise the permanent substratum of the resurrection-life, to which He supplies the inner, basic element and the outer atmosphere. It is this second aspect of his function we must now look into. A difficulty meeting us at the outset may be briefly referred to. It concerns the two-fold aspect in which the Scriptures present to us the character of the Holy Spirit. Owing to the task He performs in the work of individual salvation, together with the other two members of the Holy Trinity, it is most familiar to us to conceive of Him as a Person, and not only this: the task has become so thoroughly personalized, as to leave almost no room for aught else in our practical contemplation of the Spirit. When, alongside of this, operations and functions are ascribed to Him, for the expression of which we need figures clothed in impersonal terms, we must not over-rashly conclude that in this matter, taken as a whole, two disjointed, differently oriented conceptions of the Spirit confront us, such as it would be absolutely impossible to reduce to common terms. We may not be able to make a construction that shall reconcile what seems to our minds incombinable in the same subject, but this does not prove that actual coexistence between these two aspects is in the Deity impossible. A Christological parallel can easily disabuse us of the necessity of such a negative conclusion. Nothing can be more personal than the intimate relation which the Christ (particularly the Risen Christ) sustains to the believer. And yet the background or underlying basis of this personal relationship is largely expressed in terms, that, did we not know better, might make us think of an elementally distributed Christ-atmosphere, in which, at least from the Saviour's side the personal is submerged, and of which the imagination fails to supply us with an adequate idea of what it

consists in, inwardly considered. If to be "in Christ," and at the same time to live in conscious intercourse and fellowship with Him are not logically identical, and are yet to our common Christian faith joined in the same believing subject without endangering the recognition of the one aspect by that of the other, then why should an analogous double relation of the Holy Spirit to our persons be deemed incongruous? This parallel between the two cases, that of Christ and of the Holy Spirit is all the more convincing, since in the Pauline soteriology the two phrases ἐν πνεύματι and ἐν χριστῷ, at least so far as the latter is not meant forensically, are equivalent as to purport. The Holy Spirit is, comparatively speaking, even more elemental than the Risen Christ. Still less is there need for wondering that the Spirit plays in Eschatology this, as it were, semipersonal rôle.

Let us now briefly survey the evidence found for this representation in the Epistles. 1 Cor. 15:42–49 contrasts the two bodies that belong to the preëschatological and the eschatological states successively. The former is characterized as ψυχικόν, the latter as πνευματικόν. This adjective Pneumatikon expresses the quality of the body in the eschatological state. Every thought of immaterialness, or etherealness or absence of physical density ought to be kept carefully removed from the term. Whatever in regard to such qualifications may or may not be involved; it is certain that such traits, if existing, are not described here by the adjective in question. In order to keep far such misunderstandings the capitalizing of the word ought to be carefully guarded both in translation and otherwise: πνευματικόν almost certainly leads on the wrong track, whereas Πνευματικόν, not only sounds a note of warning, but in addition points in the right direction positively. Paul means to characterize the resurrection-state as the state in which the Pneuma rules. That it rules signifies more particularly, that it impresses upon the body its three-fold characteristic of ἀφθαρσία, δόξα and δύναμις (vss. 42, 43). Over against this stands the psychical body, which in order of time precedes the soma Pneumatikon. The former for its part is characterized by φθορά, ἀτιμία and ἀσθενεία. The

passage is unique even in the long register of the high mysteries of the faith with Paul, in that it contrasts not the body affected by sin, not the body as it came to exist as a result of the entrance of evil into the world, with the future body, but the primordial body of Adam ("the First Adam") and the body of the consummation. The proximate reference is to the contrast between the two bodies only; but in vs. 46 the representation widens out to a far more general, indeed a cosmical one. In the all-comprehensive antithesis there established by the principle: "that is not first which is τὸ Πνευματικόν, but that is first which is τὸ ψυχικόν, then that which is τὸ Πνευματικόν", this is expressed by the contrast ἐκ γῆς and ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. When it is affirmed that the Second Man is from heaven, this has nothing to do with the original provenience of Christ from heaven; the "from heaven" does not necessarily imply a "coming from heaven," any more than the opposite "from earth" implies a coming of Adam from the earth at the first creation. To refer "from heaven" to the coming of Christ out of the state of preëxistence at his incarnation would make Paul contradict himself, for it would reverse the order insisted upon in vs. 46; not the "Pneumatic" is first, but the "psychical." Besides this it would make the Pneumatic the constituent principle of the human nature in Christ before the resurrection, of which there is no trace elsewhere with Paul. The phrase "from heaven" simply expresses that Christ after a supernatural fashion became the Second Man at the point marked by ἔπειτα. A "becoming" is affirmed of both Adams, the second as well as the first, for the verb ἐγένετο in vs. 45 belongs to both clauses. How far in either case the subject of which this is affirmed existed before in a different condition is not reflected upon. The whole tenor of the argument (for such it actually is) compels us to think of the resurrection as the moment at which τὸ Πνευματικόν entered. Christ appeared then and there in the form of a Πνευματικός and as such inaugurated the eschatological era. But, besides identifying the eschatological and the pneumatic, our passage is peculiar in that it most closely identifies the Spirit with Christ. Up to this point the Spirit, who works and sustains the future life was the Spirit of God. Here it begins to be, not so much

the Spirit of Christ, but the Spirit which Christ became. And, being thus closely and subjectively identified with the Risen Christ, the Spirit imparts to Christ the life-giving power which is peculiarly the Spirit's own: the Second Adam became not only Πνεῦμα but πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν. This is of great importance for determining the relation to eschatology of the Christ-worked life in believers.

We have found that the Spirit is both the instrumental cause of the resurrection-act and the permanent substratum of the resurrectionlife. The question here arises which of the two is the primary idea, either in order of thought or in point of chronological emergence. It might seem plausible to put the pneuma-provenience of the resurrection-act first, and to explain this feature from what the Old Testament teaches concerning the Spirit of God as the source of natural life in the world and in man, especially since in the allegory of Ezek. 37 this had already been applied to the national resurrection of Israel. If the Spirit worked physical life in its present form, what was more reasonable than to assume that He would likewise be the author of physical life restored in the resurrection. As a matter of fact, however, we find that the operation of the Spirit in connection with the natural world recedes into the background already in the inter-canonical literature, and remains so even in the New Testament writings themselves. It is more plausible to assume that the thought of the resurrection-life was the first in order, and that, in partial dependence on this at least, the idea emerges of the Spirit as the Author of the miracle of the resurrection. For the pneumatic character of the age to come there existed a solid Old Testament basis in trains of thought, which had fully held their own and even found richer development in the early New Testament period. And, quite apart from eschatological contexts, the thought that the heavenly world is the pneumatic world meets us in Paul, 1 Cor. 10:3, 4; Eph. 1:3. From this the transition is not difficult to the idea that the eschatological state is preëminently a pneumatic state, since the highest form of life known, that of the world of heaven, must impart to it its special character.

A second problem on which the eschatological evaluation of the Spirit may perhaps be expected to throw some light concerns the ubiquitousness of the Spirit in the entire Christian life on earth, his equal distribution over all its spheres and activities. In Paul first from the subjective side Christianity and the possession of and action through the Pneuma become interchangeable, and with strong emphasis the center of the Spirit's operations is found in the ethico-religious sphere. With such thoroughness and emphasis this had not been done before Paul. Gunkel has no doubt exaggerated somewhat the originality of the Apostle in this respect and underrated the preparation made for this development by the Old Testament prophetic and earlier New Testament teaching. Still a simple comparison between the Petrine speeches in Acts and the Pauline statements abundantly shows, that Paul was the first to ascribe to the Spirit that dominating place and that pervasive uniform activity, which secure to Him, alongside of the Father and the Son, a necessary divine relation to the Christian state at every point.

CHAPTER VII: ALLEGED DEVELOPMENT

IN PAUL'S TEACHING ON THE

RESURRECTION

The recent intense occupation with the significance of the Spirit for the structure of the Pauline eschatology has in many respects enriched our knowledge of the subject. At the same time, and offsetting as it were this benefit, it has given rise to certain efforts from the critical side to work out a scheme of development for the Apostle's convictions and expectations as to the resurrection. The

resulting views are so radical and deep-cutting, as to have modified in the mind of their supporters not only this one important point but the entire organism of the Pauline teaching. Into these theories and their supposed basis this chapter proceeds briefly to look.

As just intimated, the idea of the Spirit is made the starting-point and the propelling power of this evolution both in its particular and in its general aspect. Once adopted it is then turned into a searchlight throwing its luminous beams on all the high mountain tops of the Apostle's world-view. It de-Judaizes and to not a small extent Hellenizes his Christian thought. The development thus assumed is not, however, like the normal progress that might have been expected in one who once testified concerning himself: "When I was a child I spake as a child … now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things" (1 Cor. 13:11). It is rather welcomed as a development consisting in the elimination of error, each successive stage of belief contradicting the preceding stage, and in turn being superseded by the following one. The stages in this evolutionary construction and the forces back of them are counted as follows:

The first stage of the development is found by these critics in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. It contains an as yet purelyJewish form of eschatological belief, differing from the Jewish only in being centered around the Person of Jesus. Like Apoc. Bar. l. 2 it assumes that God will raise the dead, nihil immutans in figura eorum. Paul, we are told, at the time of writing this Epistle, and during his previous preaching, believed that the bodies would be brought up from the grave in the same condition as when laid therein. The main purpose of his preaching this doctrine to the Thessalonians was to reassure them that those who had recently died would be on the same footing with themselves at the moment of the parousia. Hence nothing is said about the change in those living at that point. The fact of the decomposition of the body in the grave did not trouble Paul, because he took for granted that the time until the parousia would be very short!

The second form of the development is represented by the First Epistle to the Corinthians. If the Thessalonians-stage can be called pre-pneumatic, this next one is characterized by the influence exerted by the pneuma-idea. Here the pneumatic eschatology begins. Paul now expects the resurrection to bring about a vast change in the rising body, and expects its occurrence at the very moment of rising. The pneumatic-transformation-idea virtually becomes a part of the resurrection-idea itself. Nor was this conception made possible only by the introduction of the Pneumafactor; it became inevitable so soon as the Pneuma, whose very function consists in transformation, was closely joined to the event of the resurrection. The Spirit would have denied his own nature, as in very essence a transforming agent, had He been contented with the purely objective task of bringing forth the dead, without effecting a creative change in the somatic substance, which in the resurrection He operates upon. Further, the new man consisting as to his essence in spirit, and the sarx, the very opposite of spirit, having its seat in the body, the prime necessity for such a fundamental act as the resurrection can from the nature of the case consist in nothing else than the elimination of the "sarkic" body. This, of course, means the cutting off in reality of all connection between the present body and the body of the resurrection, although it is admitted that this last consequence of the modified view is not in so many words drawn by Paul. Although on such a view the real continuity lies in the Pneuma, and no longer in the body, the Apostle nevertheless continues to assign the resurrection to the moment of the parousia. This, we are told, was an instance of inconsistency. It fitted only into the mechanical system of Judaism as exhibited in his own previous position of 1 Thessalonians. The inconsistency necessarily led on to the development of the third position.

This third position is based on the observation on the part of Paul, that the Spirit being present in the believer from the beginning of his Christian life, there existed in reality no reason, why his crowning work should be postponed till the moment of the

parousia, which, no matter whether Paul thought it distant or near, involved an element of objectionable retardation. The moment of resurrection was now placed at the believer's death. Be it noted, however, that the resurrection placed at that moment savored in no respect of the diluted modern spiritualization so largely favored in certain circles. It was not to his mind the mere entrance upon a superior incorporeal state, but the entrance upon a better embodied state, as refined and spiritualized as that expected during his second period, only no longer postponed till a later point, but immediately accorded in articulo mortis. There is, then, no discarding of the resurrection-idea here, but only the remodelling of it on a new basis. This third conviction is found reflected in the remarkable passage, 2 Cor. 5:1–8. It also finds recognition in certain statements of Romans and Colossians. Apart from the logical motivation above stated, the impulse towards embracing it arose from the Apostle's experience of the danger of death he had repeatedly incurred in his missionary labors. Hitherto he had believed in such a close nearness of the Lord's coming as to cherish reasonable hope for a life prolonged to that point. Now reckoning seriously with a previous death, he had to reconsider his resurrection-belief in adjustment to it. And it was under the emotion aroused by the thought of a preparousia-death, and particularly the inevitably ensuing interval of "nakedness," i.e., the existence of the soul without a covering body, that he found refuge within this new construction of things. Nakedness could be prevented, if at the very moment wherein the old body slipped off a new somatic garment were produced and put on in order to take its place. It seemed even possible to add to this view the belief in the preëxistence of the new body, as held ready antecedently in heaven, and put to its predestined use at the very moment of the believer's death. In accordance with this new construction he speaks, we are told, in Rom. 8:19, not of the glorification of the sons of God, but of the revelation of the sons of God, an expression adapted to suggest that the glory of God's children already exists and waits only to be manifested. Similarly in Col. 3:4 the statement occurs that when Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, the Colossians also shall be manifested in glory.

Still a fourth standpoint is attributed to Paul, according to which in certain connections he implies the genesis and development of a somatic organism within the believer during the course of the present life, whilst the earthly body is still upon him. This, however, differs from the preceding stages enumerated in that it does not follow them as something attained in chronological sequence replacing a belief held before. It occurs in Epistles which at the same time reflect one or the other of the previous standpoints. According to 2 Cor. 4:17 the "weight of glory" is wrought for the believer while he is still in the present state, and according to 3:18, in the same context, the "transformation into the image of the Lord from glory to glory" takes place gradually here and now as the words themselves suggest. Consistently carried out this would, of course, have led to a considerable modification of what the new exegesis finds in 2 Cor. 5:1ff., as above formulated. Not even at death would the draping with a new body have, on such a theory, been rendered necessary. The new body having been already formed within the old body previously to death, all that remained to happen was the slipping off of the old which had hitherto hid the new from view, so that it might be manifested from within.

It will not be necessary to review this scheme of development in each of its steps. Only in so far as it involves a deviation from the traditionally accepted doctrine of the resurrection, so largely received from Paul, need we enter into the questions involved. The alleged second stage, that found in 1 Cor. 15, agrees in its broad outlines with the common Christian faith. It is different with the remaining three phases. To these we therefore address some critical remarks.

As regards the first stage the point in question is the absence of the pneumatic factor. It is true that the Spirit is not here explicitly named either as the author of the resurrection-act or as the substratum of the resurrection-life. Does this reveal nonacquaintance on Paul's part with such a circle of ideas? We must not overlook that the absent features did not bear directly upon the

purpose of Paul's exhortation. Not the nature, but the fact of the resurrection required stressing. The point that the living should not anticipate the previously dead on this joyful occasion was the point in need of emphatic affirmation. Such Paul affords explicitly. It were, however, foolish to infer from this, that he could not have told his readers much more about the nature of the event, had it been expedient. Indirectly the Epistle shows clearly enough that the idea of the pneumatic character of the resurrection was not unknown to the author, whatever might be the case with his hearers. In 4:14 the certainty of the readers' resurrection is based on the fact that Jesus "died and rose again." The ground of the certainty can not lie in this, that Christ is now alive, and therefore able to serve as the instrument of resurrection for the others. For in that case there would have been no reason to emphasize that Christ not only rose but "died and rose again." The real nerve of the argument is that because in his life their experience had been prefigured, the phase in question must be likewise reproduced in them. Now everywhere in the Pauline teaching the Spirit is the mediating factor, whereby the reproduction of the experience of Christ in believers takes place, and there is no reason to assume that the idea has any other than this same pneumatic background here. We meet even with the phrase "dead in Christ." This does not apply to any particular class of "dead," e.g. to such alone as had died for Christ's sake; the words do not suggest this, and there is no evidence of early cases of martyrdom in Thessalonica. The phrase "in Christ" can have no other meaning than belongs to it elsewhere. It describes the fundamental, mystical union between the dead and Christ. The phrase "in the Spirit" undoubtedly lies back of it.

In regard to the second stage a few brief words may suffice. The main point to take issue with here relates to the assertion that on the view developed by Paul, and taken over from him into the Church's creed, the real continuity between the original body and the resurrection-body is broken off. To be sure, this is more in the nature of a dogmatic contention than of an exegetical finding; it means that to Paul's modified standpoint and for his unspiritual

followers the trend of belief in this direction was leading to that. They were on the point of losing something that had always been precious to their imagination, to wit, the recovery of the identical body here possessed. Not now enquiring into the metaphysical or physical or biological elements of the issue but confining ourselves to the purely-exegetical question what Paul's words about the subject may mean, the answer need not be overdifficult nor dubious. To be sure, the figure of "sowing" (σπείρειν), which plays so large a rôle in the argument, does not suffice of itself to vouch for Paul's belief in a real continuity (which is still different from complete identity) between what is deposited in the ground and what is raised. Nevertheless by way of implication this idea seems to underlie the word and figures used. Only a mistake has often been made through over-estimating the purport of the representation. Paul did not adopt or frame the figure for the sole or even main end of stressing the continuity between the two bodies. The argument, in which it lies enclosed, is an argument for the truth of the resurrection in general, and not for this one special point. The idea of "sowing" forms, within the argument as a whole, a means to an end; it is not the end in itself. Hence it gives no information as to the modus quo of the intermediate process between the figurative "sowing" and "harvesting." Its meaning is confined to the twin poles of the mysterious process, its beginning and end. We are sure Paul could and would have felt like the man in the parable, who knew not how the growth was brought about. What the actual purpose of the use of the figure was we can only ascertain by carefully considering the course of Paul's argument. It is necessary to go back to vs. 35. Here Paul formulates the two principal objections raised in Corinth, probably first by pagans, but later likewise by Christians, on whom the cavillings of the others had not failed to make some impression. The formulation is as follows: "But somebody will say: how are the dead raised, and with what kind of body do they come?" This, be it observed, is not one question presented in two forms for the sake of emphasis or clearness. Two distinct grounds for scepticism are plainly distinguished. The first, "How are the dead raised," ridicules the phantastic folly of believing in the return to life of a dead body.

The whole thing was considered as lying beyond the sphere of arguable possibilities. The second objection is contained in the second part of the verse: "With what kind of body do they come?" This second question relates to the indeterminableness or unimaginableness of the form. The Apostle proceeds to deal with these two questions in due order of sequence. The answer to the former is given in vs. 36; to think that what is "dead" (νεκρόν) cannot be raised is in flagrant contradiction to the facts of experience: "what thou sowest is not made alive except it have died." Death, so far from being an obstacle to quickening, is its very prerequisite. Here the figure of "sowing" is already present; it serves the purpose of pointing to a common law of nature. Quite different is the use to which Paul turns it from vs. 37 onwards. Here the second (or secondary) objection, "With what kind of body do they come?" is met. The objectors found it impossible to frame a concrete conception of the nature of the resurrection-body, that is of its form and appearance. It is important to note that the question of substance does not seem to enter into either of the two stages of the argument. What the doubters felt perplexed about, concerned the quality of the new bodies, viz. their external quality. Perhaps it is not irrelevant here to remember the peculiar mentality of the average Greek (not now including the philosophers). The Greek would want above all in such things the convincing force of vision and imagination. To be unable to form a concrete image of something was of itself an invitation to doubt. In accordance with this Paul speaks throughout the sequel of the discourse (up to vs. 50) of the present and future bodies in terms of quality and appearance. The way of introduction of the substance-question in vs. 50 indicates of itself, that there a new aspect of the mystery is for the first time touched upon. Previously to that point the figure of "sowing" served merely to answer the second objection raised, viz. that no concrete visualisation of the body to come could be formed. Paul meets this with an appeal to the richness of God's resources in the bestowal of form, and to his sovereignty in choosing from the available forms in each individual case what seems fitting to Him: "And that which thou sowest thou sowest not

the body that shall be, but a bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or some other kind; but God gives it a body even as it has pleased Him, and to every seed a body of its own."4 The form, the appearance, that characterizes what comes out of the ground, is not to be limited to a replica of what was put into the soil. The grain, the seed-kernel, is "naked," that is unclothed with foliage or flowers. The dress, the envelope, are given by God. No observation of a seed-grain could have taught, without previous experience, what the appearance of the sprout or plant issuing would be like. What right then has a man to argue from the impossibility of pre-vision and pre-imagination, to the presumptuous conclusion that the forthcoming of a new differently-shaped and differently-appareled body is a priori an absurdity?

It is evident that this feature, the intent of bringing out the nonresemblance between seed and plant governs Paul's entire treatment of the comparison. That in this explanation we have correctly diagnosed the Apostle's intent, is borne out likewise by the subjoined argument of vss. 39–41. Here Paul elucidates the principle at stake from two other spheres, passing over from vegetable to animal and astral existence. This, of course, excludes the possibility of every attempt at genetic explanation, which in the foregoing, where sowing and reaping came under review, might still have seemed to be possible. What here remains of the argument is solely the variety of somatic condition in the groups named as a static fact. Naturally the group of animal creatures as standing nearest to man is first drawn upon for illustration. After that the astral world comes under review. The point at issue, however, remains the identical one dwelt upon before. The variety, existing de facto as a constant phenomenon, though differentiated in its multiplicity, removes the right of doubting the possibility of the resurrection on the sole ground of a differently complexioned body being inconceivable. Let us briefly follow the progress in the reasoning. Its structure is carefully and skilfully framed through the alternate employment of the two adjectives ἄλλος and ἕτερος. Unfortuntely the precise difference between these two, and, in

consequence, the full force of the argumentation, are lost to the English reader. The clearness of contrast could have been retained only through a pedantic alteration between the philosophic phrases "generically different" and "specifically different." Paul calls attention to the differences appearing both in the sub-human and in the superhuman realms between single species. He likewise calls attention to the generic, fundamental difference between the realms taken comprehensively. Ἄλλος marks the difference among the species included in one and the same genus, whilst ἕτερος marks the difference between the genera. Between the flesh of mankind and beasts and birds there is specific difference only; as to genus they belong in common to the same animal world; hence in vs. 39 ἄλλος is used: "there is one flesh of men, another of beasts" (κτηνῶν), etc. When, however, all these are taken together, and the heavenly bodies placed over against them a heterogeneity results: "the glory of the celestial and the glory of the terrestrial are ἕτεραι." But among the heavenly there is again a specific difference: "another (ἄλλη) is the glory of the sun and another is the glory of the moon, and another is the glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory." Here again it is at once seen that the reasoning revolves not about the substantial make-up of these bodies, but about their kind, their quality, their appearance. This follows further from the fact that the close of vs. 38 links on closely to vss. 39–41, and there, as shown above, the reference to plant-clothing in foliage and flowerage is unmistakable. The same observation can be made by noting carefully the word here chosen by the Apostle to express the aspect in regard to which the variety exists. It is a variegation in "glory" (δόξα), and "glory" is primarily a term of outward manifestation. Again, the same conclusion may be drawn from the manner in which Paul, returning to the figure of sowing, immediately resumes the terminology of the qualitative. He contrasts the two bodies ("sown" and "rising") as possessed of corruption (vs. incorruption), dishonor (vs. glory), weakness (vs. power). In keeping with all this we shall have to understand the word sarx in vs. 39 not of "flesh" as so much animal matter, but of the ordinary somatic instrument for revealing certain traits or a

complex of appearances. Sarx is simply in this connection a synecdochical designation of soma from this qualitative point of view (cp. vss. 38, 40). When Paul says: "another is the sarx of men, another is the sarx of beasts, another the sarx of birds, another the sarx of fishes," he means nothing else than that a cognate somatic organization in each case defines the limits of the species. Earthly bodies can be thus differentiated by the term sarx, because sarx is in them the most conspicuous feature, one of these elements after which the language is wont to give names to things. But, coming to "celestial things," the difficulty arises that such celestial entities possess no sarx, after which they could be synecdochically denominated. Yet, although sarx was excluded, the word soma in the sense of medium of appearance, above defined, continued to admit of use. It is somewhat difficult to determine, when Paul speaks of σώματα ἐπουράνια, whether the word "body" is used in the sense of physics or of biology. That sun, moon and stars are named as instances of heavenly bodies would seem to favor the former. This is held by others to be non-decisive, because, following a prevailing belief, both Jewish and pagan, Paul might have looked upon these celestial balls as inhabited by angels. In that case their glorious outward appearances might have been considered as a radiance of angelic inhabitants. Whatever one's exegetical choice between these two opinions may be, the conclusion to be drawn is, in this instance as before, that the resurrection-body will differ greatly from the kind of body we now possess in its eradiation of glory. It will be a case of heteros and not merely of allos. What will be the attributes from which this difference in manifestation results is stated in vss. 42, 43. Four contrasts are distinguished. These four, however, are not simply coördinated. On either side the three first named are thought of as the product of the last and fourth. That the earthly body consists in corruption, dishonor, weakness is in some way connected with its being a σῶμα ψυχικόν. In the same manner the heavenly body is characterized by incorruptibleness, glory, power, all three of which result from its being a σῶμα Πνευματικόν. The only difficulty thus remaining unsolved is how Paul could connect as inevitable consequences with the psychical body, which

is according to the following context the body of creation, the unfallen body, these three ugly predicates of corruption, dishonor, weakness. One might suggest that what he connects with creation is not the actual existence of these qualities, but the contingency of their emergence: the "psychical body" would then be a body, not infected by, but nevertheless not immune either from corruption, dishonor, weakness, whereas the Pneumatic body is lifted above all invasion of these. It must be admitted, however, that this is dogmatic construction, so far as our passage is concerned. Taking into account Paul's teaching as a whole, we believe it to be a quite justifiable construction; only the principle is not here expressed in so many words. Still there is even here one phenomenon lending favor to the view suggested: Paul seems intentionally, in characterizing the body of the First Man, to avoid the adjective sarkic and the noun sarx to which it belongs. From both words in the ordinary Pauline vocabulary the notion of sinfulness, moral corruption, is inseparable. The introduction of such words as ἐκ γῆς χοϊκός, χοϊκός, vss. 47–49, where on the ordinary terminology sarx, sarkic would have been indicated, proves to our minds that the avoidance was intentional, and not for the sake of stylistic variation only. In vs. 50, on the other hand, where the body of man's sinful estate is indisputably spoken of, the term sarx immediately emerges.

We now have the facts with sufficient completeness before us. The question is in order, whether in this context, so full of mysteries, there is actually present, as the evolutionary pneumatology would have it, such a powerful influx of the pneuma-principle as would overbear everything else, and even exclude the factor of the erstwhile earthly body from the process described. The answer must be in the negative. Let it be observed that so far as the act of raising is concerned, the Spirit does not receive the prominence we should expect Him on the new theory to acquire or possess. It is God, as elsewhere, who raises. No doubt He does it through the Spirit, but pointedly stressed this is not. Where it does come to expression the form is Christological, that of the Lord having become a Πνεῦμα

ζωοποιοῦν (vs. 45). This concerns the act of the resurrection, strictly so taken. It does only through inference teach that in the subsequent resurrection-state we shall bear the Spirit-image, or live in the Spirit-atmosphere (vs. 49). As to the presence and operation of the Spirit in the intermediate state, preparing the dead for the issue of the resurrection, nothing whatever is stated; we are here thrown back on the scanty phrase "dead in Christ" from 1 Thessalonians. If the last-mentioned idea could be legitimately drawn from the passage, then, the importance of the Spirit would be greatly enhanced; but even then, with the mystery thus increased, it would contribute nothing to the problem of how the body buried can retain continuity with the body raised. The Spirit were in that case no more than the preparatory agent for bringing about gradually the event of the resurrection. On one view only could a measure of light seem to fall on this mystery of all mysteries, viz. if in any way the Spirit could be conceived as so identified with the body sown as no longer to form the Actor but the object acted upon, no longer the Sower, but in some sense the seed sown. For in that case the continuity and identity of what is sown and what rises at the end would be absolutely assured, since the Spirit is according to the judgment of Paul the absolutely Unchangeable One. This suggested solution brings us face to face with the unsolved, and perhaps unsolvable problem of the relation between the Holy Spirit ad extra and the Holy Spirit immanently considered as part in the make-up of the believer's person. Whether solvable or not, the problem, even if it promised elucidation in general, would from the terms employed in the context here be plainly eliminated as a true solvent. This will appear straightway, if once more the several elements entering into the figuratively formulated transaction be recalled. The term "naked grain" is assumed as the starting-point for this construction. This "naked grain" is explained as carrying in itself a germ, a nucleus of life, and on the same principle the body buried would have within itself the Holy Spirit as the principle or potentiality of a requickened life. Unfortunately Paul in working out the figure makes no distinction between germ and seed in such a way that the presence of the former could serve as a guarantee of

the identity of the rising with the buried body. On the contrary he affirms that that which is sown is quickened, and precisely what is sown dies. The subject is the same in both propositions. And moreover, in vs. 37, instead of picturing the connection between seed and plant in terms suggested by the interpretation offered, he passes over to a totally-different train of thought. After stressing the necessity of dying previously to the possibility of quickening, the argument turns to the variegated exhibition of external clothing in the plant-world. On the theory advocated attention ought to have been immediately called to the fact that the dying is but a partial one in which the Spirit-kernel is not actually involved. Nothing of the kind is done. Neither do the terms subsequently employed fit into the theory under discussion. If the Spirit is sown as residing within the seed, then it can no longer be affirmed that what is sown is naked, for on such a view the Spirit-kernel is precisely clothed upon with the seed. Of what is sown it is emphatically affirmed that it undergoes this process in corruption, dishonor, weakness. All these and such-like things are utterly unpredicable of the Spirit, no matter, whether He be taken objectively as a divine entity, or subjectively as immanent in man. Thus, whichever way one turns, the proposed explanation proves impossible and futile. It is better to leave the matter where it is and to commit the working out of the mystery to God, who can bring about things unsearchable to the mind of man. The resurrection belongs with many other objects of eschatological faith to the region "which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which ascended not into the heart of man."

We proceed to the discussion of the alleged third stage in the evolution of Paul's resurrection-belief. This is the stage in which the Apostle is supposed to have moved forward the endowment with a new body to the moment of death in case the death of his earthly body occurred before the parousia. This view is not ascribed to Paul as a firmly established conviction, but as a more or less contingent eventuality, which none the less he seriously reckoned with. The passage on which it is chiefly based is 2 Cor. 5:1–8, a context extremely difficult of interpretation, partly as a result of some

uncertainties in the text, which, however, may themselves have arisen from a desire through emendation to remove exegetical or doctrinal obstacles. The best method of dealing with the passage seems to be to give first a cursory exegesis of the successive clauses, paying particular heed to their syntactical coherence, and then to sum up the results obtained in a brief paraphrase. In order that the exegesis may be conducted with the greatest degree of discrimination, it will be desirable to place clearly before our minds the traditional understanding of the words, which was common up to the time when the modern exegesis took hold of them. This old view interpreted as follows:—Paul felt himself in uncertainty as to whether he was destined to survive till the parousia or die previously to that point. If the former happened the eagerly desired heavenly body would become his immediately, and that without any strange, fearsome process of first stripping off the earthly body now clothing him. In both respects this mode of transformation appeared to him the more desirable. There would be no delay, and there would be nothing of the dread ordinarily associated with death. But in case the other alternative happened through his dying before the coming of the Lord, both of these advantages would not only be lost, there would in addition ensue the far more serious detriment of having to spend the interval between his death and the parousia in a disembodied state, a state of "nakedness" as he calls it. Confronted with these two possibilities and their differing implications, he gives voice to a strong desire for obtaining the former and escaping the latter. With the idea of a tertium quid, viz. that the new body could possibly become his immediately upon death, he did according to the old exegesis in no wise reckon. That which on the modern exegesis formed the very pivot of the movement of his hope, did according to the ancient exegesis never enter his mind. He had before him a maximum and a minimum; the former he preferred, but with true Christian resignation expressed himself contented with the latter, should the Lord have that in store for his servant. He could be thus contented with fulfilment of the lesser hope, because after all it had in common with the higher desire the assurance of being with Christ immediately after death,

even if the supreme satisfaction of entering upon that blessedness in the body were denied him.

Proceeding now to our cursory exegesis of the complex of thought, we observe that the opening statement in vs. 1, when read in the A.V. has perhaps more than aught else in the passage given rise and encouragement to the modern interpretation: "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved (καταλυθῇ), we have a building from God," etc. This subjunctive "were" injects into the statement the thought of the improbability of its happening after the manner the sentence describes: Even if it were,—but it is not likely to happen. This rendering at the outset prejudges the Apostle's state of mind as to the outcome, and is in no wise required by the Greek text. The conjunction "if" (ἐάν) with the Aorist Subjunctive not infrequently has the force of a Future Perfect. The correct rendering accordingly would be: "We know that in case our earthly tent-house shall have been dissolved, we have a building from God," etc. The inaccuracy has been corrected by the R.V., which reads: "For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved" ("be" instead of "were"), etc. Through this correction of the rendering the impression is made less obtrusive, as if Paul in these words reflected upon the availableness of a new body for himself in the very moment that the less desirable event of his pre-parousia death should occur. All that the words, strictly taken, mean is that the loss of the earthly body will be made up for (sooner or later) by the supervening of a wholly-differently complexioned body pertaining to another sphere, but of the timepoint when this certainty shall enter into actuality, nothing is said. Nor do the words, taken by themselves, contain an intimation as to whether the "dissolution" is near or not. But, it will be asked, does not the Present Tense "we have" (ἔχομεν), when joined to the foregoing, imply that the new body must be in possession of the Apostle, when he dies; how otherwise could he declare that at the extreme moment of his earthly life he has it? There is more than one way to meet this difficulty. The verb "we have" can be given the sense of assured possession, carrying a title de jure to something

that may or may not as yet be in existence. Or "we have" might be a case of imaginative projection into the world to come. The closing words of the verse (ἐν οὐρανοῖς) favor the latter, for they do not, of course, describe where the body now is or has been from the first. That would be a formal avowal of the preëxistence of souls, and could hardly in the Apostle's view have been confined to souls, when once embraced with regard to them. What the phrase really means is that heaven is the place in which the body, when received, will be permanently possessed, in which it will exist and move and live; that such is the correct interpretation can be verified from the corresponding phrase "earthly" (ἐπίγειος), applied by way of contrast to "tent-house" (οἰκία τοῦ σκήνους). Further, that the term "house" (οἰκία) which is the object of "we have" is used from the standpoint of the actual and permanent possession in the heavenly life, appears from the difference between it and the term "building" (οἰκοδομή) used just before. In the latter the emphasis rests on the origin of the body: it is a building, something constructed, hence the added words ἐκ θεοῦ; it is a building provided by God, of his own making. In the former the emphasis rests on the existence of the body as a finished product, a "house." Vs. 1, therefore, leaves it undecided when this body will be received, and in no way implies its preëxistence. The characterization of the new body as "eternal" only intends to set it off against the frail and collapsible "tent-house," serving as a figure for the earthly body. A contact for the idea of prëeexistence has further been sought in the closing words of vs. 2, "our habitation from heaven." But this "from heaven" is simply another form of statement for what is called in vs. 1 "from God." The resurrection-body is from heaven because it is in a special supernatural sense from God. Heaven is the seat and source of the Pneuma by which the resurrection-body is formed. On the other hand the word ἐπενδύσασθαι, in this second verse is distinctly unfavorable to the view that Paul looked forward to or weighed the possibility of receiving the new body at or immediately after death. Ἐνδύσασθαι means "to put on," and ἐπενδύσασθαι signifies "to put on one garment over another garment"; it is the preposition ἐπί, that effects this plus in the meaning. The latter word expresses the

same thing which in 1 Cor. 15:53 Paul calls ἐνδύσασθαι, because there the subject of the act is the present earthly body: "this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." Here in 2 Cor. 5, on the other hand, the subject is the self, the incorporeal part of the believer, conceived as already clothed upon with its present body-garment, and desiring to put on over this, as some over-garment, the eschatological body. Now, how did or could Paul conceive of the realization of this desire? The answer seems plain. He could hardly conceive of it as taking place at death, for death is precisely the putting off of the first garment hitherto worn. On such a supposition room would remain for an ἐνδύσασθαι only, no longer for an ἐπενδύσασθαι. It yields an utterly fantastic thought to assume that the Apostle expected at death to carry over, were it only for a moment, the earthly body, and then to slip on over it the new body. In such a case there would have been no real death, nothing would have remained for burial. The only way in which we can intelligibly construe for ourselves this ἐπενδύσασθαι is that it takes place at the parousia, and then, in those to whom the parousia takes place before death. Under these circumstances alone Paul would still be wearing the old body, and therefore able to put on over it the habitation from heaven. Vs. 2, therefore, is utterly irreconcilable with the modern exegesis of a reception of the new body at death.

Vs. 3 we wish to pass by without comment for the moment, because it is exceedingly obscure, owing in part to the uncertain reading of two words, and thereby incapable of yielding any definite conclusions on the question before us. We shall revert to it presently, when endeavoring to paraphrase the passage as a whole.

Coming to vs. 4, we notice several points entirely inconsistent with the idea that Paul is thinking of something to happen at death. He declares: "We that are in the tent do groan being burdened, because we would not be unclothed, but be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life." Here an alternative is formulated by Paul and a preference expressed. The alternative is between the two

experiences, first of being unclothed, and then being clothed anew, and second of being clothed upon immediately. And he prefers the latter. The preference is a strong one. Under the influence of the uncertainty of its decision Paul groans. Now the question arises: Does this situation fit the case of the bestowal of a new body at the moment of death or the case of the bestowal of it at the parousia? In answer let us make clear to ourselves that the groaning and the strong preference become entirely unintelligible, if we conceive Paul thinking of both members of this alternative as attached to the moment of death. For, how could the resolution of such an alternative in articulo mortis become to him a matter of burdensome uncertainty? It would have certainly been regarded by him as pertaining to the formalities of getting into the proper apparel for a solemn occasion; in both cases the outcome would have been precisely the same. If once it were fixed that the new body comes immediately, it certainly, in comparison with that tremendous fact, must have appeared a matter of slight importance, whether it immediately (with the smallest of intervals between) shall succeed the old body, or shall, casting a veil over all that goes on beneath, swallow up the old body, absorbing it, as it were, into itself. For one who was assured that death without fail would bring with itself the new body, it would seem pusillanimous to groan on account of the trifling question whether the instantaneous occurrence should take place one way or the other. Paul was, with his entire periculous and painful life-experience behind him, hardly the man to let his mind be distracted to the point of groaning fear over such matters. All this vexing uncertainty and painful weighing of a small issue must have lacked real importance for a man of his temperament. The fear of death per se, as a momentary experience we have no reason to ascribe to him. It follows, therefore, that the strong sense of uneasiness and the strong preference expressed must have revolved around another, far more serious and solemn question, viz. would there be or would there not be awaiting him in the near future a protracted state of being unclothed, that is "naked" between his possible death and the arrival of the parousia? The uncertainty, therefore, arising from this can not stand in direct

contradiction to the "we know" in vs. 1; in other words "we know" can not, consistently with what follows, carry the meaning: we know that we receive a new body at the time of death. Such a conviction would from the outset have rendered all subsequent burdensomeness and groaning out of place. The simple sense of the verse is, as above intimated: in a general way Paul affirms that instead of the tent dissolved a new structure will be received, but he does not indicate here when or how it will be given.

It is said that vs. 5 proves the "being clothed upon" to be in Paul's view the common lot of all believers, because of the statement "He that wrought us for this very thing is God." The plural "us" is on this view understood of all Christians. Likewise the further words "who gave us the earnest of the Spirit" are taken to bear out this exegesis, since all Christians are recipients of the Spirit and must consequently share in what this gift is the pledge of. He could not have affirmed these things, had he confined the "being clothed upon" to those found alive at the parousia. To this our answer is that from the "us" and the statement concerning the gift of the Spirit as an earnest, no such conclusion can be legitimately drawn. Even if Paul does not use "us" here as a rhetorical plural, but actually includes all believers, this simply shows how he lived in the expectation, that the parousia might still find the great majority of the Christians of his day alive, and looked upon the cases of those who died in the interval as exceptions. After all, he could just as well say of believers in general, that they had been prepared by God to be "clothed upon," at the last day, as he could on the hypothesis under review affirm of his readers collectively, using the word "us," that they had been prepared of God for investment with a new body at death, for on every view he must have been aware that some would be found alive at the parousia, whom God could not have prepared for that peculiar experience, and to whom He could not have given the Spirit as an earnest for such experience. We have answered this argument on the assumption, that "this very thing" (αὐτὸ τοῦτο) in vs. 5 actually refers to the "being clothed upon," as excluding the "being clothed" of vs. 4. Of course, the affirmative answer brings us

face to face with the difficult question, how Paul could so positively affirm that God had prepared the majority of the then living believers to survive till the parousia, then to be changed in the way indicated by "being clothed upon." For this reason we feel inclined to give to "this very thing" another reference. For the present, however, it suffices to have shown, that the usual interpretation of vs. 5 does not compel us to place the "clothing upon" at death.

Finally, vss. 6–8 are said to demand the modern exegesis. Here Paul declares himself of good courage, because immediately after death he will be with the Lord: to be at home in the body is to be absent from the Lord, whilst to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord. And this goal of his desire which he expects to reach at death is taken as identical with what is described in vss. 2 and 4 as the "being clothed upon," because by means of "therefore" it is connected with the foregoing: "Being therefore always of good courage," etc. Hence the conclusion drawn runs as follows: the being at home with the Lord is effected through the "being clothed upon" at death. To this we reply as follows: Paul's good courage in view of the fact that to die means to be at home with the Lord attaches itself to the preceding context in the general import of the latter, a general import that found clearest expression in 4:17, 18 and 5:1. The general proposition, in regard to which Paul felt absolute assurance, was that after the present affliction, or in reward for it, there is eternal glory in store for the believer, and more specifically that, after this earthly tent-body shall have been dissolved, the believer will be put in possession of an eternal heavenly body. As to the secondary question, whether this consummate state of glory would be reached with or without an intervening period of nakedness of death, as to this Paul felt no conviction, either one way or the other, but only a desire and a preference. Hence he contents himself with expressing this preferential desire as growing out of a strong dislike of the state of nakedness. Now, inasmuch as his assurance on the general question far outweighed the uncertainty on that one particular point, Paul could, notwithstanding the unresolved doubt of vss. 2, 4, proceed in

vs. 6 with the declaration, that he was always of good courage. Of course, he had to put the ground of his good courage under the circumstances in the form of the minimum of what he felt sure about; he could not say: we are always of good courage, because to be absent from the earthly body means to be put immediately in possession of the heavenly body. His uncertainty as to whether he would survive till the parousia forbade him that. Therefore he says only as much as he could with full certainty profess: to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord. Even in case that happened which appeared to him the less desirable, he would still be contented, because in this being with the Lord everything else was potentially given. Looking at it closely, the words of vss. 6–8 even seem to disparage the idea of the new body being given at death. He speaks here of death as meaning absence from the body. Of course, he means the earthly body; yet he would scarcely have expressed himself precisely thus, had he meant that immediately another body would be substituted, for the state in such a new body would hardly be describable as the state of one absent from the body. And likewise the phrase "to be present with the Lord" is so general that Paul, had he had in mind the presence with Christ in the new glorified body, would in all probability have chosen a more definite mode of expression in contrast to that of "being absent from the body." Our conclusion, therefore, is that vss. 6–8 do not favor the exegesis under review.

We must now look for a moment at the passage as a whole, and in connection with this at the difficult vs. 3, in order to grasp the import of the entire section, and thus to gather in the fruit of our somewhat laborious exegesis. The passage connects with 4:17, 18 by means of "for" (γάρ): "For we know that in case our earthly tenthouse shall have been dissolved, we have a building from God," etc. Chapter 4:17, 18 affirm that the "affliction" in the body works out an eternal weight of glory, likewise to be enjoyed in the body, since there, in the body, the "affliction" was borne. The future body thus appears from the outset as the bearer of an eternal weight of glory. The knowledge that such a new body shall be ours is basic for the

hope of possessing and enjoying the certainty of this eternal glory. Without such a center the glory could not exist. Especially the description of this new body as a "house" admirably fits into this train of thought, because a house is not a mere place of shelter, but has attached to it the aesthetic conception of a center of manifestation for the glory of its inhabitant. The next verse joins to this, by means of "καὶ γάρ," as a further basis of the conviction expressed in the "we know" of vs. 1, the circumstance that "we groan desiring to be clothed upon with our habitation from heaven. Such an ardent, groaning longing affords a particularly strong ground for the assurance that a heavenly body must be appointed for us. This would not follow, of course, if the longing were of the nature of a purely-subjective sentiment or aspiration. In the present case it does follow, because, being worked in the believer by the Spirit, it becomes divinely prophetic of what is actually in store for him. The idea is that the Christian is so eagerly desirous of the succedence of the heavenly body, if possible, without the intervening of any period of bodiless existence, as to justify the conclusion that the Spirit's hand is discernible in this. The ardency and eagerness of the desire are guarantees of its divine origination. Paul continues, "in this we groan." Some render by "in this (tent)" referring back to vs. I. This construction is somewhat favored by vs. 4 where the same thought is expressed as follows: "for we that are in this tent do groan." It is quite possible, however, to render: "in this respect we groan, that we long to be clothed upon."

The foregoing brings us to the difficult vs. 3. There are two points of uncertainty in the reading of this verse: (1) the conjunction introducing the sentence is in some MSS. εἴ γε (or εἴ γε καί), in others εἴ περ; (2) the participle following this conjunction is read in some authorities ἐνδυσάμενοι, in others ἐκδυσάμενοι. The evidence seems to be in favor of εἴ γε καὶ ἐνδυσάμενοι οὐ γυμνοὶ εὑρεθησόμεθα. But it is extremely difficult, on any view taken of the passage as a whole, to fit these words into the context with an intelligible result. The modern exegesis above criticized would take it as follows: the verse assigns the reason for the longing to be

clothed upon at death: having put the (new) body on we shall not then be found naked. For in that case there will be no interval of disembodied existence. So far as thought is concerned, and taken by itself, this would yield appropriate sense. The fatal objection to it is that it takes ἐνδύσασθαι in the same sense as belongs specifically to ἐπενδύσασθαι. Now the latter is used vss. 2 and 4 with pointed emphasis upon the ἐπί, so as to compel the express understanding that it is not identical with ἐνδύσασθαι, but rather its opposite, if not in result, yet surely in method of procedure. This being so, we may say that Paul, in order to express the thought attributed to him by this new exegesis, would in all likelihood have repeated the word ἐπενδύσασθαι in its participial form; he would have said "we long to be clothed upon, since having been clothed upon we shall not be found naked." The verb which has but one prepositional prefix is distinguished from the doubly compound one in this very vital respect, that it does not imply the guarantee for the avoidance of "nakedness," inasmuch as it does not fix the point for the "putting on" as coinciding with the moment of death. We are bound, therefore, to take ἐνδυσάμενοι as different from ἐπενδυσάμενοι. But what the clause means, if the distinction be insisted upon, as we believe it must, appears difficult to tell. Under these circumstances we prefer, instead of wrestling with the text in order to extract from it some sort of meaning, such as will at best induce half-acceptance, to try how far the difficulty admits of relief by adopting the other reading with ἐκδυσάμενοι instead of ἐνδυσάμενοι. With this combined with either εἴ γε καί or εἰ περ ("although"), we can reach comparative clearness. The sole warrant always for changing the text, either by pure emendation, or through adoption of some other, perhaps less-strongly attested, reading, is the discovery that the adopted modification suddenly lets in light where before darkness prevailed. Such is the case here. Ἔι γε και ἐκδυσάμενοι yields "if so be that also, having put off this body (i.e., having died), we shall not in the end be found naked, our "being clothed upon" taking place at the general resurrection. Taking the other conjunction εἴ περ we obtain the following rendering: "although even having put off this body (died) we shall not ultimately be found naked."

Vs. 4 takes up vs. 2 again, elaborating further the same thought there expressed, whence in the same manner the verse is introduced by καὶ γάρ. The groaning, though it be a groaning caused by uncertainty as to the how or when, nevertheless conveys assurance so far as the simple fact of ultimate attainment is concerned. The "being burdened" here by no means excludes the "we know" of vs. 1, as it would do on the modern interpretation.

In connection with vs. 5 we encountered a difficulty, left for the time to one side. Here is the place to consider it. It consisted in the problem, how the "this very thing" could be referred to the immediately preceding "clothed upon"? How could Paul so objectively affirm that God had purposed and prepared him and his readers for "being clothed upon," if at the same time he continued in uncertainty, as to whether he was to attain it or not? That for which God prepares believers can scarcely be considered a matter of doubt, and conversely, if the point was subject to doubt, Paul could scarcely affirm that God had prepared him and the others for it. We suggested at the previous point a removal of the difficulty by making "this very thing" refer back not to the immediately preceding "clothed upon," but to the general thought dominating the whole preceding context, viz. that in one way or another the Christian is sure to obtain a new body. The question remains, however, whether "this very thing" is not too pointed and emphatic for reference to this general idea. For this reason we now offer for consideration the reference of these words not to the "being clothed upon," but to "we groan." The "groaning" is on this view taken as the very thing for which God has prepared the believer, which He causes to issue from his heart, whence also it has a prophetic significance, becomes a confirmation of the assurance that he shall obtain the heavenly body.

We have now at some length discussed the chief passage supposed to contain the proof that Paul had undergone a change in his eschatological outlook, and have found it inadequate, nay implausible at many a point. The other passages to which appeal is

made for the same purpose are less involved and consequently more easily disposed of. In Rom. 8:19 Paul declares: "the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing (ἀποκάλυψις) of the sons of God." What will happen at the end is here called a "revealing" of the sons of God, not because their somatic glory preëxisted, and hence needed no more than a momentary flashing forth into light. The reason is a quite different one. It is none other than that their status as sons of God with all privileges attached, such as freedom and heirship, existed before, but had not been openly demonstrated. Not their celestial body, but their supreme sonship was in hiding. It is this status that will be revealed, and this revelation will be accomplished, by laying upon them the glory, the medium for whose manifestation, to be sure, is the body of the resurrection. For doing this, however, the body needed no previous existence. Paul does not even say that the glorious body will be revealed, but that the sons of God will be revealed, or, what amounts to the same thing, that the glory will be revealed "to us" (vs. 18). Because the resurrection is a revelation of sonship (not of a hitherto hidden body), it can be also called the "adoption of sons" (υἱοθεσία). That not merely the bringing to light of an already existing body, but its real formation is referred to follows from the coincidence of the redemption of the body with the deliverance of the whole creation from the bondage of corruption. Still another passage appealed to (Col. 3:3, 4) speaks of the life hid with Christ in God, and of the manifestation of believers with Christ in glory at the time of Christ's own manifestation. "Life" does not here necessarily imply somatic existence so that the hidden presence of a body for each believer in Christ would be affirmed. It is true the manifestation of believers together with the manifestation of Christ Himself in glory presupposes that they will, when manifested, possess a body to make them manifest as Christ will be manifest through his body. But it by no means follows from this that they possessed this body previously, simply because Christ possessed his previously to the joint-manifestation. The contrast between the hidden state and the manifested state has not the body for its subject, but the life of the believer. This life is first hid with Christ,

because it is a disembodied life; at the last day it will become manifest through union with the eschatological body. For in the world to come all things are manifest and provided with the proper organs for being so.

In addition to the foregoing we note that the advocates of the modified resurrection-doctrine are compelled to admit an inconsistency on Paul's part even during the stage of development assumed for this third period. In this very chapter the Apostle speaks of the fact that all believers must be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ. The manner in which this is referred to shows that it contemplates a collective manifestation. We have already seen that in the preceding context the Apostle speaks of his conviction, that God, who raised up the Lord Jesus, will also raise him (Paul) up with Jesus, and present him together with the Corinthians. We may further compare Phil. 3:20, 21: "For our commonwealth is in heaven; whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subject all things to Himself." This last passage also suggests an answer to the question, why, if the new body is a product of the Pneuma, the believer should have to wait for it until the parousia, whilst the Pneuma is his already during the present life. The Spirit's work in the renewal of things proceeds according to a fixed, systematic method, in certain distinct stages. First it takes effect in the sphere of the inner man. Its laying hold on the outward man has to wait till the bodily appearance of Christ on earth. The "working whereby He is able to subject all things to Himself" will then draw within the sphere of its operation that whole visible external realm to which the body belongs. Consequently there is nothing arbitrary in the postponement of the transformation of the body till the parousia, nothing that could be called inconsistent with the Pauline doctrine of the present possession by believers of the Spirit.

There still remains to be looked into the fourth and most revolutionary extreme supposed to have been reached by Paul in his concept of the resurrection. This is the stage in which he is claimed to have reached the idea of an actual preformation of the new body within the believer during the course of the latter's earthly life. This lies so much on the line of the construction built on 2 Cor. 5, that it must create wonder that the Apostle did not, once having reached this novel concept, consistently adhere to it, but fixed soon after upon the moment of death as the proper point for bringing the new body into existence. For it is chiefly in Chap. 3 of the same Epistle that this extreme view is found. There is surely a hysteron-proteron here. The words which in Chap. 3 are believed to speak of the mystical process in question are found in vss. 17–18: "Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror (or reflecting as a mirror) the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit," with which are to be compared the words in vs. 16 of the next chapter: "Wherefore we faint not; but, though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day." In judging of the exegesis imposed upon these statements, it should not be forgotten that the uniform testimony on the time-question runs squarely athwart such an opinion as is thus ascribed to Paul, for everywhere he excludes the earthly life-course from the resurrection-process, even there where according to some he places it at the moment of death. His tenses in speaking of the supreme event are throughout future; cp. Rom. 8:11; Gal. 6:8; 1 Cor. 15 (passim); 2 Cor. 5:1–10; Phil. 3:20, 21. If now in the context of 2 Cor. 3 and 4 a different conception of such a radically reversional type actually confronted us, the utmost we could say would be that the Apostle in these isolated moments, in a fit of rapture, as it were, had been raised to such mystical heights, as in this case to be swept entirely out of the consistency of a uniform doctrine. But even to assume this involves considerable difficulty. The assumption would lead us to expect that Paul would have from this point onwards at least made consistent progress along the line indicated. If between First and Second

Corinthians he advanced sufficiently to move the point of the resurrection backwards from the parousia to the death of individuals, and even at certain moments by a flash of pneumatic illumination was given to believe that the formation of a new body is now already imperceptibly going on within the Christian, then we would surely expect that between that date and Philippians he would have made still further progress, and attained the last result of this development as an assured possession. As a matter of fact we find the very opposite. Philippians would suffice to disillusion us in this respect for it proves that the Apostle did ex hypothesi not only halt in his development, but surrendered the newly-gained ground by most distinctly placing the transformation of the body at the parousia. For this reason it is unlikely that even as isolated extreme modes of statement the passages cited can bear the interpretation put upon them. 2 Cor. 3:18 speaks of the glory into which believers are changed by beholding as in a mirror (or, according to another rendering, "reflecting as mirrors") the glory of the Lord. This glory into which they are transfigured is meant to be set in contrast to the glory that shone upon the face of Moses, when descending from the mount of God. Now, inasmuch as with Moses this was a visible, bodily glory, it might be thought that with reference to believers it must be of the same nature, the more so, since "glory" (δόξα) has in most cases eschatological associations relating to the body. None the less the context shows that in the present case Paul attached a different meaning to the word, viz. the idea of an inward glory of illumination by the Spirit of God. It was not the body of Moses as a whole that shone but his face, the organ of vision. Christians likewise receive this glory through beholding it; it is the face which is the organ of its absorption. This takes place "with uncovered face" (ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ). To speak more literally, it is the Gospel by which this mysterious process is mediated, whence the Apostle calls it in 4:4 "the gospel of the glory of Christ." The Gospel corresponds to the veiled countenance of Moses, so far as the perishing are concerned, in whom the god of this world (Satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. At his conversion God shined into Paul's heart" in order that the Apostle by his preaching might

impart to others the illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God πρὸς φωτισμὸν τῆς γνώσεως τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ in the face of Jesus Christ." This beholding of the glory through a mirror is something that belongs, dispensationally speaking, to the present state, for in 1 Cor. 13:12, Paul pointedly distinguishes between the vision "in a riddle" (ἐν αἰνίγματι) and the vision "face to face," which latter is reserved for the end, with which further agrees 2 Cor. 5:7, according to which believers walk through the land of faith, not as yet through the land of sight. All this points to the conclusion, that in the context of the passage under examination a peculiar turn is given to the concept of "glory," a turn by which it is placed in the sphere of "knowledge" (γνῶσις). This is confirmed by the fact that 3:7 names as one of the concomitants of the state in which the transfiguration takes place "liberty," which "liberty" also in Rom. 8:21 appears connected with the "glory." If the above interpretation be correct, we may conclude that the "glory" spoken of in our passage has nothing to do with the body, but is an inward state, specifically belonging to the sphere of supernatural knowledge.

Even less ground is there to find in the verses 2 Cor. 4:16–18 the idea of a present transformation of the body within, while the old earthly body still continues to drape the inner man. Here the resurrection is in the context explicitly placed at the end, vs. 14: "knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also, and shall present us with you." What has misled many here is that in the preceding context Paul speaks of the manifestation of the life of Jesus in "his mortal flesh," i.e. his body. But his speaking in terms of sarx suffices to show that he can not have meant thereby the transformation of the body, since that could come about only through the putting aside of the mortal flesh, and could never be called a "manifestation of life in the flesh." What the Apostle hints at by these expressions is the preservation of his life in the midst of the deadly perils spoken of in vss. 8, 9. He describes these in vs. 10 as an "always bearing about in the body the dying (νέκρωσις) of Jesus." But, while it would be a mistake to identify this sustaining operation of divine power with the body-forming operation of the

Spirit, there appears, nevertheless, and this is the element of truth in the fantastic view propounded, a real connection between the death-entailing experiences of the Apostle's labors and the ultimate resurrection. In vs. 14, in the closest dependence on the register of persecution and affliction written in the foregoing, Paul declares: "Knowing that He that raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also with Jesus." What is the mysterious connection here obviously implied? It must be sought on the negative, not on the positive side. The process of resurrection from its inherent nature has two sides, the stripping off of the flesh and the endowment of the believer with a pneumatic soma. From the negative point of view it could be truly affirmed that the resurrection-process was in operation: room was being made for the new body through the gradual removal of the old. But this is something far different from the assumption of the development of a new body within the old. On its negative side the disintegration of the old structure could also be interpreted as a prophecy of the rearing of the new building appointed to take its place. From the actual erection of the latter, however, this remains different. In this negative sense only the Apostle could say to his readers: "So then death works in us but life in you." The bodily life God sustained in Paul was the same life that enabled him to labor for the Corinthians. And he labored for them, certainly not by means of a mysterious invisible, embryonic corporeity built up within, but in no other way than by means of the present natural life of the body, in which he was undergoing hardships for their sake. Nor do the statements of vss. 16 and 17 compel us to think of a present bodily glory inwrought in Paul: the outward man, he declares, is decaying, the inward man is renewed day by day. For "the inward man" does not signify here a composite human person, consisting of the Pneuma plus a new body. It stands for the Spirit as distinguished from the present fleshly body. If the other view were correct, if ὁ ἔσω (or, ἔσωθεν) ἄνθρωπος meant spirit and body combined, then its opposite ὁ ἔξω ἄνθρωπος ought likewise to signify the natural spirit and body combined, whereas the context shows that it does stand for the bodily life alone. In the other two passages where ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος is spoken of (Rom. 7:22; Eph.

3:16), there can be no doubt about Paul's referring to the inner spiritual part of man by itself and not including a new body. But this renewal of the inner man mentioned in vs. 16 is the beginning of the eschatological glory in its future sense. That here the future glory must be meant follows from the manner in which the light affliction is spoken of as lasting but for a moment; its momentariness is contrasted with the eternal character of the glory, and this contrast involves the contrast between present and future. On the principle of gracious recompense the affliction here endured works out for the eternal world, a superabundant weight of "glory." For the present, therefore, he speaks of the renewal of the inner man only. When speaking of the weight of glory comprehensively it is in contrast with the present, as of something that does not exist at the moment of speaking, but which is being laid up (not actually in preparation), something which the present tribulation creates the title for.

CHAPTER VIII: THE RESURRECTION-

CHANGE

So far as the Apostle's recorded teaching is concerned this subject of the resurrection-change relates to believers, both those whom the Lord's parousia will find living, and those whom at His advent He will raise from the dead. The changing is so intimately related to and connected with the agency of the Pneuma, that this of itself would exclude from its consideration the problem of what takes place in those raised not for an eternal Pneumatic state of blessedness, but for a subsequent state of punishment. It is true that the common earthly corporeity would as little fit in with a permanent destructive environment and its forces of perdition, as the same kind of corporeity would be adapted to the surroundings

and powers of the eternal life that awaits believers. Leaving this question to one side because of its speculative and purelyinferential character through lack of exegetical data, the ulterior question may be raised, whether the change, as it affects believers, is substantially distinct from the process of the resurrection itself. The right of the distinction rests on the difference between the two situations in which those subject to the resurrection and those subject to the change find themselves. The former issue from a state of death, the latter, though already in possession of the Pneuma, nevertheless will exist as to their bodies in a condition of unpneumatic life, and this postulates in their case the change as a distinct separate event. It is an event not mixed with any other process. On the other hand, the change in those raised does not partake of such separate, self-contained character: it is, as it were, swallowed up by the larger, more comprehensive event of the resurrection itself. We nowhere get the impression as though the believing dead were first in a purely negative manner restored to an as yet unchanged form of bodily life, and then through the superimposition of a second positive act made partakers of a transformed corporeal constitution. This would be a mechanical procedure. We may a priori expect that the Spirit will not in this respect deny his own nature, which loves organic procedure in all redemptive operations.

There are four passages which deal with the destiny and experience of believers found living at the parousia; these are 1 Thess. 4:15–17; 1 Cor. 15:51–53; 2 Cor. 5:1–5; Phil. 3:20, 21. The first of these does not speak of any change; it simply affirms, that the living, after the previous raising of the dead, shall together with the latter be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. Without due warrant it has been inferred from this that at the time of writing Paul had not as yet developed his doctrine of a change in the resurrection-body, and consequently did not expect a corresponding change in the living either. But the question of change was altogether beside the point at issue in this connection, and the change for the dead is implied and guaranteed by the assumption of the presence of the

Pneuma, which, as shown before, underlies their in-being in Christ even in the interval between death and resurrection. And, if the dead in being raised undergo a change, then we may count it certain that the same was believed by Paul as regards the living, who shared the same in-being and its cause, the activity of the Spirit. Of this change the other three passages speak explicitly. 2 Cor. 5:1–5 has already been discussed in detail. It contains the figure of the "ἐπενδύσασθαι" by the believer of the heavenly body over the earthly body, in result of which what is mortal (i.e. the earthly body) will be swallowed up of life. The peculiarity of this representation is that it starts with the new body and makes the other body be absorbed by the former, but by the terms of the figure this particular mode of the process, is, of course, confined to such as are found living at the parousia; the others are only "clothed," not "clothed upon." That the several contrasts drawn in vss. 1 and 2 ascribe to the post-resurrection body a constitution wholly different from that possessed by the former body is plain at a glance The former is no longer "earthly," has no longer the nature of a "tabernacle," but is a solid structure to be possessed and used in heaven forever, for this is what "eternal in the heavens" means. This radically altered condition, affirmed as a fact, involves that some change producing it must have taken place, and this applies to both classes here reckoned with by Paul, the living and the raised, since it is affirmed in its generality. In the other two passages, 1 Cor. 15:51– 53 and Phil. 3:20, 21 the representation starts from the old body and makes this to be changed into the new body. There is no contradiction in this. Both are figurative and in so far, when each is taken by itself, inadequate representations. How little the two are mutually exclusive appears from the fact that in 2 Cor. 5:1–5 they appear side by side in "ἐπενδύσασθαι" and "κατλυθῇ."

Between 1 Cor. 15 and Phil. 3 a disagreement has been discovered, and on the basis of this an argument constructed against the genuineness of Philippians. It has been urged that according to Philippians the identical body of our humiliation is changed, whilst according to 1 Corinthians we ourselves are changed, and the

earthly body is done away with. This also, however, amounts to nothing more than a verbal difference inseparable from the limitations of figurative expression. On the one hand the "μετασχηματισμός" of Phil. 3 involves a doing away with the body of humiliation; on the other hand the doing away with the body of flesh and blood may not be understood in such a sense as to destroy the continuity between the old body and the new. Granting the point that Paul here says "we shall be changed," he likewise uses the alternate representation that "the corruptible must put on incorruption." Whether one says: the body of humiliation is transformed into a body of glory, or says, the corruptible puts on incorruption, the mortal immortality, makes no difference whatever as to the principle of continuity. In neither case is there any emphasis upon the perpetuation of the substance which changes its σχῆμα or of the old garment which puts on over itself the new. When the Apostle says in 1 Cor. 7:31 παράγει τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, he surely does not mean to affirm that the substance of the present world will abide. Even so in Philippians the point at issue is not the substance but the "σχῆμα," the contrast lying between "ταπείνωσις" and "δόξα."

That a change will take place inherent in the resurrection-act for believers that are raised follows not only from explicit or more or less implicit statements, but rests besides on the stronger ground of the analogy between the resurrection of Jesus and that of believers which Paul throughout presupposes. According to Rom. 1:1–4, while the identical Jesus who had been buried rose from the grave, yet it was by no means the same Jesus in the endowment and equipment of his human nature. Not only a new status had been acquired through the resurrection: new qualities amounting to a reconstructed adjustment to the future heavenly environment had been wrought in Him by the omnipotent power of God: He had been determined (declared effectually) the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. It is self-evident that these words do not refer to any religious or ethical transformation which Jesus in the resurrection had to

undergo. Such a thought nowhere finds support in Paul's Christology, nor in his general teaching. Only, in the quite justifiable eagerness for excluding this, there is too narrow an interpretation put upon the sentence, as though it meant to affirm a purely bodily transformation. The other, psychical, side of our Lord's human nature was obviously affected no less than the physical side. This comprehensive change was inseparable from the resurrection itself; it was not an additional element, but an integral part of the first and only act required. Had this been lacking, then not the resurrection, but the subsequent transformation ought to have furnished the pattern upon which the soteric renewal of believers was fashioned. As it is the Pauline formula reads "raised with Christ," and of this generic designation of the renewal of the Christian the particular form "changed with Christ" could be only a specific variation.

As to how the mysterious process of this "change," where it appears by itself, apart from the resurrection, will take place we gain from the Apostle's figurative statements no more concrete information than we do on the corresponding problem of the mode of change in the resurrection. The question may, however, be put, as to whether Paul knows and uses a generic term descriptive of both, at any rate closely analogous, transactions. Does he designate both by the common term ἀλλάττεσθαι or μετασχηματίζεσθαι? The answer to this depends on the exegesis of 1 Cor. 15:51–53 and Phil. 3:20, 21. In 2 Cor. 5:1–5, as we have seen, the figure brings it about that both are formally distinguished, the one being named an ἐνδύσασθαι, the other an ἐπενδύσασθαι. But in the other two passages it is not uniformly recognized that such a distinctive way of speaking is actually present. Some interpreters understand the terminology used here comprehensively of all believers, those dead and those found living, others more narrowly apply it to the latter group only. The question is of some importance, because, if we adopt the former view, it would yield one more ground of assurance for the continuity of the new body with the old. For when Paul says—δεῖ τὸ φθαρτὸν τοῦτο ἐνδύσασθαι ἀφθαρσίαν καὶ τὸ θνητὀν τοῦτο … ἀθανασίαν, and

we are warranted in applying this to the resurrection as well as to the change, then it will follow that in the resurrection the old body will play its part, that it will be there as an ἐνδυσάμενον, as something that "puts on for itself," in other words that we are not justified in thinking of it as simply the endowment of the soul with a new body, altogether without connection with the old body laid in the grave. The choice is, especially with reference to 1 Cor. 15:51–53, a difficult one. It turns on the interpretation of the words: πάντες οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα, πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγησόμεθα. If the more usual construction of οὐ be followed, the statement will mean: it is true of all of us that we shall not sleep, but be changed. This could mean nothing else than that Paul expected all his readers to survive till the parousia. On this view, further, the words οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα may still have a twofold sense. They may affirm: we shall not fall asleep (die) between now and the parousia, but be changed at the parousia; the alternative view makes the clause mean: we all of us shall not at the parousia first have to fall asleep (die), but we shall all be changed directly at that time without such an intermediate experience. The difficulty in the way of this first exegesis, in either of its forms, is that the forecast has not been fulfilled. Neither Paul, nor any of those living when he wrote has reached the parousia in the body. He said of all: οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα; in reality all ἐκοιμήθησαν. This difficulty is all the greater, since Paul does not seem to give expression here to a mere subjective hope or opinion, but explicitly characterizes the statement as a "μυστηριον," something received by revelation: ἰδοὺ μυστήριον ὑμῖν λέγω. In order to avoid this difficulty Meyer assumes Paul to have silently supplied with the subject πάντες the qualification "all who shall be left at the parousia," and understands the statement in the second sense indicated above, i.e., as a declaration to the effect that those left at the parousia will not then have first to die. If we adopt this view, the form in which Meyer presents it seems a fairly plausible one. The "μυστήριον" does not then refer to the fact that all shall survive, but only to the fact that those who do survive, more or less numerous or more or less soon, shall not have to die, but will be changed as living persons. And when Paul speaks in the first person

plural, as though he himself and his readers were concerned in this, it is not necessary to ascribe this chiefly to individual curiosity, nor need the form of statement be considered a purely-rhetorical plural; it may be set down to the common hope of all Christians at that time of being perhaps permitted to survive till the parousia. The advantage of this view is that it enables us to take the verb ἀλλαγησόμεθα in the same sense in both vs. 51 and vs. 52, in each case with restricted reference to those found living. The loss in pregnancy of meaning lies in this that it ceases to throw light on the change of body involved in the resurrection from the dead. Plainly in vs. 53 the Apostle uses the word with this restricted application, for, distinguishing two groups, he says: οἱ νεκροὶ ἐγερθήσονται … καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀλλαγησόμεθα. On the other hand it must be confessed, that the silent supplementing of such a qualification as Meyer assumes leaves behind the impression of a degree of arbitrariness.

The other interpretation in its simplest form (for there are others) assumes a transposition of the negation οὐ. Πάντες οὐ is rendered as identical with οὐ πάντες. This does not seem to be an impossible construction. While perhaps primarily inspired by dogmatic interest, it has not lacked advocates with whom this factor could scarcely count, but who felt linguistically justified in adopting it. The sense resulting is: it is not true of all but only of some that we shall sleep; it is true of all (both who sleep and who do not sleep) that we shall at the last day be changed. On this rendering Paul affirms the change for both groups. This suffers from the apparent implication that the resurrection of believers does not in itself as yet effect the necessary change, which takes place only a little later, in order that both raised and those found living may simultaneously partake of it as an identical experience; the real transforming aspect of the resurrection as such is lost sight of, a result which, as intimated before, ill agrees with the Pneumatic character of the act. It is likely that the Spirit, while performing his specific transforming task in the quickening of the dead, will as it were, refrain from carrying it to its logical completion through bringing the dead upon whom He operates to a state adapted to their henceforth

eschatological, celestial life? The mere motive of guarding the simultaneous occurrence of this final stage of the act may seem to some insufficient. Nor is this merely a question of appropriateness in the sequence of the process meant to form one continuous act. The adoption of a postponed change in those raised brings the idea into conflict with the explicit statement of vs. 52, where Paul does not simply affirm οἱ νεκροὶ ἐγερθήσονται, but οἱ νεκροὶ ἐγερθήσονται ἄφθαρτοι. According to these words the change for the raised does not follow, it coincides, and that not merely chronologically but substantially with the resurrection. The resurrection is in their case such a thing as to result ipso facto in "incorruptibleness." It is true, the verses from vs. 54 onwards speak of the victory over death in such general terms as render it difficult to believe that they attach themselves to but one particular aspect of this victory, viz. the change of the living. Still, perhaps even here the figure in κατεπόθη may, on account of its resemblance to 2 Cor. 5:4, seem to refer particularly to the change of the living. Overmuch weight, however, should not be attached to this, since the word in question forms part of a quotation here, being no more than a reminiscence from the passage in Hosea, whilst in 2 Cor. 5 it forms an independent figure.

The advantages and disadvantages of both views so nearly balance each other, that we do not feel competent to make a choice. The one thing certain is that Paul conceived of the resurrection as involving a pneumatic transformation. To that vs. 52, with its ἐγερθήσονται ἄφθαρτοι bears conclusive witness. But, whether he made the raised share in a still further change with the living, or, as a matter of language employed the word "change" sometimes generically to include both phases of the transaction, as to this we venture no positive decision.

As to Phil. 3:20, 21, here the representation that the Christian "waits for a Saviour" seems to show that the Apostle speaks from the standpoint of such as look for the parousia during their lifetime, so that the μετασχηματισμὁς is not made to include the change in the

resurrection. On the other hand, there is nothing in the conception of a μετασχηματισμός or in the phrase σῶμα τῆς ταηεινώσεως, that could have hindered Paul from applying these terms to the process of the resurrection itself.

CHAPTER IX: THE EXTENT OF THE

RESURRECTION

By the phrase "extent of the resurrection" we posit the question whether, according to Paul's teaching all dead men will be raised at the end, or only a limited section of those who shall have died previously to that time. The problem is, of course, to some extent bound up in part with that of Chiliasm, and in so far belongs to the following Chapter. The segment of the church set apart for an anticipated resurrection at the opening of the millennium, whether more or less narrowly counted, form part of the resurrection in any event, so that on the score of the chiliastic doctrine itself there is no objection to the comprehensive resurrection of all who have been, or are, or shall be believers, retrospectively, or at the moment, or prospectively during the interregnum to elapse before the absolute end. On the other hand, it stands to reason, that, when once the unitary and all-comprehensive scope of the transaction has at that point been broken in upon, the temptation may easily arise to affirm this partial aspect of the event likewise to the second and final act of the resurrection drama, confining this to believers so as to exclude from it all but the raising of Christians. The partialness of the idea is apt to fasten itself upon it, although originally proper to one application of it only. In logic, to be sure, this is by no means necessary: a partial resurrection at the opening of the millennium

and an all-comprehensive raising of all the dead at the last day are by no means inherently contradictory. It is another question whether any limitation imposed upon the final resurrection is in line with the general trend of the Apostle's teaching, and if not, will not seem at the outset to be discredited, by the character of Paulinism as a whole.

Leaving these more or less a priori considerations to one side, we proceed to consider the direct data of Paul's deliverances on or allusions to the extent of the resurrection as such. The debate between limited and unlimited resurrection, distinguished by exclusion of non-believers or their inclusion, at first sight does not seem to leave the latter member of the alternative a fair chance for presenting the merits of its case. It has been plainly shown above that the resurrection of which Paul speaks in practically all the great contexts dealing with the subject, is viewed and treated by him as a Pneumatic event. But, the question immediately arises: how could a pneumatic occurrence, and that one in which the Spirit plays so prominent and intimate a part, fall within the sphere of the nonChristian? The same question, only presented from a different angle, arises where the close relation of the Spirit-Christ to the resurrection is considered. The raised are raised because of their being "of Christ" or "asleep in Christ," conditions inapplicable to such as do not possess the Spirit or are not possessed by the Spirit, for in this matter, no less than in regard to the Christian state as a whole appurtenance to Christ and appurtenance to the Spirit flow into one. Unbelievers having not the Spirit cannot undergo that part of his quickening activity that is productive of the resurrection, or, if they could, how could they be fit subjects for living the subsequent Spirit-life for which to all intents the agency of the Spirit in the act of the resurrection is but the necessary preparation. With regard to non-Christians the resurrection would come to appear as internally disrupted, inasmuch as in its better and eternal half it could never be expected to take place. So far as the pervasive tenor of the Pauline teaching is concerned, it must be freely conceded that the comprehensive interpretation is at a decided disadvantage. None the

less too much weight may be easily attributed to this for the following reason: the Apostle is not e mente sua presenting in his letters a well-rounded, complete system of Christian truth, although more than any other New Testament complex of teaching it has come to be this for us. Paul writes to Christians and that for practical purposes largely. This fact reminds us that the phenomenon of his preoccupation with the resurrection of believers and his seeming neglect of the other side may easily be due to quite different causes than a logical disregard of systematic completeness. As a matter of fact the loci from which we draw our information of the thing as it lay in Paul's mind are in each case intra-redemptive in character; they are for comfort and, if for argument, than for such argument as the Christian readers stood in need of for comfort. It remains quite possible that in different situations, but scantily recorded for us, there may have been motives working in Paul's mind postulating a resurrection of non-believers, motives pertaining to a different than the strictly-soteric sphere. The pneumatic basis on which the resurrection is put only explains this one thing, viz. that Paul does not coördinate and mention together the two divisions of the resurrection, as otherwise would have seemed natural in an adherent of the doctrine of two-sided resurrection. For such joint-mention or coördination the significance of the event in the two classes of men had become too widely different in result of the thorough development of Paul's doctrine of the Pneuma. To the ordinary Jewish consciousness habituated to the belief that the resurrection would be the same thing in the case of all men, placing all in the same condition of a restored earthly corporeity before the judgment-seat of God, it was quite easy to speak after the well-known manner of a resurrection of the good and the evil. To Paul this must have been exceedingly difficult, for the simple reason that the term "resurrection" had to such an extent attracted to itself and begun to monopolize the habitual soteric associations, as to become after a fashion inapplicable to something in which these soteric concomitants had no place. Inevitably the term "resurrection" had lost somewhat of its neutral character, becoming graphically fit for use only in sensu

bono. It is far from impossible in our opinion that Paul consciously refrained from speaking of the resurrection of the wicked. Still, and this requires strong emphasis, it would by no means follow from this, that such avoidance of the term could be justly construed as evidence of the principle that the Apostle had thrown overboard the residue of content that had at one time been undividedly included in the term for evil and good alike, after discounting the specificallyPneumatic elements. We must, therefore, proceed very cautiously here.

An argument in favor of partial resurrection as the genuinely Pauline doctrine has been drawn from what is believed to have been the Pharisaic conception of the subject. For our information about the belief of the Pharisees in this respect we depend on Josephus. He states that according to them only the souls of the righteous have the power (faculty) of coming to life again, whilst the wicked remain forever imprisoned in the nether-world. In another passage he records as the Pharisaic view that only the soul of the righteous man, in distinction from that of the wicked, passes into a new body.3 If such was the Pharisaic position, it is argued, and if, as we know from elsewhere, Paul declared himself in essential harmony with the Pharisees on this issue, then the Apostle cannot have thought differently of the question under review than his former coreligionists. This argument, however, is not so conclusive as at first sight it might seem. We do not know to what extent one may rely on Josephus for exactness in formulating the Pharisaic doctrine on such a controversial, and somewhat esoteric point. That no complete reliance can be placed on his statements appears from the second passage above quoted, where he even credits the Pharisees with his own belief in the transmigration of souls, as expressed in the last-cited passage. Still it seems not improbable that what on two occasions Josephus ascribes to the Pharisees must have been a doctrine held at least by some among them. The Pharisaic leaders were hardly such expert and precise theologians as instinctively to extrude whatever ran contrary to the principles of their system. Paul in such matters had a much keener sensorium. We may be sure,

however, that the view quoted by Josephus was not the only doctrine held in Pharisaic circles. In all probability more than one view was current. What all agreed on was the reality of the resurrection as such, apart from the question to whom exactly it was to extend. And possibly those Pharisees who did not deny the resurrection of all theoretically, yet for practical reasons threw so much more emphasis on its main aspect as a resurrection of the righteous, could by this alone lead Josephus to the mistaken inference expressed in his statements. But even, if feeling bound to take Josephus' account as substantially correct, this would not compel us to ascribe the same Pharisaic position, unmodified in any respect, to Paul after his conversion. Altogether apart now from the factor of revelation, Paul might through his contact with the earliest Christians have been led to alter his Pharisaic persuasion on the subject. The early Christians were, of course, not recruited from the Pharisees chiefly. Those converted from other circles may well have entertained varying opinions.

Leaving this matter of the Pharisees and Josephus to one side, it must be conceded that the doctrine of an all-inclusive resurrection was not before or at the time of Paul the firmly established doctrine of Judaism. In various quarters, in various forms, the range of the resurrection was limited. The Old Testament itself had approached the doctrine from the point of view of the people of God or of the pious among the people of God. Thus in Isa. 26:19: "Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise"; the resurrection of the dead members of the holy nation is predicted, for assurance that they may share in the joys of the future. It is not clear how far back this promise is intended to apply, nor how comprehensive its range is conceived. In Dan. 12:2 the prophecy confines itself to many that shall awake, although it is not limited here to such as are righteous, some being destined to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt. Here probably the reference is not to all the righteous and wicked that have made up all generations of the people of Israel, but to those righteous and wicked who have played a prominent part in the crisis with which this prophecy deals. The

idea that the martyrs of the people of God are sure of the resurrection, whilst nothing is said of the others, righteous or unrighteous, is found also elsewhere. For this Chap. xc of the Book of Enoch may be compared. In 2 Macc. it cannot be determined with certainty, whether the resurrection of the evil is denied or not. Of Antiochus Epiphanes it is explicitly denied, but this relates not to the resurrection as such; the reference is to the ἀνάστασις εἰς ζωήν. It is said that Judas Maccabaeus made expiation for the slain in whose garments pagan idols had been found, ὑπὲρ ἀναστάσεως διαλογιζόμενος, "concerned about their resurrection." This, however, might relate to the punishment they might otherwise have to suffer in Sheol, previously to the resurrection, so that a resurrection with subsequent punishment is not necessarily implied. Still another variation of the doctrine is that not only the martyrs of the last crisis, but all the righteous dead of Israel are to be raised. This is found in the Psalms of Solomon, 3:10 ff. and in the section of the Enoch Apocalypse extending from xci to civ. A still somewhat wider extent the resurrection obtains in Enoch i–xxxvi. In this document besides the resurrection of the righteous from among Israel (in the body) a resurrection of some impious Israelites as disembodied spirits seems to be taught, viz. of those who have not been adequately punished in the present life; they are brought up from the nether-world, in order to be cast into Gehenna, the place of punishment, whilst the other wicked Israelites, already sufficiently punished in this life, appear to remain permanently in the more negative state of Sheol. Finally, the most inclusive view is that all the wicked as well as the righteous will be raised for judgment. Where this view is found two points are frequently left in obscurity, although the author in each case may have had a definite opinion on the subject: a) whether all the wicked and all the righteous from among Israel, or all the wicked and righteous composing the human race are meant; b) whether the wicked are simply to be brought up as disembodied spirits in order to be judged, after which they go to their final punishment in the same disembodied state, or whether they are put in possession again of their erstwhile bodies in order to receive punishment in these. The

writings in which this doctrine of a universal resurrection is found are the following: the Similitudes of the Book of Enoch, li. 1: (here the two points just specified are left doubtful); 4 Ezra 5:45; 7:32; 14:35 (here the first two passages speak of a universal resurrection of the race: Deus vivificabit creaturam, whereas the last-mentioned passage might be limited to Israel); Apoc. Bar. xlii. 8; l. 2 (here the absolute universality is found by some writers, for instance Volz, but denied, among others, by Charles); the resurrection here is a resurrection in the same body, which is afterwards changed in bonum or malum; Test. XII Patr.: Benj. 10; Lev. 4; in the former passage it is said that after the fathers have been raised, all will be raised (whether this "all" relates to all Israelites or to all men is not plain); in the other passage the Greek text has that, when the Lord will hold judgment on all mankind, Hades will be depleted; the Armenian text contains the quite different words "the nether-world will make prisoners through the plagues of the Most High"; the fourth book of the Sibylline Oracles, vss. 180 ff. (here there exists some uncertainty as to whether the wicked to be raised are the wicked of all generations of history, or only those wicked just perished in the great world-conflagration); the Life of Adam: Chap, x, "the sinners shall be there"; xli, "the whole seed of Adam."

Especially this last class of writings teaching a universal resurrection, is of interest for our present purpose. For, while here the universality is explicitly affirmed, we nevertheless find certain other statements which speak of the resurrection of the righteous, and that in such a way as to make it appear as though no other aspect of the resurrection were known to the authors. Such varying representations appear side by side not only in writings which criticism believes to be composite, but likewise in documents or sections of documents whose unity is not subject to doubt. Thus e.g. in the Similitudes of the Book of Enoch, apart from the passage cited above (li. 1), there are several other contexts in which only the resurrection of the just is reflected upon, cp. xl. 3; lxi. 5; lxii. 8. In 4 Ezra, side by side with the universalistic passages (5:45; 7:32; 14:35), we find the particularistic statements of 4:35; 7:28. In Apoc.

Bar., side by side with the universal resurrection of xlii. 8 and l. 2, the resurrection of the righteous is mentioned, as though it were the only one, xxvi, (21), 24; xxx. 1 ff. In Test. XII Patr. we have not so much two classes of statements, but at least statements of more or less doubtful interpretation. In the Life of Adam occurs the most striking juxtaposition of both forms of statement: Chap. xli, as just stated, contains the doctrine of the resurrection of the whole human race which is of the seed of Adam; Chap. xiii contains the words: "Then all flesh from Adam onward shall be raised, all those which are holy people." The point which, in view of these facts, we desire to make is the following: if in the case of the writers of these Apocalyptic books the one-sided emphasis thrown upon the resurrection of the righteous did not exclude a conjoined belief, be it of a more theoretical nature, in a universal resurrection of good and evil alike, then there is ample reason for hesitating to say that Paul must have restricted the resurrection to believers, on no other ground than that prevailingly he speaks of it as a Pneumatic transaction. To introduce the same double-facedness in his various references must have been more easy for him than for the Apocalyptists, because the constant emphasis on the Pneuma led of itself to relegating the other side to a sort of semi-oblivion, a feature not equally present in Apocalyptic literature, although its relative absence even there did not prevent the one-sided focussing of the attention on the saving side of the transaction. It so happens that Apoc. Bar. and 4 Ezra, are the books in which the apparent contradiction is most conspicuous, and these are precisely the writings standing nearest to Paul.

The only explicit witness we have for Paul's belief in a comprehensive resurrection of the wicked as well as of the righteous is found in his speech to Felix, Acts 24:15. The Apostle here declares that he believes all things which are according to the law, and which are written in the prophets. Probably he makes this double affirmation in order distinctly to align himself with the Pharisees over against the Sadducaic unbelief, which was based on a one-sided adherence to the explicit testimony of the Thora, and on

refusal to take into account the prophetic statements. As the main content of this belief, based on both prophets and law, he names the hope he has towards God, which hope the (Pharisaic) Jews also themselves look for, that there shall be a resurrection both of the just and unjust. It will be observed that, though the two-sided character of the resurrection is here affirmed, nevertheless the main emphasis lies on its hopeful aspect, i.e., as a resurrection of the righteous. The whole doctrine is a "hope held towards God." And this hope he declares to have in common with the (Pharisaic) Jews, which shows that in the Pharisaic doctrine likewise, while the resurrection of the wicked was not denied, yet the main interest attached to the hope which the doctrine afforded for the righteous. This may help to explain how Josephus came to believe that the Pharisees expected a resurrection of the righteous only. There is no ground for calling into question the accuracy of this speech of Paul to Felix, far less to deny its historicity altogether. The author of Acts proves himself in other points thoroughly acquainted with the differences in belief between Pharisees and Sadducees and with the prevailing Jewish beliefs in general. Even if one were to assume that he had freely composed the speech, we might nevertheless expect it to be true in so much of its theological coloring as is of importance for the matter under review. The author could not have made the mistake of representing Paul as at one with the orthodox Jewish doctrine on this point, if neither the Jewish orthodoxy, nor the Apostle had actually entertained the belief imputed to them.

This testimony from Acts would be corroborated by direct testimony from two of the Epistles, if we could adopt the interpretation given by some to 1 Cor. 15:22–28 and to Phil, 3:11. If in the former passage the words "then comes the end" could be understood of the end of the resurrection, there would for this succeeding act of the resurrection be none others left than the wicked, at least supposing that those "of Christ," raised in the preceding act, included all believers. In another chapter, however, we will endeavor to show that "the end" spoken of is not "the end of the resurrection" with which negative conclusion the argument presented falls to the

ground. As to Phil. 3, inasmuch as the personal privilege of resurrection striven after, would on the new interpretation have to be considered the martyr's privilege, it would leave open the field of any subsequent resurrection-stage for the non-martyr Christians, and the question of resurrection for the wicked would not be touched thereby.

An indirect proof for the resurrection of the wicked has been found in Paul's supposition of the presence of unbelievers at the judgment by which the resurrection is succeeded. The inconclusiveness of this argument is due to the circumstance that a judgment passed on disembodied souls is not an impossible conception, and actually occurs elsewhere in the Jewish sources, as has been shown above. Hence, so long as the question under debate is not entirely settled, one must reckon with the possibility that both the resurrection and the judgment will deal with the wicked in an uncorporeal state. To be sure, positively considered, there is nothing in Paul that would suggest such an idea. It amounts to no more than a mere abstract possibility. And there is, on the other hand, that which, while not amounting to absolute proof, at least tends towards favoring the opposite view. This will appear presently, when we shall have occasion to deal with the Apostle's doctrine on the Judgment. Finally, attention may be called to 1 Tim. 6:13: "I charge thee in the sight of God "τοῦ ζωογονοῦντος τὰ πάντα." This, placed in comparison with 2 Tim. 4:1: "I charge thee in the sight of God and of Christ Jesus who shall judge the quick and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom," seems to require an eschatological interpretation for the word "quickeneth," and the object of this being "all things" (or in view of the article prefixed "the universe") the all-comprehensiveness of the resurrection might seem to be affirmed. In classical Greek the word ζωογονεῖν actually has the sense of "to bring to life," "to quicken." In the two other N.T. passages, however, where this same verb occurs, Lk. 17:33 and Acts 7:19, the sense is "to preserve alive," which does not suit the interpretation of the resurrection. If the correct reading were "ζωοποιοῦντος," instead of "ζωογονουντος," this objection would fall

away, since "ζωοποιεῖν" is used elsewhere (by Paul and Peter and John) in the sense of "to quicken." As it is, the uncertainty of reading and rendering do not permit a sure conclusion. The issue of the discussion remains that for explicit proof of Paul's belief in the universality of the resurrection we are dependent on the testimony of Acts 24:15.

CHAPTER X: THE QUESTION OF

CHILIASM, IN PAUL

"Chiliasm," more commonly called "Pre-millennarianism," occupies a peculiar place in the scheme of Biblical Eschatology. It is difficult to form a deliberate judgment upon it, either by way of decisive rejection or enthusiastic approval. The question is, of course, a question of evidence, to be considered and settled on the basis of Scriptural testimony and of calm, sober, dogmatically-unprejudiced exegesis. Were it confined to the elucidation of the Pauline eschatology alone, the settlement should not appear overdifficult. Unfortunately, where one undertakes to do this, he must expect to have the scheme outlined in Rev. 20:4 ff. brought to his attention with the insistent demand, that a laborious effort at harmonizing shall be forthwith undertaken in which the large mould of the Pauline eschatological teaching shall be reduced to the narrower, pictorial measures of the Apocalyptic vision. With all due respect to the authoritativeness of biblical prophecy, it is difficult to escape the feeling that this is an unmethodical procedure. The minor deliverances ought in the harmonizing process be made to give way to the far-sweeping, age-dominating program of the theology of Paul. After the latter has been interpreted to a satisfactory degree of clearness and certainty, then, and not until then, will come the time to look the Apocalypse in the face, and to endeavor to bring it into consonance with the Pauline deliverances. The law of proportion cannot be entirely waived in so far-reaching a matter as this. On the other hand, if we are urged to settle the problem not quite so objectively, but more on the basis of a theological imitation of philosophical behaviorism, putting to ourselves the question, which of the two, pre-millennarianism or post-millennarianism, has done or bids to do more good to practical Christianity, or which of the twain can be trusted to do less injury to the cause of religion, even then the answer is by no means so readily forthcoming. Chiliasm

has to its credit the astounding readiness it evinces of taking the O.T. Scriptures in a realistic manner, with simple faith, not asking whether the fulfilment of these things is even logically conceivable, offering as its sole basis the conviction that to God all things are possible. This attitude is, of course, not attained except through a reckless abuse of the fundamental principles of O.T. exegesis, a perversion invading inevitably the precincts of N.T. exegesis likewise, heedless of the fact that already the O.T. itself points to the spiritualizing of most of the things in question. Apart from accidental features, and broadly speaking, Chiliasm is a daring literalizing and concretizing of the substance of ancient revelation. Due credit should be given for the naïve type of faith such a mentality involves. It is a great pity that from this very point of view pre-millennarianism has not been psychologically studied, so as to ascertain, whence in its long, tortuous course through the ages it has acquired such characteristics. Although pre-millennarianism is by no means a local phenomenon, there are evidently certain milieus in which it has found a more fertile soil than elsewhere. In certain countries it comes to meet an eccentric interest in the superficial, visible, curiosity-attracting events in eschatological perspective. The evil is not so much an evil in itself: it is a malformation or over-rank outgrowth drawing to itself a surplusage of religious interest, at the expense of what is more essential and vital in the eschatological sphere. The resulting evil lies largely in the deficit thus caused in the appraisal of other eschatological processes far overshadowing in importance this one feature, at least to the normally-constituted Christian mind. Its tendency towards eclipsing views more important than itself has done much harm. It is not an uncommon experience at the present day for one who expresses dissent from Chiliasm to be met with the question, Are you then, an unbeliever in "the second coming?" In other words the subject of eschatology in its broad and tremendous significance has vanished from the field of vision, the delusion has been created that eschatology and Chiliasm are interchangeable, the species has usurped the place of the genus, which is to be regretted, altogether

apart from the question whether acceptance of the species is in accordance with the biblical data or not.

"Chiliasm" is so named from the numeral "χίλιοι," "a thousand." The name is more or less unaptly chosen, because the duration of the interval which is placed between the two successive resurrections, or the point of the departure of the two successive eras, is by various adherents of the scheme variously fixed. It might have been six hundred or four hundred, in neither case would this have affected the essence of the belief in the least. Since, however, in common usage the number "one thousand" is laid at the basis, the designation may be allowed to stand by reason of the preference of the vast majority of adherents. It is true another term, that of "premillennarianism," would deserve the preference if a more informing nomenclature be sought after. But this terminology is less perspicuous for the noun "pre-millennarianism" does not make it plain to what the preposition "pre" in it has reference, and the Latin "millennium" is no more free than the Greek name from prejudicially fixing the duration. The point of departure is in both cases the parousia; the number of years fixed upon begins with it; pre-millennarian is an adjective before the implied noun parousia, expressing the assumption that the return of Christ will take place before the millennium. The substance of the matter is that Chiliasm divides the eschatological future following upon the parousia into two distinct stages, the one of a temporary provisional, the other of an eternal, absolute character. The old traditional view of orthodox theology, and the current interpretation of Paul know of no such dualism in the eschatological prospect; they make the eternal state, strictly so called, begin with the return of the Lord.

This "chiliastic" division of the eschatological future into two distinct stages is probably of pre-Christian origin. It seems to be first met with in the Book of Enoch, Chaps. xci and xciii, in the "Vision of Weeks," so called, because it divides the entire course of the world's duration into ten weeks. The eighth of these stands for the Messianic period, the ninth and the tenth bring the final

judgment, and it is not until the close of the tenth week that the new creation appears. In the third book of the Jewish Sibyl (vss. 652–660) the Messianic kingdom is represented as subject to attack and destruction by the assembled nations, and after in turn these are destroyed, the kingdom of God begins. The dating of these two apocalyptic documents is somewhat uncertain, but not a few authorities place them in the pre-Christian period. The same distinction between a preliminary Messianic and a final kingdom has been found in the Psalms of Solomon. Here in Psalms 17 and 18 the Messianic reign seems to be described as something transitory, for the writer speaks not only of "his (i.e., the Messiah's) days," "those days" (17:32; 18:6), but also of his (the Messiah's) lifetime (17:37). On the other hand, in Psalm 3:12 we read of a resurrection to eternal life. It is not absolutely certain, however, that all the Psalms in this collection are of one author. If we were sure of this unity in authorship, the succession of two differently-complexioned kingdoms would offer the only explanation of the two varying descriptions of the future. Were the authorship diverse such a conclusion would not be necessary, since the outlook of one author might be entirely confined to the Messianic era sub specie temporis, whilst another might contemplate the same era as of eternal duration. Coming down into the Christian period, we meet the twofold kingdom in the Slavic Enoch and the two great Apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch, and here a definite number of years is fixed for the duration of the provisional Messianic reign. According to 4 Ezra 7:28 ff. the Christ reigns four hundred years, then He, together with all other earthly creatures, dies, after which the dead awake and the eternal judgment occurs. Similarly in 12:34, where the reign of the Messiah lasts till the end of the world and the day of judgment. In the Slavic Enoch and Apoc. Bar. the limited duration of the Messianic era is connected with the system of world-periods. In the latter apocalypse, after the description of the Messianic kingdom in Chap. xxix, the opening verse of the following chapter states that, when the period of the arrival of the Messiah has been completed, He will return in glory into heaven, which return will be the signal for the resurrection of those who are fallen asleep hoping for Him.

While Chap. xli. 3 represents the reign of the Messiah as "permanent forever," this is immediately qualified by the subjoined clause "until the world devoted to destruction comes to a close, and the things named above fulfil themselves." Finally, according to Chap. lxxiv. 2 the Messianic age is that which is transitory, and the preceding that which is non-transitory.

In regard to the motive underlying this conception of a provisional Messianic kingdom it has been suggested by recent writers that it should be looked upon as a compromise between two heterogeneous eschatological ideals, the ancient national-political, terrestrial scheme, revolving around the destiny of Israel, and the later transcendental-cosmical scheme, which has in view the transformation of the kosmos, and the introduction of altogether new conditions on a super-mundane plane. At first the ideas and expectations connected with these two schemes formed an orderless mass, a conglomerate without adjustment or correlation. The most diverse elements lay unreconciled and unreconcilable in close proximity to one another, as in the older parts of the Book of Enoch and in the Book of Jubilees. Or, the semblance of coherence was saved by bringing into the foreground only one of these two aspects of the eschatological hopes, leaving the other in eclipse, while not theoretically denying its right of existence. Thus in the Similitudes of the Book of Enoch and in the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs the prevailing atmosphere is of the transcendental, super-terrestrial kind, although not to the entire exclusion of earthly national prospects. On the other hand in such writings as the Psalms of Solomon and the Assumption of Moses the eschatological drama plays mainly on the stage of this world and under temporal conditions, the interest being centered on Israel. Rarely, as in the Slavic Book of Enoch, does the spirit of other-worldliness become so dominant as to expel all the heterogeneous elements belonging to the other and lower plane. In most cases the contradictions were not actually removed, but only covered up by the distribution of emphasis. And for this reason it was inevitable, it is thought, that a more systematic attempt should in course of time be made to bring

not only apparent but real order into the confusion. This was done through the distribution of the various elements over two successive periods. The older national, political, earthly hopes, it was now believed, would first go into fulfilment, and thus have full justice done to them. But this would last for a time only. Then, after this tribute had been paid, the new order of things could assume its eternal, cosmical sway, no longer hindered in the unfolding of its transcendental character by the intrusion of motives of a lower type.

Sometimes, as notably in the case of Bousset, the view sketched is coupled with the hypothesis that the entire higher eschatology of Judaism is not a native growth on the soil of the Old Testament, but an importation from Babylonian (ultimately Persian) sources. This peculiar assumption, however, so grave and far-reaching in its consequences, is by no means essential to the theory. The cleavage and heterogeneity which mark the Jewish eschatology would invite reduction to a system quite as much if the disharmony were due to indigenous development, as if due to the intrusion of foreign influence. But apart from this, and considering the problem altogether by itself, we are not convinced that the solution, attractive though it may seem, is borne out by the facts. The origin of a scheme does not always coincide with the uses to which it may be subsequently put. When so far back as the period of canonical prophetism we find the twofold representation, on the one hand that the final order of things will be called into being by the appearance of a Messianic King, and on the other hand that it will come through the appearance and interposition of God Himself, so that the two conceptions of a Messianic Kingdom and a Kingdom of God appear at this early stage side by side without any attempt at harmonizing, then it would seem, that in this ancient prophetic diversity, we have a fully adequate explanation of the origin of the two successive kingdoms, without having to go to Babylonia and Persia, or deriving the whole from Apocalyptic dissatisfaction with the world. When once the problem inherent in this twofold perspective had made itself felt, it required no profound insight to perceive that the easiest way of solving it lay in making the two

forms of the future state follow each other, in which case the first in order would naturally be the Kingdom of the Messiah, to be followed by the Kingdom of God as the absolute consummation of all things. Chiliasts resenting the charge of the dependence of their favorite idea on the streaming in of pagan elements of thought into the Old Testament, can make a good case for themselves on the ground indicated. Whether the New Testament stamps with its approval the solution by which on the theory stated the early Jewish Theology sought to solve the problem, or has a different solution of its own, may for the present remain an open question. But a charge of being rooted in paganism, rather than in statements of the Old Testament need not lie against Chiliasm.

From this possible origin of the distinction we must, however, keep separated the use to which in course of time it came to be put. In itself the distinction between a preliminary Messianic and a subsequent divine Kingdom is indifferent to eschatological tone or atmosphere. In the earlier sources the Messianic kingdom is not depicted in particularly glowing sensualistic colors, as though any conscious effort had been made to save in it realistic hopes and dreams for which, it was felt, the more modern outlook left no room. Nor, on the other hand, is the final state described in such super-sensual terms as to convey the impression that an order of things so constituted is utterly incommensurable with the substance of the old earth-bound expectations. It is not in Enoch, not in the well-known verses of the third book of the Jewish Sibyl, nor in the Psalms of Solomon that the picture of the provisional Messianic kingdom assumes the complexion usually called "chiliastic" in the specific sense of the word. This happens first in the great Apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch. According to 4 Ezra 7:28, God's son, the Christ, when revealed "will dispense joy for four hundred years to those that remain." The same prospect of "joy" for those left in the land recurs in 12:24. The most typical passage is Apoc. Bar. xxix. 1–8: "When the Messiah begins to reveal Himself, Behemoth and Leviathan likewise appear, and are given as food to the remnant; the earth produces ten-thousandfold; a vine will have

one thousand branches, every branch one thousand clusters, every cluster one thousand grapes, and every grape will yield one kor of wine; winds will proceed from God and will carry to the people the fragrance of aromatic fruit, and at night clouds will distill healing dew; the heavenly supplies of manna will be let down and they will eat of them in those years, because they have reached the end of the ages. Characteristic also is lxxiv. 1: "In these days the reapers will not have to exert themselves, and those that build will not have to toil, for of themselves all works will have progress together with those who labor thereon with much rest." And it is precisely in these latest Apocalypses that the final state appears at the farthest remove from the conditions of earthly existence even in an idealized form. It is not a perfection of the present life, but a transposition of life into the supernatural key that is expected. There can be little doubt that some sense of the incompatibility of such glories with the Messianic joys, as ordinarily conceived, contributed to sharpen the distinction between the two successive states, and to make it one not merely of chronology, but likewise of antithetical character.

The Pauline eschatology in point of time lies between the older documents in which Chiliasm crops out and this later efflorescence of it in 4 Ezra and the Baruch-Apocalypse. It is not surprising, therefore, that attempts should have been made to bring the Apostle in line with the general apocalyptic development in this matter. Effort is exerted to make him teach the future coming of some such temporal kingdom as the Jewish sources assume. It is alleged that Paul expects a twofold resurrection, one of a certain class of dead at the parousia, and one of the remaining dead at the end of all, and that he places a glorious provisional reign of Christ between these two resurrections. Now it will be observed that the idea of Chiliasm, when introduced in this concrete form, which is, as a matter of fact, the only form for which any semblance of support can be found in the Pauline Epistles, does not particularly fit into the development of doctrine in Jewish Apocalyptic. It would represent a more advanced form of the idea than is met with in 4 Ezra and Apoc. Bar., inasmuch as with Paul the differentiation between the two

kingdoms would appear carried through to the point of a distinction between two resurrections. In the two above-named Apocalypses the resurrection is not yet divided, but remains fixed at its accustomed place immediately before the final judgment. The Pauline teaching then would in this respect be not in continuity with the apocalyptic development of doctrine, but overtake it and pass on beyond. Still it might be urged that this phenomenon can be explained from the specifically Christian feature, that the Messiah has already come, and that in Him, at a central point, the resurrection has already become an accomplished fact, so that naturally, when between this fundamental resurrection and the final resurrection the Chiliastic kingdom as a future stage is inserted, this intermediate stage must likewise have at its opening some kind of resurrection connected with itself. In this way at least somewhat of the strangeness of a departure from the ordinary scheme could be toned down, and the hypothesis of a real connection in the main point upheld.

It must be admitted, however, that the likelihood of finding Chiliasm in Paul is not favored by the trend of the Apostle's teaching as a whole. Not merely does his general concatenation of eschatological events, in which the parousia and the resurrection of believers are conjoined with the judgment exclude every intermediate stage of protracted duration, it is of even more importance that Paul conceives of the present Christian state, ideally considered, as lived on so high a plane that nothing less nor lower than the absolute state of the eternal consummate Kingdom appears worthy to be its sequel. To represent it as followed by some intermediate condition falling short of the perfect heavenly life would be in the nature of an anti-climax. It is, as shown before, of the very essence of salvation that it correlates the Christian's state with the great issues of the last day and the world to come. And in this connection it should be once more observed, that what the earthly Christian state anticipates is in each case something of an absolute nature, pertaining to the eternal life. No matter with what concrete elements or colors the assumed Chiliastic règime be filled

out, nevertheless to a mind so nourished upon the very firstfruits of eternal life, it can for the very reason of its falling short of eternal life, have had little significance or attraction.

Still such general considerations do not absolve us from testing the exegetical basis on which adherents of the theory believe it to rest. There are not lacking those who fully agree with us as to the general structure of the Pauline eschatology, but who, on exegetical grounds, feel constrained to assume, that through lack of discrimination the Apostle let this heterogeneous strain of teaching, as a remnant from his Judaistic past, continue in his thought and work harm to his proclamation of the Gospel. The passages in which Chiliasm has been discovered are chiefly four: 1 Cor. 15:23–28; 1 Thess. 4:13–18; 2 Thess. 1:5–12; Phil. 3:10–14. We shall examine these in succession. As to 1 Corinthians the argument for the Chiliastic interpretation may be briefly stated as follows. It is urged, first of all, that in the statement of vs. 22: "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all men be made alive," the "all" must be taken without restriction. All men die, all are to be made alive. This necessitates, it is further said, since "οἱ τοῦ χριστοῦ" of vs. 23 does not exhaust the "πάντες," the assumption that vs. 24 speaks of a subsequent stage in the resurrection. The words "εἶτα τὸ τέλος" are therefore taken to mean: "Then comes the end," i.e., the final stage of the resurrection. And it is believed that with reference to these two successive stages thus obtained the Apostle writes in vs. 23: "Each in his own order." There are two orders, first the raising of those that are Christ's at his parousia, secondly the end of the resurrection (that is the raising of the remainder of men), when He delivers up the Kingdom to God, even the Father. And as in the first statement the phrase "at his parousia" is added to fix the time when this first act will occur, so in the second statement the words "when He delivers up the kingdom" are added to define the point for the second act.

The first resurrection, then, takes place at the parousia, the second when Christ abdicates his kingdom. This, of course, involves that

the two do not coincide but are separated by an interval of shorter or longer duration. Just as between the "ἀπαρχὴ χριστός" and the ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ αὑτοῦ lies a period marked by "ἔπειτα," so between ἐν τῇ παρουσἱᾳ and τὀ τέλος Paul places an interval and marks this by εἶτα. That there are two successive acts to be distinguished in the resurrection, follows also, it is believed, from the use of the term "τάγμα": "each in his own tagma." This distributive way of speaking implies that there is more than one tagma, and, since Christ in his resurrection stands alone, and cannot form a tagma by Himself, it is plain that there must be two tagmata besides Him. The one of these two is the tagma of those that are Christ's at his coming, the other is the tagma of those raised at the end. That the time elapsing between the resurrection of believers and the final resurrection must be a protracted period is said to be implied by the second ὅταν in vs. 24. The first ὅταν merely names in the Present Subjunctive the point of time, when the final resurrection takes place, ὅταν παραδιδῷ τὴν βασιλείαν τῷ θεῷ, "when He delivers up the kingdom to God"; the second ὅταν names in the Aorist Subjunctive the period after which the resurrection will occur, ὅταν κατηργήσῃ πᾶσαν ἀρχἠν, "when He shall have abolished all rule." Thus Paul not merely implies that there will be a period between the resurrection of believers and that of the others, but also conceives of this period as "the kingdom of Christ" specifically, in distinction from the kingdom of God, which is to follow after, and he moreover affirms that this specific interresurrection kingdom of Christ will have for its concrete content the progressive subjugation of the enemies designated ἀρχαί, ἐξουσίαι, δυνάμεις.

Having now the proposed exegesis before us, we perceive at a glance that it seems to commend itself by that most popular of credentials, surface simplicity. But, as is frequently the case, the difficulties lie beneath the surface. Let us begin with the argument derived from πάντες in vs. 22. There is an insurmountable obstacle to understanding this of "all men" in the fact that the ζωοποιεισθαι is represented as taking place ἐν Χριστῷ. How can this apply to the second resurrection at the end? Two answers are offered us, but

they are both equally unacceptable on the basis of the general teaching of Paul. The first is that offered by Meyer and Godet. These propose to give to "ἐν χριστῷ" a weakened sense, so weakened indeed as to make it equally applicable to the resurrection of the lost as to that of believers. Thus Meyer interprets the phrase in question to mean that "in Christ lies the ground and cause, why at the final historical completion of the redemptive work death … shall be removed again and all shall be made alive." And Godet asks: "May it not be said of those who shall rise to condemnation, that they also shall rise ἐν χριστῷ?… The Saviour having once appeared, it is on their relation to Him that the lot of all depends for weal or woe; it is this relation consequently which determines their return to life, either to glory or to condemnation." We submit that all this rests on an utterly un-Pauline interpretation of the phrase "ἐν χριστῷ." Wherever this occurs in Paul it is always meant in the full sense of a soteric (though not necessarily "pneumatic") in-being in Christ. Especially a ζωοποιεῖσθαι taking place in Christ must needs be mediated by the Spirit; just as the ἀποθνήσκειν ἐν τῷ Ἀδάμ implies a real connection between Him and the all who die. This suggestion, therefore, is inacceptable. The second way of relieving the difficulty, that, after those who are Christ's have been raised, still others shall be raised ἐν τῷ χριστῷ is scarcely more plausible. It ventures to assume that the Apostle here rises to the height of belief in the so-called "ἀποκατάστασις πάντων," that is of absolute universalism. At the second resurrection those will be raised, who at the time of the first resurrection at the parousia were not yet "of Christ," but who in the meantime have been converted and thus become subjects of a saving resurrection. Such an assumption, however, no less than the proposal of Meyer and Godet, is too palpably inconsistent with the Apostle's most explicit teaching elsewhere to deserve serious consideration. The eternal judgment of the wicked is taught not only in the earlier Epistles, but in this very same Epistle to the Corinthians, and in the later letters, so that the difference cannot be accounted for by any development in Paul's mind in the direction of universalism. Neither do the words "ἵνα ᾖ ὁ θεὸς πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν" in vs. 28 require an absolutely universalistic

interpretation, so far as the ultimate salvation of all human and superhuman creatures is concerned. For these words refer to the bringing to nought of the enemies spoken of in vss. 24, 25 of whom the last is Death. These enemies are designated "ἀρχαί, ἐξουσίαι, δυνάμεις, θάνατος." They prevent until the end that God should become "τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν," that is they interfere with the complete victorious sway of God over the universe. Full justice is done to these words when they are interpreted of the breaking of the power of these enemies in the world. To be sure, it may be replied, that, so long as any wicked men remain, the power of superhuman enemies is not wholly broken, because the very existence of moral evil among part of the human race would imply its continuance, and that, therefore, although the ἐν πᾶσιν be neuter, and does not directly affirm the conversion of all men, yet indirectly the unqualified subjection of the universe to God and the comprehensive καταργεῖσθαι of these powers warrant the same conclusion. In reply to this we would submit that if the phrase πὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν is to be pressed to that extreme, then Paul must have meant to convey by it the idea of either the conversion or the annihilation of these spirit-forces likewise. If moral evil cannot continue to exist in man, no more can the theory of absolute universalism permit its continued existence outside of man. In the passage before us, however, the Apostle does not either speak of or hint at conversion or annihilation of these demonic powers, but simply affirms their future καταργεῖσθαι. This word does not, as a rule, mean to reduce to non-existence, but to render inoperative, to strip of power "ἀεργὸν ποιεῖσθαι." And in the case of ὁ θανατός we have a concrete example of how it is meant. Death καταργεῖται when he is no longer permitted to slay men. This will happen no more after the resurrection. Assuming that ὁ θανατός is not a mere personification but a real demon-power, one of a genus divided into "rules" and "authorities" and "powers," and further assuming, that as such Death is assigned to eternal condemnation, there would be nothing inconsistent in all this with God's being all in all in the universe. And, assuming once more than the wicked of mankind are likewise given up by God to eternal perdition, there is nothing

inconsistent in their continuing evil either with the καταργεῖσθαι of Death or with God's being all in all.

If these two proposals be unacceptable, the question remains what is the true interpretation of "all shall be made alive" in vs. 22? Again two possibilities offer themselves. The one is to assume that "all" is qualified by "in Adam" and "in Christ." Charles believes that this construction is indicated by the position of the words. According to him the rendering should be: "As all who are in Adam die, so all who are in Christ shall be made alive." This is a possible view; for analogies 1 Cor. 15:18 ("those who fell asleep in Christ are perished"), 1 Thess. 4:16 ("the dead in Christ shall rise first"), Col. 1:4 ("your faith in Christ Jesus"), Rom. 9:3 ("accursed from Christ"), may be compared. On this view the whole succeeding context deals avowedly with the resurrection of believers only. It is, of course, quite possible to adopt this construction of vs. 22 and its corollary that the passage confines itself to the resurrection of believers, without endorsing Charles' further inference that Paul taught a resurrection of believers only. There is, however, still a second way, in which the same understanding of the passage may be had, and yet the more usual construction of "in Adam" and "in Christ" be retained. For even when construing these phrases with the verbs, we are quite at liberty to assume that Paul made the mental qualification: "all (who were in Adam)" and "all (who are in Christ)." We believe this to be the most plausible interpretation of the verse. What the Apostle means to say is not that there is no exception to the dying in Adam (although in point of fact this was actually his teaching), nor any exception to the being made alive in Christ, viz. so far as any making alive anywhere takes place. What he does mean to affirm is rather this that there is no variety of operation in the range of these two processes described as "in Adam," "in Christ." In other words not the universality of the law, but the universality of its modus operandi within the compass in which it works, this is what is affirmed. Vs. 22 serves to elucidate vs. 21, and in the latter verse the point of the statement is that both death and resurrection are through a man. Consequently in vs. 23 not "πάντες" by itself, but

"πάντες" jointly with "in Adam" and "in Christ" has the emphasis; there is no dying outside of Adam, there is no quickening apart from Christ. With abstract, absolute universalism this has nothing to do whatsoever.

The next point raised was related to Paul's use of "τάγμα." This, it is maintained, implies two stages in the resurrection separated by an interval. And it will have to be conceded that there is no escape from this, if the primary meaning of "tagma" be insisted upon. Primarily the word stands for "division," "troup," "group," being used largely as a military term in tactics. "Each in his own tagma" would then imply, that there are two groups to be raised at least. Now, it is further urged, Christ could not possibly have been considered by the Apostle as forming a tagma by Himself; consequently the divisions (plural) referred to must exist and form a pair apart from Christ being reckoned in; in other words there must be two resurrections subsequent to that of Christ with the two necessary intervals. On this view the word ἕκαστος "each" in vs. 23 does not include Christ, but covers only the "all" of vs. 22, of whom it is said that they will be made alive "in Christ," which latter affirmation could not, of course, apply to Christ Himself.

Against the validity of this argumentation we submit, that it is impossible to exclude Christ from the range covered by ἕκαστος. Christ is the ἀπαρχή and ἀπαρχή stands connected with ἔπειτα. No plausible reason can be assigned why Paul should have written the clause "Christ the firstfruits" at all, unless he meant to assign to Christ a clearly defined place in the order of the resurrection. On the other hand, by assuming that Christ forms a tagma by Himself, the reason why his resurrection is introduced here becomes immediately perspicuous. Probably the circumstance had been urged against the Apostle's doctrine of the resurrection, that the resurrection of believers ought to take place immediately after their death, at least with no longer delay than intervened between Christ's death and his resurrection. To this the Apostle may be conceived as replying: "each in his own order." Christ has a

precedence, He is the ἀπαρχή, the source of the entire process, therefore his resurrection had to follow without delay, but it is only natural that that of the others should be postponed till His coming, precisely because He is the ἀπαρχή. The Apostle, it seems to us, does not use tagma with any conscious emphasis upon its primary military meaning; ἀπαρχή belongs to a totally different sphere of figurative representation, that of the firstfruits and the harvest. The only point of comparison in the use of tagma is that of order, sequence of occurrence. By so understanding it here we also meet the argument drawn from the difficulty that Christ cannot form a tagma by Himself. To adhere to the primary sense of "division," "troup," and yet include Christ would be possible only by throwing strong emphasis on the military meaning of the word, as if to suggest that He was, as it were, a host in Himself, an entire division by reason of His own strength. This might suit the rôle He plays in the eschatological process, and fit in with the representation of Him as the conqueror over all enemies in the sequel. But, as already observed, it is not favored by the characterization of Christ as "aparche," rather than as ἀρχηγός or some such term. And it certainly does not fit the case of those who form the other tagma, for believers in their resurrection do not appear in any military capacity.

If then tagma be given the sense of "order," "rank," and Christ comes in the first tagma, every necessity falls away for inferring from the mode of statement that there must be a further tagma beyond that of Christ and that of believers, and for finding here, in consequence of the other rendering, the doctrine of a twofold resurrection, one before and one after the millennium.

Much is made of the argument that εἶτα at the beginning of vs. 24 proves a substantial interval between the parousia and "the end." It must be granted that, had the Apostle meant to express such a thought, εἶτα would have been entirely appropriate for the purpose. But it is not true that εἶτα is out of place on the other view, viz. if Paul means to affirm mere succession without any protracted

interval. Εἶτα can be used just as well as τότε to express momentary sequence of events, as may be verified from a comparison with vss. 5, 6, 7 in this same chapter, and with Jno. 13:4, 5. Of course, a brief interval in logical conception at least, must be assumed: "τὸ τέλος" comes, speaking in terms of strict chronology, after the rising of οἱ τοῦ χριστοῦ. But that by no means opens the door to the intercalation of a rounded-off chiliad of years.

The absolute phrase "τὸ τέλος" does not favor the view that "the end of the resurrection may, or even must, be meant by it. In its absoluteness the simple "τὸ τέλος" is too weighty for this; it requires a more absolute force. To interpret it of the "end" of the present aeon is scarcely admissible, for that coincides with the parousia, and by means of εἶτα "the end" is represented as a step subsequent to the parousia. We have the choice between taking it in its strictly teleological signification as "the goal," i.e. the goal to which the entire process of redemption has been tending, or, if the time-element be retained, taking it as the close of the great eschatological finale, which leads over from this aeon into the coming one. The latter seems favored by the time-sense of ὅταν and the clauses which this conjunction introduces. That which forms, as it were, the concrete content of the "telos" is the giving up of the kingship to God, the Father. And this "giving up" is nothing else but the culminating result of the eschatological process of subduing the enemies, whence also the second ὅταν describes it as taking place after all these enemies have been reduced to subjection. Taking telos in this sense as marking the consummation-point of Christ's eschatological reign, we can no longer find in it the evidence for a millennium which it would contain, if taken to mean "the end of the resurrection."

The question remains, however, where Paul makes this eschatological reign of Christ, which comes to a close after the resurrection of believers, begin. It is on the answer to this question that the understanding of εἶτα, which in itself may mean sequence with or without chronological interval, in the present case depends.

If Paul made this reign of Christ begin at the parousia, then there must lie a period between the parousia and the telos, because the beginning and the end of things cannot but be separated in time. If, on the other hand, the reign dates from a point back of the parousia, then the telos can follow closely united with the parousia. Here the second ὅταν-clause may help us to a decision. It affirms that the delivering up of the kingdom will happen after Christ has brought to nought the various powers enumerated. The question resolves itself into this: Is there anything in the conception of these hostile powers and of their subjection that compels us to think of Christ's warfare against and victory over them as not antedating the parousia? Plainly the conquest is of such a nature that it covers a period of some duration; this is implied in the ἄχρις οὗ and in the word "last" of the phrase "the last enemy." But the question is where we shall make the period begin: at the parousia or at some earlier point? Ὅταν is retrospective, but the point to which the retrospect extends is uncertain. All we can say is that there is nothing in the words of the passage itself, nor in Paul's general teaching, to hinder us in dating this period of eschatological conquest from the Saviour's death and resurrection. Paul regards these last-named events in an eschatological light. In Col. 2:15 he speaks of the conquest of the ἀρχαί and ἐξουσίαι as having in principle been accomplished in the cross of Christ. In Rom. 8:38, 39 he assumes that even now Christ so reigns over and controls death and life and principalities and powers as to preclude every separation of the Christian from the love of God in Him.

But, while the words of the second ὅταν-clause will fit into either view, nevertheless, when this clause is taken in connection with the statement of vs. 26, it will be felt decidedly to favor an earlier beginning of the kingdom of Christ than at the parousia. The last enemy that is brought to nought is Death. The conquering of the other enemies, and consequently the reign of Christ consisting in this, precedes the conquest of Death. Now Paul makes the conquest of Death coincide with the parousia and the resurrection of believers. According to vss. 50–58, when the dead are raised

incorruptible, and the living are changed (i.e. according to vs. 23 at the parousia), Death is swallowed up in victory. And still further, apart from this specific argument, a more general argument can be built on vss. 50–58, because it is there implied that the resurrection of the righteous and the very last "end" fall together. The Apostle here speaks throughout in terms of absolute consummation. When the righteous dead are raised this is the moment of their inheriting "the kingdom of God," vs. 50. Notice, the Apostle does not say "the kingdom of Christ," as he ought to have said according to the chiliastic exegesis of vss. 24–28, for this exegesis makes him distinguish between a kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of God in this way, that the former extends from the parousia till the "end," whilst the latter does not begin until the "end." Vs. 50 proves that the kingdom of God begins with the parousia and the resurrection of the righteous, therefore the kingdom of Christ must, so far as it is chronologically distinguished from the kingdom of God, lie before the parousia. It begins, as already stated, with Christ's own resurrection. This conclusion also follows from the equivalence of the κυριότης of Christ and the βασιλεία of Christ. The κυριότης begins with the resurrection of the Saviour, therefore his βασιλεία cannot begin at a later point. Phil. 2:9–11 connects with Christ's exaltation to the κυριότης the same things that 1 Cor. 15:24–28 connects with his reign as King. The trump blown for the resurrection of Christians is "the last trump," which excludes the prospect of any further crisis. Elsewhere also the Apostle joins together the resurrection of believers, the change of the living and the judgment of the world. Finally, Paul expects that the renewal of the κτίσις will accompany the resurrection of the saints. When the creation is delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God, this of itself must mark the consummation of all things, and excludes the further activity of enemies, such as would still have to be reduced to subjection.

Two other passages usually quoted as carrying chiliastic implications are 1 Thess. 4:13–18 and 2 Thess. 1:5–12. The argument from the former passage is not so much an argument

from direct statements contained in it, but rather based on the observation that without the injection into the exegesis of the millennium-idea the passage yields no clear sense, whilst becoming lucid so soon as the factor of the millennium is reckoned with. It is argued that the Thessalonians appear to have been dubious as to whether those who had died from among them after the formation of their church would be raised from the dead at the coming of the Lord. But, it is further argued, they cannot possibly have been ignorant of or non-believers in the final resurrection of the saints as such, since this latter doctrine holds a central, prominent place in Paul's gospel, and he cannot but have preached it to them emphatically. They could not have been Christians without knowing and accepting it. The situation is supposed to become clear and conceivable only, if we understand the doubt or unbelief involved as relating not to the resurrection of believers in general, but to the question whether the already departed saints would obtain for themselves a resurrection at the parousia which would enable them to share in the provisional kingdom of Christ, together with those whom the Lord would find alive at His coming, or whether they would have to wait for their resurrection and glory until the end of this kingdom. It was for them not a question of resurrection or noresurrection, but a question of earlier or later, the former meaning participation, the latter non-participation in the blessedness of the millennial kingdom. And that such was the real situation, it is urged, follows not merely from the impossibility of conceiving it otherwise, but also from the manner in which Paul meets the difficulty. He does not affirm in general that there is a resurrection of the dead, as he does in 1 Cor. 15, but says "those that are fallen asleep, God will through Jesus bring with Him." And "we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep." The use of the verb φθάνειν, "precede" is taken as proof that the question was a mere question of precedence. Paul denies the precedence in the particular form in which the Thessalonians had imagined it. There will be no later or earlier as regards believers, no discrimination between living and dead as to sharing in the provisional Messianic kingdom. All will be

brought by God to be with Jesus at his coming. But, while denying this, and in the very act of denying this, Paul implies that the general scheme of the resurrection left room for the possibility of doubt on this point. If there is room for precedence in the abstract, there must be successive stages; there must be a double resurrection, one at the parousia, another at the close of Christ's millennial reign. The Apostle virtually assures the Thessalonians that their dead will be present at the first meeting of the saints with Christ, which distinctly presupposes that there will be a second meeting at a later point.

Here, even more than in the case of 1 Cor. 15, it must be conceded that the argument looks like a very plausible and convincing one. But, when we look more closely at the actual words of the passage, the matter becomes considerably more complicated and less certain. First of all, it should be observed that little can be built on the a priori assumption of the impossibility of the Thessalonians doubting the resurrection of the dead saints in toto after the preaching of Paul. To the Church of Corinth Paul had also preached the resurrection, still some of the members of that Church were disbelievers of the doctrine. To be sure, the doubt of the Thessalonians, if it existed, must have been of a somewhat different complexion, more naїve, less theoretical, that that of the Corinthians, otherwise Paul would have met it systematically as he does in 1 Cor. 15. But, if theoretical considerations made the Corinthians sceptical, notwithstanding the explicit preaching of Paul, then some more primitive or instinctive form of the same pagan unbelief may have kept the Thessalonians from assimilating this part of Paul's gospel, in a more innocent way, of course, for the Apostle does not blame, he simply comforts and reässures them. It is not a priori impossible, that there were those among the Thessalonians who believed the glory of the end to be restricted to those who would be found living at the parousia, and expected nothing for the dead, neither at the parousia nor thereafter, neither in the body nor as to the soul, in a word who judged of the dead

after a pagan fashion, while taking a Christian view in regard to those whom Christ would find living in the body at his coming.

But the decisive question is: What does the passage itself imply? The very words in which the Apostle introduces the subject seem to make it plain that the Thessalonians did not take into account, as a reason for relative disappointment, or relative comfort, a resurrection of their dead later than the parousia at a point separated from the latter by an intervening reign of Christ. Vs. 13 indicates that the readers were given to sorrowing over their dead as the pagans do who have no hope. The question has been raised, whether this necessarily must mean their sorrowing for the same reason for which the pagans are wont to sorrow, or whether justice perhaps may be done to these words, by merely making them mean, that the Thessalonians sorrowed in the same excessive manner as the Gentiles do, only for a different reason, the Gentiles because they have no hope for the post-mortem state at all, the Thessalonians because they feared that their dead would not return to life until after the Messianic (provisional) reign of Christ with its possibilities for enjoyment was hopelessly past. It has been argued that Paul distinguishes the case of the Thessalonians from that of the λοιποί; the λοιποί are οἱ μὴ ἔχοντες ἐλπίδα; they themselves, therefore, must be ἔχοντες ἐλπίδα; consequently Paul does not class them with unbelievers concerning the resurrection; the manner or excess of their sorrow only was the same as that of the pagans; not the reason was the same. This argumentation, however, overlooks the fact that the ἐλπίδα ἔχειν, which certainly is implied with reference to the readers, is not an ἐλπίδα ἔχειν in their subjective consciousness, but in the objective conviction of Paul. The Apostle does not mean to say: You need not have sorrowed, because you knew you had hope. What he means to say is: You need not sorrow, because I know there is hope for you. These words, therefore, do not help us in any way to determine the subjective state of mind of the Thessalonians, whether they doubted merely the raising of their dead at the parousia or the raising of their dead at any time whatsoever. Decisive, however, it seems to us are the following

considerations: (1) The καί before οἱ λοιποί indicates that the Thessalonians in their own mind also belonged to the class of those who had no hope; had the mere manner or degree of sorrowing formed the point of comparison, Paul would have written καθὼς οἱ λοιποί; (2) The way in which Paul explains himself in vs. 14 shows how he conceived of the subjective state of mind of the Thessalonians. It will be noticed how in this verse he really gives a double assurance: (a) that the κοιμηθέντες will be raised; (b) that they will be brought by God into the presence of Jesus at the parousia. This sounds as if both points had been in doubt. Had the latter only been in doubt, Paul would have said: the resurrection will take place not later than, but at the parousia. What he says is: there will be a resurrection of the dead, and the dead will be present at the parousia. Especially the protasis of vs. 14: "for if we believe that Jesus died and rose" makes this very clear, because logically it requires the apodosis: "then also those that are fallen asleep will rise in Christ." That Jesus rose Paul would not have mentioned at all, had there not been doubt concerning the fact of the resurrection generally. The apodosis which Paul actually wrote does not show our point so clearly, because it contracts into a single clause two distinct propositions: ὁ θεὸς τοὺς κοιμηθέντας ἐγερεῖ διὰ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ and ὁ θεὸς τοὺς κοιμηθέντας ἄξει σὺν αὐτῷ; (3) Had the Thessalonians been merely concerned about a belated participation of their dead in the blessings of the future, and had Paul wished to call attention to the relative hopefulness of even this state of mind in contrast with the utter hopelessness of the pagan unbelief, then the Apostle would as a matter of fact have given the Thessalonians two distinct grounds of comfort: in the first place that even so their doubt did not call for such excessive sorrow, since they themselves continued to feel assured of an ultimate resurrection embracing all Christians; in the second place that the actual situation was far better than they imagined, since they could count on an immediate resurrection coinciding with the parousia. But in reality there is no trace whatever that the Apostle had two such distinct thoughts in mind: vs. 14, by means of "for" attaches itself to vs. 13, yet it makes no reflection upon the main thought which would according to the

Chiliastic exegesis find expression in vs. 13, viz. that the Thessalonians had at any rate the final resurrection to fall back upon.

On the ground of these three considerations it may be confidently affirmed that the sorrow of the Thessalonians had no Chiliastic background, but was caused by misconceptions of a more fundamental nature. It is true this yields no more than a negative result. It can not be proven from their state of mind, that they were Chiliasts, nor that Paul had taught them such doctrine. Notwithstanding this the possibility is not thereby precluded, that in the answer Paul gives in order to instruct or relieve them, there might have lain Chiliastic implications. The general doubt of the Thessalonians, as to whether their dead would be present at the parousia, Paul might have met in the more precise form of implying that they would not only participate in the resurrection, but would obtain a first resurrection restricted to believers. In other words the writing of this very passage might have been the first occasion on which Paul called the attention of the Thessalonian converts to the subject of the provisional kingdom. This brings us to the question how the φθάσωμεν in vs. 15 is to be understood. The verb expresses the thought of arriving earlier at a goal than somebody else. How is this to be understood in the present situation? Did Paul, when using this figure, have in mind that there were two distinct arrivals at the presence of the Lord and at the resurrection-crisis, one earlier and one later, and does he assure the Thessalonians that those who remained alive would not have the advantage of the earlier arrival and that the dead in Christ would not have to put up with the later one of these two arrivals? In that case the background is that of Chiliasm with its twofold resurrection. Or, did Paul simply employ the figure to assure the readers that in gaining the presence of the Lord the dead would not be one moment behind the living? In that case the representation has nothing to do with Chiliasm. It seems to us that everything speaks in favor of the latter exegesis. The Chiliastic scheme distinguishes between two resurrections, but not between two resurrections to glory, so that it fails to explain the

mode of expression: those that are left will not anticipate the dead. Of an anticipation in glory the Chiliastic scheme knows only where the first resurrection is confined to the martyrs, and that could not be the case here, since Paul speaks of all the dead in Christ.

In 2 Thess. 1:5–12 two expressions occur which have given rise to a Chiliastic explanation. In vss. 5 ff. the Apostle says that the persecutions and afflictions endured by the members of the church are a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, to the end that they may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which they also suffer, since it is a righteous thing with God to recompense affliction to them that afflict the readers and to those that are afflicted rest with Paul at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven. In vs. 11 we have the more general idea, that God may count the Thessalonians worthy of their calling κλῆσις here in the objective sense "that to which one is called," as ἐλπίς elsewhere, "that which is hoped for"). There is, however, nothing in these statements that would go beyond the general thought that suffering and glory, sanctification and the inheritance of the kingdom of God are inseparably linked together. The persecutions and afflictions of which the former passage speaks are not specifically those of martyrdom, and to think of a separate resurrection for all those that were persecuted and afflicted, would be without analogy. Besides this, the kingdom to which Paul refers is "the kingdom of God" (vs. 5), and this, according to 1 Cor. 15:24, is the kingdom of the absolute end, not any intermediate kingdom preceding it.

The last passage we must examine as to its bearings on the question of Chiliasm is Phil. 3:10–14. The Apostle, it is said, here expresses the desire to become conformed unto the death of Christ, i.e., to suffer martyrdom. The motive for this desire is expressed in the words: "If by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead." Paul, according to this interpretation, expected a preliminary resurrection in which those only would share who had died for Christ's sake, whereas the others would have to be content with the general resurrection at a much later point. This, it will be observed,

would yield a conception far more analogous to what chiliastic exegetes find in the well-known passage of the Apocalypse, than to the chiliastically interpreted statements of 1 Cor. 15:22 ff. Here in Philippians we should actually have the idea that the martyrs receive as a special reward a resurrection preceding that of the others, whereas, according to 1 Cor. 15, all those that are of Christ would share at his coming in the resurrection.

It so happens that in the Epistle to the Philippians it is more impossible than anywhere else to reconcile the alleged Chiliastic elements with the fundamental structure of the Pauline Eschatology. According to Chap. 3:20, 21 Paul makes the parousia coincident with the change of body not merely for himself but for all: "for our commonwealth is in heaven, from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby He is able to subject all things unto Himself." If Paul expected any special privilege for himself and other martyrs as regards time and order of resurrection, it cannot have been in connection with the parousia. We should then have to assume that he looked forward to an earlier resurrection, perhaps immediately after death. On such a view it would perhaps be possible to explain the plural of vss. 20, 21 rhetorically so as not to include Paul himself, and confirmation might be found for that in the first chapter, where "to depart" is equivalent to "being with Christ." Thus at least a degree of consistency could be saved for the Epistle. But even such a modified form of the anticipated-resurrection theory would not be plausible enough to entitle it to serious consideration. On the one hand it is unnatural to exclude Paul from the ἡμεῖς of 3:20, 21; on the other hand there is nothing in 1:20–24 to suggest the Apostle's conceiving the "being with Christ" to which his death would immediately introduce him, as an embodied life in heaven. It is true the phrase σὺν Κυρίῳ εἶναι designates in 1 Thess. 4:17 the presence with Christ in the body after the resurrection, but in that passage it receives its special meaning from the context, as is indicated by the word οὕτως,

"and thus we shall be forever with the Lord." In our passage the "being with Christ" does not have its meaning contextually determined in this way. The phrase in itself decides nothing as to the form which the presence with Christ will assume. Nothing hinders and everything favors giving it the same meaning as the ἐνδημῆσαι πρὸς τὸν Κύριον of 2 Cor. 5:8.

Another serious objection to the Chiliastic interpretation lies in the expressions of vs. 12. Here Paul speaks of that which would enable him to καταντᾶν εἰς τὴν ἐξανάστσιν τὴν ἐκ νεκρῶν as an "apprehending," a "having been made perfect," and denies having attained to this: "Not that I have already apprehended or am already made perfect, but I press on, if so be that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended by Christ Jesus." It is plain from this that the condition on which the Apostle suspends his attaining unto the resurrection cannot be martyrdom, for it would have had no sense for him to assure the readers that, that he had not yet obtained this, nor was yet in that way made perfect. Some internal process of attainment and perfecting must be referred to. So soon as we understand the words as speaking of attaining to the resurrection in that sense they appear to be identical in substance with other Pauline statements affirming the causal nexus between suffering here on earth with Christ and glorification with Him hereafter, and in which it is universally recognized that no special privilege granted to a class of believers can be meant but only the general grace of the resurrection-glory in store for all believers.

But the difficulty arises that on this exegesis Paul seems to make his participation in the resurrection, which elsewhere appears as an assured predetermined hope of every Christian, contingent upon the issue of a process he is undergoing here on earth. How could he speak, one unavoidably asks, of his resurrection with the dubiousness implied in the words: "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection from the dead?" In order to relieve this difficulty Van Hengel in his Commentary on the Epistle proposes the following: the word ἐξανάστασις does not mean here Paul's own

resurrection, but is a designation for the time when the parousia takes place, equivalent to "the hour of the resurrection." Paul then would, with a degree of dubiety, express the desire that, as a result of his striving after conformity to Christ, he might be permitted by God to attain unto, i.e., to survive until the day of the resurrection. But this is an impossible exegesis for several reasons. Why should Paul call the day of the parousia by this name "the resurrection from the dead," if he himself wishes or hopes to survive, so that to himself personally it would not be a day of resurrection? Going outside of his usual terminology to employ a strange name, we should expect him to choose at least a name that had some application to his own personal case. And in the first chapter of the Epistle Paul shows very plainly that survival until the parousia did no longer at the time of writing appear to him so desirable a thing as to be the supreme goal of aspiration. He there declares to depart and be with Christ "very far better" than "to abide in the flesh.19

We are thus compelled to face the fact that ἐξανάστασις designates Paul's own resurrection at the parousia, and that the Apostle represents this as in some sense dependent on his whole Christian striving and living as this revolved around the apprehension of Christ and the conformation to his death. This may be an unusual representation, but we have no right to declare it impossible or rule it out a priori. If taking it at its full meaning should have to be done at the cost of embracing the pre-millennarian scheme, we should not over-dogmatically shrink from the issue. Still, with all openness of mind, we cannot bring ourselves to the conclusion that such is the absolutely necessary exegesis. The protests raised by the Epistle as a whole seem to be too emphatic for this. From one point of view, of course, the resurrection belonged to the province of the Apostle's absolute certitudes, viz. as viewed from the standpoint of the divine purpose reflected in the believer's assurance of salvation. But, from another point of view, the resurrection could appear none the less as the ethically and religiously conditioned acme of his progress in grace and conformity to Christ. The best way to make this believable is to place side by side Paul's strong sense of accountability towards

the judgment-day, and his absolute conviction about the allcomprehensiveness and certainty of the verdict of justification. The sanctification of the believer is to him in practical life the sine qua non of the divine approval in the last day. This may throw light upon the analogous representation of the resurrection as the goal of a process of ever-growing apprehension and reproduction of Christ. As no one can expect to stand in the last day who has not practised holiness in the fear of God, so no one can hope to attain unto the resurrection of life who has not learned to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed unto his death. Such a mode of viewing the resurrection need not do away with the other mode of viewing it as a gift of free grace bestowed for the sake of the merit of Christ. The first relation in which Paul stands to Christ is expressed in vss. 8, 9: "That I may win Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." This is the forensic relation of justification and it is fundamental. But this is followed by a second, that of the apprehension of Christ subjectively in sanctification. And that it is not impossible for Paul to hold up the resurrection as a goal to be striven after, appears from the fact that he here plainly so represents the spiritual resurrection, which elsewhere he views quite as much as the bodily resurrection under the aspect of an absolute act or gift of God. The process of "knowing Christ," more particularly of knowing "the power of his resurrection" is, in some sense, subject to a διώκειν. It is at one and the same time a divine grace and a Christian attainment. It is a γνῶσις in which Paul takes an active part, in which there is place for a καταλαβεῖν, just as there is a καταντᾶν with reference to the eschatological resurrection. It may not be easy to explain in the concrete how precisely the Apostle conceived of this. The only point we desire to make is that, if the terms of effort be appropriate terms to be used in connection with the spiritual resurrection, then we lack the right to say that καταντᾶν εἰς used with εἴ πως involves an impossible representation from Paul's point of view as regards the resurrection of the body at the last day. Possibly in vs. 14 "the prize

of the high-calling of God in Christ Jesus" likewise designates the resurrection-experience or the resurrection-state as something to which God will call at the end, or as something lying ready in heaven as the goal to which the believer has been called. Now of this prize Paul declares that he presses on towards it as towards a goal, and he expects of all mature Christians (τέλειοι) that they will be "thus minded," that is assume the same attitude of pursuit.

We have completed our exegetical survey, and the conclusion is that in none of the passages where Chiliasm was supposed to have been discovered, the discovery is borne out by the facts, while in not a few contexts it is positively irreconcilable with the Apostle's representation. It ought to be remembered, however, that this result of our investigation concerns only the idea of a provisional Messianic Kingdom as future, i.e., strictly eschatological from Paul's own standpoint, beginning with the parousia of the Lord. The argument in no wise precludes Paul's having regarded the present reign of Christ, with its semi-eschatological character in the light of a provisional kingdom to be succeeded by an absolute kingdom at the parousia. In point of fact such a conception is found in the passage of 1 Cor. 15. Here we are told in so many words that at "the end" Christ will deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father. This implies plainly a distinction between the kingdom of Christ as a present and the kingdom of God as a future reality. In this place then Paul has plainly incorporated into his eschatology the idea of a twofold kingdom, just as in the teaching of our Lord there appears the same distinction between the present kingdom and the eschatological kingdom. In this form, and in this form only, is the distinction exempt from the objection that it must involve the anticlimax and interpose something different where the whole tenor of the Pauline teaching requires unbroken continuity. On our interpretation the Messianic provisional kingdom and the present σωτηρία are identical and coëxtensive, so that what the Christian now possesses and enjoys is the firstfruits and pledge of the life eternal. Paul's aspiration everywhere fastens, without any intermediate resting-point, on the eternal state. This is immediately

explained, if the blessings and joys of the Messianic reign have already arrived, so that the Christian hope can with undistracted intensity project itself into the world to come.

It cannot be maintained, however, that Paul carries through this distinction between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of God with uniformity. Although to a larger extent an eschatological conception with Paul than with Jesus, the kingdom of God is not exclusively so in the Pauline teaching. The Apostle speaks of "inheriting the kingdom of God," 1 Cor. 6:9; 15:50; Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5; believers are "called to God's kingdom and glory," 1 Thess. 2:12; they suffer "that they may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God," 2 Thess. 1:5. But the kingdom of God also appears as a present reality. According to Rom. 14:17 it consists not in eating and drinking, but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, and acording to 1 Cor. 4:20 its essence is not in word but in power. In these passages the kingdom of God and the present reign of Christ are identified. And if the present kingdom can be called the kingdom of God, it is also worthy of notice that the future kingdom can be called the kingdom of Christ. This occurs in Eph. 5:5, where Paul speaks of an "inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." In 2 Tim. 4:1 we read of "the ἐπιφανεία and βασιλεία of the Lord Jesus Christ" as coinciding with the judgment. This has been brought into connection with the advanced doctrine of the later Epistles, where Christ is represented as the goal of the worldmovement.

The above observations show that a hard and fast distinction between a Messianic kingdom and the ultimate kingdom of God cannot be carried through in Paul. Obviously what has invited the distinction in 1 Cor. 15 is the fact, that there the reign of Christ appears in one specific aspect, viz. as a reign of conquest. The βασιλεύειν of Christ here virtually consists in subduing one enemy after the other. As such it naturally enters into contrast with the absolute eternal reign of God at the end, of which it is characteristic that from it all enemies and warfare shall have been banished.

Confirmation to this may be found in Col. 1:13, the one passage besides 1 Cor. 15:24, where the kingdom of Christ has a somewhat militant setting: "God has delivered us out of the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love." To be sure, here the conqueror, who rescues us from the enemy, is rather God than Christ.

CHAPTER XI: THE JUDGMENT

Resurrection and Judgment are the two correlated acts of the final consummation of things. They are like twin-woes in the travail by which the age to come is brought to birth. But they are not cleanly separated even at their eschatological emergence. In the resurrection there is already wrapped up a judging-process, at least for believers: the raising act in their case, together with the attending change, plainly involves a pronouncement of vindication. The resurrection does more than prepare its object for undergoing the judgment; it sets in motion and to a certain extent anticipates the issue of the judgment for the Christian. And it were not incorrect to offset this by saying that the judgment places the seal on what the believer has received in the resurrection. Broadly speaking, and keeping the whole trend of revelation in mind, the two processes cover between themselves the entire religious destiny and status of man. The physis and the ethos appear here in their interdependence. Ethically man must be set right, physically, or rather soterically, he must be healed and transfigured. To these two ideas nothing of equal fundamental importance could be added: they are in principle exhaustive of what takes place at the end.

The eschatological judgment appears in two widely varying forms of description, which, respectively, may be named the realistic and the

forensic one. In regard to the former it is not necessary that the technical term "judgment" should be employed, or where this appears it is in a less formal half-metaphorical sense. The substance, however, is always there, viz. that God brings about an effectual termination to the preceding process and puts in the place of it something toto genere different of final significance. From the nature of the setting given to this it relates chiefly to the judgment of God's enemies. The setting is martial; the background that of a fierce battle and a decisive victory. In the Old Testament this is for a long time the prevailing mode of representation, though from Daniel and the Psalms onward the formal forensic picture becomes increasingly in evidence, without, however, entirely superseding the other. In the martial judgment there is no apparatus of records kept and examined, and no verdict solemnly pronounced on the basis of these. The mode is theophanic, that is through an appearance of Jehovah, but the theophany assumes such dimensions and produces such absolute effects, that there can be no question as to its belonging to the sphere of eschatology proper. Through the subsumption of the apparently physical process under the category of judgment its basally-eschatological character is assured. What seems at first sight blind and unexplainable is placed in the light of supreme purpose.

The two terms in which this survival of the one, and that the earlier, of the Old Testament representations finds expression are ὀργή and ὄλεθρος. It is chiefly the merit of Ritschl to have once more placed in its proper eschatological setting the idea of the divine "wrath." The term is not, of course, exclusively eschatological in its use; cp. Mk. 3:5; Rom. 12:19; 13:4, 5. But the overgrowing of the generallyethical by the specifically-eschatological is clearly traceable. The ὀργὴ μελλουσα of John the Baptist, the "ὀργή that abides" of Jno. 3:36, the "coming ὀργή" of 1 Thess. 1:10 clearly indicate its ancient eschatological affinities long after the period of the Old Testament. Then there is also the figure of its "being stored up," which presupposes a final epochal terminus to its outworking. This reference is plainly required where the "orge" appears as something

from which even believers need yet to be saved through the life of Christ, Rom. 5:9; for the present it would be absolutely impossible to conceive of believers as subject to the divine wrath, so that on that account alone reference of the "wrath" to the eschatological crisis appears inevitable. The objects of reprobation are designated as "σκεύη ὀργῆς" i.e. vessels in which wrath has been stored up for manifestation in the future, Rom. 9:22.

Less frequent is the term "ὄλεθρος," perhaps a specifically-Pauline word in eschatological usage. It occurs four times: 1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Thess. 5:3; 2 Thess. 1:9; 1 Tim. 6:9. With "orge" it has in common the unforensic setting. The root from which "olethros" is derived is the same as in "ἀπόλλυμι" and in the latter's correlative noun "ἀπώλεια." All these forms are pointedly eschatological. The "Manof-Sin" in 2 Thess. 3 bears the name "son of perdition" ("apōleia"). 1 Tim. 6:9 "olethros" and "apōleia" occur together. Whether the verb "apollumi" means, eschatologically, "to annihilate," and the noun "apōleia" "annihilation" is a question to be looked into presently.

There is one peculiar feature about this execution of judgment in act, viz. the immediateness of its effect. This is best illustrated by the description of the disposal of the "Man-of-Sin" in Thessalonians; it is brought about by the breath of the mouth of the Christ, by the mere manifestation of His coming. Plainly this feature was borrowed from Isa. 11:5. In Isaiah it is simply one of the illustrations of the prophet's conception of the instantaneousness of Jehovah's supernatural working particularly in judgment.

It were a mistake to understand these realistic descriptions of the judgment as, to the mind of Paul, depicting God in a passionate state of non-reflecting self-assertion. Even in the Old Testament this is not so. Back of the bursting forth of the "wrath" and of the surrender to "olethros," there is always assumed to lie a decision taken deliberately and based on righteous grounds. What is so often alleged and so thoughtlessly repeated concerning the unethical nature of the God of a large part of the Old Testament finds no

support in such representations. The terminology does not favor it, for the process is of old called a "Shaphat," a "judgment, and a "judgment" as such has intelligent discrimination in it. Else the term and its derivatives could never have been drawn into the service of certain current delineations of Jehovah's O.T. character, either eschatologically or otherwise. The peculiar term "zedakah" for "victory" in certain contexts of the Old Testament bears witness to the same principle.

It would be no less a mistake, however, to identify these unforensic forms of judgment-execution with purely physical processes. Realistic they are, to be sure, but realistic is not to be equated to the sensual-physical. The breath of the mouth of the appearing Christ is not to be understood as a withering blast, although some of the Apocalyptic writers may have actually formed this conception of the Messiah's mode of action. But neither is all this material to be diluted into the purely ethico-spiritual, as though it were a species of psychological procedure, only on a higher plane. The divine realism is more than thoughtor will-tissue. But the greater of these two misconceptions is, perhaps, that of solidifying what happens into elements of physics. Kabisch, who out-apocalypses the Apocalyptics, has gone farthest in the direction of the latter extreme. He handles the conception of "fire," not only after a realistic-substantial but after a materialistic fashion, particularly in connection with 1 Cor. 3:13–15. To the physical nature of the fire here spoken of he attributes, first of all, the illuminating character of the judgment: "every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day" (i.e. the day of Jehovah) as a complex of light-producing fire. But fire is also a destructive, consuming principle, so that, if the process be once physically conceived, the literal fire will furnish the unitary element in which these two effects are naturally combined. The fire spoken of is assumed to be, with the same literal understanding, the elemental fire of which the Spirit consists. This pneumatic fire, according to Kabisch, preserves in Paul's conception that which is similar to its nature, whilst destroying all the dissimilar, viz. the sarcical.).

All this rests on an over-literal interpretation of what wishes to be understood as figurative language, although it can not be denied that by an unusually felicitous interweaving of a figurative woof with a literal-realistic warp a remarkably-impressive texture has been obtained. The figures are undoubtedly suggested by belief in the phenomenon of an actual, eschatological fire having a real function in the judgment-day. But this by no means suffices to render the entire representation physico-eschatological. It may even be doubted, whether in the Apocalyptic passages quoted much more than figures are intended, because in other passages the figurative meaning lies on the surface. Thus Test. Abr. we read: "He tests the works of man by fire, and if any man's work is consumed by the fire, straightway the angel of judgment takes him and carries him into the place of sinners … but if the fire shall test any man's work and shall not touch it, he is justified." The argument taken from the Jewish representation of the Law as a fiery substance, operating as such in the judgment-day, rests on a very slender basis, for in 4 Ezra 13:38 it is only the Syriac Version that reads: "by his Law which resembles a flame"; the better reading seems to be: "by his word of command which resembles a flame." In Chap. 14:39 the water which Ezra is given to drink resembles fire not because the substance of the law is of fire, but to depict the seer's inspiration. But if some, or even all of such statements bore in the mind of these visionary writers a grossly-physical sense, it would by no means follow from this, that the images called up by the Apostle, simply because the same terms appear in them, require or allow the same interpretation. The fact alone that Paul in the passage of 1 Cor. 3 turns the figure into three different directions suffices to prove that to him it is actually a figure. Nor does Paul believe that any such fire will be needed to destroy that product of work which is compared to hay, wood, stubble. With as much right might one insist upon the literalness of these terms: wood, hay, stubble, in their application to the work-product as upon the literalness of the combustion-process when applied to the destruction of the things named. Were the destruction to be understood realistically as a destruction through chemical fire, then it would be unavoidable to assume the presence

of the work-product in some realistic sense in the day of judgment, a consideration which, to be sure, does not deter Kabisch, for he asserts that according to the Jewish, and therefore likewise Paul's conception, the substance of works done is bodily preserved and bodily brought forward to undergo judgment. Support has been sought for this in the representation, that, when Christians are made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ, each will receive the things done in the body, whether it be good or bad, 2 Cor. 5:10. Within this statement, however, the phrase "done in the body" serves no other purpose than to specify the state of life, that in the judgment will pass under review, viz. the period spent in the body. It is impossible to conceive that Paul meant to restrict the judgment to corporeal sins, excepting from it all non-somatic wrongdoings. Even, when enumerating the works of "the flesh," he subsumes under this category several forms of sin that lie outside the sphere of the body, Gal. 5:19.

Passing over into the strictly-forensic field we find a technical terminology employed. The verb κρίνειν, κρίνεσθαι is the regular medium for describing the judging act of God or Christ. The noun for the passing of the judgment is κρίσις that for the resulting verdict κρῖμα; cp. Rom. 5:16. These terms are not, of course, confined to eschatological use, although in the majority of cases such is their actual reference. In its etymological origins the term "krinein" is an entirely neutral term meaning "to place or keep apart." The central idea is that of discrimination. In the basic natural, physical associations there is no technical judicial element present. "To judge" simply means to form an opinion, which, while it cannot help being to the credit or discredit of the one on whom the opinion is passed, is not even reminiscent of either law or lawcourt. How purely-ideal the mental action is becomes specially clear from its forming the main element in the concept of "to answer," ἀποκριθῆναι. A certain opinion is placed before the mind of one spoken to; this evokes a correlative opinion, and the act of "answering" is strikingly conceived as the result of the reaction of one opinion upon another. We meet this, ethically or juridically as

yet uncolored, use in such passages as Lk. 7:43; 12:57; Jas. 2:12. In Pauline statements it occurs Act. 13:46; 15:19 ("my opinion is"); 20:1; ("had determined"); 1 Cor. 10:15; 2 Cor. 5:14; Tit. 3:12. Easily, however, there enters into this the formulation of a more or less official approval or disapproval. Thus the definitions brought from the council of Acts 15 to the diaspora Christians are called δόγματα κεκριμένα in 14:4. This is a court-terminology, although as a matter of fact it describes not an enforceable decision, but partakes of the nature of advice from the Apostles.

Within the province of divine jurisdiction, on the other hand, we plainly are in such statements as the following: Rom. 12:2; 3:6; 6:2; 1 Cor. 1, 5; 5:13; 11:32; 2 Thess. 2:12; 2 Tim. 4:1. In most instances of this forensic turn given to the word it contracts an unfavorable meaning implying divine disapprobation. The neutral "krinein" tends to change into an unfavorable "krinein," although this latter signification, notwithstanding its unfavorable import, still remains distinguishable from the absolutely unfavorable verdict of the last judgment.

There is still a third group of terms relating to the judgmentprocedure of God with its result of final, absolute determination. This group attaches itself to the "δίκαιος-δικαιοῦν-δικαίωσις"-idea which plays so large a rôle in the Apostle's soteriological, particularly his justification-vocabulary. It comes under consideration as to all three, adjective noun and verb, in a favorable sense only. The "dikaios" in result of justification cannot, of course, be condemned in the last judgment. Still of his positive final absolution and endowment with the supreme eschatological blessedness we read less than might be a priori expected in the judgment-contexts. And it is doubtless the relative absence of the element in question that reflects itself in the scarceness of the justification-terminology in such cases. The term "dikaios" (of God as Judge) occurs with undoubted reference to the final judgment in 2 Tim. 4:8 only. In 2 Thess. 1:5, 6 the enduring of persecution by believers is called an "endeigma" of the "dikaia krisis" of God, to the

end that the readers may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God; here both the entire context and particularly the term "kingdom" prove that the statement is meant eschatologically sensu stricto; there is no reflection here so much upon relative matters of degrees of blessedness; the inheritance of the kingdom of God is involved. The verb "dikaioon" "to justify" is found in the argument of Rom. 2:13; while this argument is hypothetical, as explained above, it is none the less fundamental; it connects the principle ennunciated with the final judgment, which is explicitly named in vs. 16: the day when "God shall judge the secrets of men … by Jesus Christ." The noun "dikaiōsis" occurs with probably eschatological reference once only, Rom. 5:18; "(the free gift) came unto all men to justification of life"; here the reference to "life" certainly includes the consummate life of the eternal state, although it is not necessarily restricted to that. The synonym "dikaiokrisia" appears in Rom. 2:5 with specific eschatological reference: "the day of wrath and of revelation of the righteous judgment of God." On the future tenses in certain passages no absolute reliance can be placed, because the tense may be logical and not chronologically-prospective. The fact remains that the justification-terminology is somewhat in abeyance in Paul's references to the judgment. This in a measure confirms the conclusion reached before, viz. that in one important sense is to Paul virtually a judgment by way of anticipation.

By no means, however, does this mean that Christians have no further interest in or concern about the judgment still to come. How little this would be correct may be seen from the fact that by far the majority of instances where the last-judgment-idea occurs speak of believers. Of course, the first and most obvious reason for this is, that the letters are addressed to Christians, and that in consequence the judgment idea is brought to bear upon such. As God alone judges those that are "without," even so the Apostle might quite properly speak no more than was absolutely unavoidable of the judgment to be passed upon the world of unbelievers. The restraint in this respect could not help bringing about a certain abeyance of the sharp antithesis between believers acquitted and non-Christians

condemned in the last day. It were quite unwarranted to infer from this that the sharp contrast named was not familiar to or even was indifferent to the Apostle. Proof for the opposite is by no means lacking. Instances in which the act of "krinein" revolves around the salvation or non-salvation of persons are the following: Rom. 2:2, 3, 8, 12, 16; 3:6, 8; 5:16; 1 Cor. 5:13; 6:2; 2 Cor. 2:9; 2 Thess. 2:12; 1 Tim. 3:6; 2 Tim. 4:1.

Giving full weight to these passages and not drawing any unwarranted generalizing conclusions from them, we still cannot help noticing that, broadly speaking, with Paul the judgment is an event that will make discrimination as to the future rank and enjoyment in the life to come between individual Christians. The differences established may and will be great, but the range covered by them lies within the realm of salvation. The Corinthian transgressors are "judged," that is disciplined by God through the infliction within their circle of sickness or death, but this happens not to the detriment of their final salvation, rather to the furtherance of it, 1 Cor. 11:30–32. Particularly this principle is brought to bear upon those who are dispensers of the Gospel to others. All the work performed by one of this class may in the last day be destroyed as by fire, nevertheless the workman himself will issue from the judgment as a firebrand plucked out of the combustion that destroys his work, 1 Cor. 3:14. At the same time the destruction of his work-product will be reckoned to him and by him as a real loss which he suffers. Paul, although only hypothetically, yet with real seriousness and a perceptible degree of fear, contemplates the contingency of becoming a castaway in his own person after all the labor expended by him towards the salvation of others.

It might easily seem as if through the partial shifting of the emphasis from the personal issue to the question of degrees in the allotment of eternal benefits somewhat of the solemnity of the judgment-prospect were apt to be lost. The actual tone and tenor of the Apostle's deliverances on this subject do not verify such an

impression. There remains hanging over the consciousness of approaching judgment a veil of disturbed apprehension, which even the most advanced in sanctification is unable to throw off. It forms in a certain sense the balancing counterpart to the pervasive and fundamental joyfulness of the first recipients of the new-born faith. And this tremor that runs as an undercurrent beneath and mingles even with the surface waves of the stream of primitive Christian experience is so real that it shows its presence in the mind of the Apostle himself to whom an ascent to the highest summits of Christian exultation was not unfamiliar. The supreme joy engendered by this was not able to render him immune to the fear and depression inseparable from the contemplation of the ultimate crisis with all it bears within itself of eternal issues. In the conscious presence of this thought he became acquainted with what he calls "the dread of the Lord," 2 Cor. 5:11. And in the case of the common believer likewise this sentiment is a constant ingredient. All the teaching on the fatherhood and love of God as connected with the experience of justification did not eradicate it. It yields no satisfactory explanation to say that this element in Paul's and the early Christians' mind represents but a lingering remnant of Paul's erstwhile religious way of thinking and feeling. It is far too deepseated for that. Much more to the point would it be to recognize in it the thoroughly matured fruit of the age-long culture of the moral aspect of revealed religion among the Old Testament people of God fostered by the Law and the Prophets. In this respect also Paul was a genuine son of Israel, and through upholding the principle involved he took pains to make his converts spiritual heirs of what was finest and noblest in the Mosaic dispensation. Besides, nothing is more certain than that any depreciating judgment passed upon this strain in Paulinism affects with equal pertinence the teaching of Jesus.

The clear recognition of this aspect of the judgment brings us face to face with the problem of the legitimate or non-legitimate rôle played in the Pauline teaching (and in Biblical teaching generally) with the conception of reward. The question has been touched upon in our third chapter, but a closer examination at this point need not

prove superfluous. The modern stress laid upon the autonomy and spontaneity of religion, even to the point of strict exclusion of every form of external authority, here plainly runs athwart what constitutes a main strand in the religion of the Scriptures. To propose any rule at all and to introduce any motives whatsoever ab extra is held to vitiate the religious process at its very root. The general answer to this radical position is, of course, that it puts man on an equal plane with God in the matter of religious converse, and that this in itself is an irreligious attitude to assume. Such autonomy and spontaneity as are thus insisted upon belong to God and to Him alone. If the objection to forcing religion upon man were to be taken in a strictly-literal sense the position taken might be readily allowed; there is no need of saying that with God no such gross violation of the nature of piety is conceivable. But the modern critique of the principle of authority in religion strikes far deeper than the view thus defined. It voices at bottom a protest against every non-volitional introduction of religious forces into the soul; the entire system of efficient, subconsciously communicated, grace is negated by it, so that to take one's stand on that ground would by one fell stroke annihilate the entire redemptive substance of the Christianity of the New Testament, and charge Paul with the incongenial rôle of unconsciously playing the Pelagian. What here we are more immediately concerned with embodies the obnoxious criticism in a much subtler and apparently less subversive form. The contention is that making use of the reward-motif in religion injures the delicacy of a relationship that by its very nature should be conducted on the high plane of absolute altruism. In other words it is the commercial aspect of the notion of reward, the quid pro quo method that provokes protest. Hence the name attached to it is "legalism" and its parentage is derived from the perverse system of Judaism, particularly as this system existed in post-Old-Testament times. The psychological root of this opinion lies not very far removed from the root of the preceding error: it is again the selfsufficient man thinking too highly of himself to suffer the dignity of his human nature to be encroached upon by God. No more than the psychic spontaneity of his religion can he permit the delicate texture

of its fine spiritual disinterestedness to be interfered with from any quarter whatsoever.

Putting the question not now on the basis of the ethics or psychology of religion, but on the basis of the available evidence alone there can be no doubt as to the presence and vital significance of the reward-idea in the Pauline eschatology. The classical statement is that of Rom. 2:6–10. We have explained before why owing to the intrusion of sin, the rule here formulated never attains to realization in practice, and what are the particular obstacles to its successful operation. The general cause lies in the refusal of the flesh (sinful human nature) to be subject to the will of God, Rom. 7:5, 18; 8:7; Gal. 5:17. But, while this belongs to the subconscious disposition of man, Paul goes further and points out to us the conscious channel which this inner opposition to God delves for itself to reach the open of surface manifestation. The general sinfulness of the heart might perhaps be mistaken for a negativelydisabling factor, something dooming all human efforts towards eschatological attainment to sheer futility. As a matter of fact Paul puts the failure of the law-method, if not on a more fundamental, yet religiously considered, on a more ugly basis. In its extreme form it assumes the character of enmity against God, such enmity to which the mere approach of and contact with God acts as a stimulus to hostile reaction. Still more specifically the Apostle teaches that the method formulated breaks down at one particular point, viz. its inevitable lapse into the sin of "boasting" before God. We can clearly observe that in his hamartological appraisal of the degrees of sin this constituted for Paul an extreme point of the fatal course traversed by sin in the human consciousness. It occupies this place for the simple reason of its being a profoundly irreligious attitude towards God as the rightful possessor and sole legitimate recipient of religious glory. The fact alone that the legalistic type of religion solicits and fosters this type of sin is in the Apostle's judgment sufficient to put it out of all consideration as a feasible method for arrival at the eschatological goal; cp. Rom. 3:27.

Still this principial exclusion of the compensation-idea is enforced only in the sub-redemptive stage. Redemption reconstructs the relation of man to God. It does so not only in general, but also in this very respect, that room is again created for the introduction of the reward-complex. First of all in its ancient, immutable form it is incorporated and remains firmly embedded in the objective vicarious task of Christ on behalf of man. Christ, according to Paul, does precisely what fallen man could no longer do in result of the insuperable obstacles thrown in his pathway by sin. For in Christ's case these obstacles do not exist; subjectively He is exempt from the disabling influence of sin. His positive moral and religious perfection renders every invasion of the self-glorifying factor into his consciousness a priori impossible. Hence in Phil. 2:9 the gracious bestowal of the name above every name upon the Saviour is placed by Paul without the slightest hesitation on the footing of work rendered and value received: "Wherefore also God highly exalted Him and gave unto Him the name which is above every name." Further, through an extension of the same principle to believers, although in their case no "earning" in the strict sense is according to Paul's general teaching conceivable, they are nevertheless admitted into a status within the régime of grace where with strict maintenance of the denial of merit, they are permitted to lay up a store of recompense for themselves towards the day in which all accounts are to be settled. As John spoke of receiving out of the fulness of Christ grace for grace, so after a somewhat similar fashion it might be said that in this Pauline construction there is deep calling unto deep, grace lying underneath grace throughout the successive divine dispensations at every point and on every plane.

Apart from Rom. 2:5–10 the passages that speak of the allotment to the individual believer of a degree of reward are the following: 1 Cor. 1:4–8; 3:8; 15:32, 58; 2 Cor. 4:16; 5:10; 9:6–8; Gal. 6:5–10; Phil. 1:10, 26; 2:16; Col. 1:5; 3:24; 1 Thess. 3:13; 5:23; 2 Thess. 1:7; 1 Tim. 2:1–8; 4:8; 5:25; 6:18, 19; 2 Tim. 2:11; 4:4, 8, 14, 16. What strikes one most in these pages is not so much the enunciation of the

compensatory principle but rather the matter-of-fact manner of its expression. It is evident that the Paul who had passed through the storm and stress of the Judaistic controversy, and come off triumphant in that crisis through the vindication of the doctrine of salvation by free grace, without the works of the law, could not possibly have felt any detraction from that in the incentive offered to the increase of the measure of reward. There was evidently to the Apostle's mind no retreat from the former position in all this. The matter simply belonged to a different plane.

It should not be overlooked that the prospect of reward just discussed reacts upon the envisagement of the judgment both by Paul and the common Christian. While the judgment as such can not be otherwise regarded than as a matter of solemnity and fear, yet to this has now been added the reverse side, that of a prospect of joy and hopefulness and there results a still more complex feeling such as might well baffle the most skilful attempt at psychological analysis. Even the factor of a prospective reward, can, owing to its uncertainty and its dependence on the progress in sanctification, not but add a constant element of anxiety to the Christian hope. The judgment is unlike the resurrection in that its canvas can never be entirely flooded with light and joy. But neither can it, in view of the subintroduction of the note of reward, be ever entirely overspread henceforth by the aspect of gloom and trembling. The things to be received, it is true, are not things of small importance; they concern tremendous issues in the world of eternity, so that even a mere question of degree can never wholly become a matter of secondary importance, far less of indifference. The element of trepidadation can not be fully eliminated, because it is inherent in the situation itself. But after all it can no longer reign supreme. With pride and rejoicing the Apostle looks forward to the day that shall exhibit in its clear light the accumulated fruit of a life full of service of the Lord. And out of this prospect of intense personal and official satisfaction there springs again in turn the intensified urge of exhortation addressed to his converts not to disappoint either him or themselves in the attainment of this unique prize. Such,

doubtless, is the meaning of passages like 1 Thess. 2:19; 1 Cor. 11:15; 2 Cor. 1:14; 7:4; 2 Cor. 4:17; Gal. 6:9; Eph. 6:9; 1 Thess. 2:19.

There are still two other aspects of the judgment on which reflection is made by Paul. The one is its publicity and the other its character as a vindication of the ways of God. These two are not independent one of the other. The vindication requires the publicity, since it is not to limited groups of persons but to the world, entering into judgment without exception, that this final divine pronouncement must be made known. Only this is in keeping with the majesty of God and the solemnity of the transaction. Paul, however, has in mind, besides the interhuman publicity confronting God with man and man with man mutually, also that exploration of men from within which draws the hidden content of the hearts into the open of the light of day. For God, the Omniscient One, this might seem superfluous, but for men it is not so, and the judgment fulfills itself in no other way than through the participation of all concerned in its execution. To Paul it was not without form and void, no mere metaphorical tableau to shadow forth a supersensual occurrence. The mysteries with which it remained beset in every attempt at visualization, did not hinder his interest in nor insistence upon an essential feature like this, in spite of its sharing in the mysterious character of the whole in all its details. It is part of the evil that it seeks to hide itself in the heart, nay would fain hide itself from the inlooking of God. The bringing of it to the surface of observation on every hand is an instalment of the retribution visited upon it, the first step, as it were, of its conviction and condemnation. In this respect it is the opposite to the hidden man of the heart, whose natural home is in the mystic recesses where he dwells alone with God. Of the necessity that the hidden sin must be exposed Paul speaks in Rom. 2:16 and 1 Cor. 4:5. In the former passage the readers are cautioned not to pass judgment on one another before the time, implying on the one hand that previously to that eventful time the necessary data for fair judgment are lacking, owing to the hidden nature of the evidence, and, on the other hand, that the time of judgment having arrived and the veil of

secrecy having been drawn aside, the possibility and opportunity for due judgment will be afforded them by God.

The thought of the vindication of the divine justice emerges only rarely in a direct way where Paul is speaking of the judgment. In his treatment of the process of justification, on the other hand, he touches upon it once and again. The judgment has frequently been represented as a theodicy. The thought of the necessity of a theodicy can not have appealed to the Apostle's mind over-strongly: he was too deeply impressed with the divine sovereignty for that. Still the approach to this point of view is not entirely absent. In the O.T. one of the branches into which the idea of the divine Zedaquah divides itself is that of righteousness of vindication. This is found especially in the latter part of the Book of Isaiah. It is, however, the vindication of the people in their controversy with the heathen that is referred to there and not the vindication of Jehovah in his judging procedure specifically. At the same time Jehovah's cause is so closely bound up with the cause of Israel that the vindication of Israel can not well be thought of, nor is it actually conceived, without that of God. The only passage which in Paul actually contains the thought of a forensic vindication of God occurs in Rom. 3:4. It is a quotation, not however from those Isaianic contexts but from Ps. 51. Here by a bold metaphor God is introduced as Himself a party at the bar. The Psalmist in his profound penitence thirsts, as it were, for some extraordinary recognition of the fact, that God is in the right and he himself in the wrong as regards his sins and for that purpose makes the pointedly personal confession "Against Thee only have I sinned," as it were, desiring to see Jehovah put in the right through some formal action at law. Here, then, God is not, within the terms of the figure the Judge, but one upon whom judgment is passed; the purpose for which Paul reproduces the situation is, however, that in his own judicial procedure God may be found true, but every man a liar.

There are a couple of points at which Paul's eschatology comes in contact with his demonology. The larger and most important part of

these concern the action proceeding from Christ against the great demonic powers, who, with Satan at their head, rule the present age, and still in a measure retain their influence after the enthronization of Christ through the resurrection. Satan is "the god of this aion." As such he blinds the mind of the unbelieving in order to prevent the dawning upon them of the light of the gospel, 2 Cor. 4:4. To the readers of Romans he holds in prospect that "shortly God will bruise Satan under your feet." This can refer only to the fulfilment of the curse pronounced upon the serpent according to Gen. 3:15, and therefore is of strictly eschatological import. But Paul likewise speaks of a judgment upon the sub-Satanic powers of the demon world, such as are enumerated in Rom. 8:38. The implication that these, powers might attempt to separate believers from the love of God marks them as out of harmony with the divine purpose. The inclusion of "angels" is not at variance with this, for the Apostle distinguishes formally between "angels of light" and "angels of darkness," 2 Cor. 11:14. That no more reference is made to Satan and his cohorts as the prime rulers and movers of the evil side of the universe is partly due to the supplanting of this antithesis (Satan vs. God) by the contrast between the "First" and the "Second" "Adam," which has an even wider reach in its ultimate issues; partly perhaps also to the familiarity of at least Paul's Jewish readers with this province of his theology.18 There is no doubt that according to the writer's mind such powers, so far as they are evil, will enter into the judgment of the last day. They are perhaps included in the, apparently exhaustive, enumeration of those whose knees shall bow in the name of Jesus, since the three spheres of the universe are explicitly named as contributing the participants in this act, Phil. 2:9–11. A more detailed description of the judgment in this realm of evil spirits is furnished by 1 Cor. 15:24; here the "bringing to impotence" of all rule, authority, power, comprehensively designated in vs. 25 as "all his enemies" is spoken of. This, however, as argued in a preceding chapter is not confined to the last crisis strictly so called; it belongs, with the exception of the abolishment of death, the last enemy, to the period intervening between the resurrection of Christ and the parousia. A different point of view,

that of an anticipated, but more gradual judgment-disposal is observable in 1 Cor. 1:18; here those not saved by the cross are described in the present tense as "the perishing ones"; whether this includes the evil spirits seeking to bring about such a failure of the gospel-preaching, must remain doubtful. Of a "coming to nought" or "being reduced to nought" of "the rulers of this world" we read in 1 Cor. 2:6; here there can be no doubt but demonic spirits are referred to, because in vs. 8 ignorance is predicated of these same rulers in regard to the glory of Christ such as led them to crucify the Lord. In so far as this act was a condemnable and self-condemnatory act, and in so far, moreover, as it set in motion the eschatological winding up of affairs through the cross, it would not be rash to discern in this a form of anticipated judgment. In the various passages dealing with this subject one gains the impression that the Apostle was conscious of a mysterious drama being enacted behind the scenes of this visible world in the world of spirits, and that not a drama bearing its significance in itself; it is something pregnant with the supreme solution of the world-drama at the close of history. There is one passage, however, in which this fact, only divinable elsewhere, finds explicit statement. This is Col. 2:15. Paul here declares that in the cross God was "ἀπεκδυσάμενος" the principalities and the powers and made a show of them openly "εδειγμάτισεν," and (thus) triumphed "θριαμβεύσας" over them. The precise implications of the statement depend almost wholly on the figure involved in the participle "ἀπεκδυσαμενος." The English versions render this by "spoiled," "despoiled," but there is an alternative translation, viz. "put off from Himself." Both renderings are unobjectionable linguistically considered; the main respect in which they differ is that the former accentuates the hostile relation between God and the principalities and powers, which is in accord with such terms as "making a show" and "triumphing" which can hardly be understood of any other class than evil angels. The other view involves the assumption that the powers named stood in some connection with the pagan gods; these had, as it were, veiled and obscured as by a mask the face of the true God to the view of heathendom, and God now openly declared his fundamental

difference from them. Still even so the phrases "making a show" and "triumphing" with their ominous import remain. Besides, a difficulty arises from the connection into which Paul brings these demonological ideas with the soteric significance of the cross (to which "in it" in vs. 15 points back) and the putting off by God from Himself, or despoiling, the principalities and powers; the act means not simply the removal of delusions on the part of paganism, but involved for Israel itself the forgiveness of trespasses on the basis of the blotting out of the bond written in ordinances that was against those living under the law. But, whatever interpretation may be put upon the mysterious words, it is plain on any view that the Apostle viewed the crucifixion of Christ as a real judgment visited upon superhuman spirits, something that, after a manner, might be put in parallelism with the anticipation of the final resurrection in that of Christ.

There is still one other aspect in which the angels appear subject to judgment, not this time of God, but to judgment on the part of believers. This representation occurs in 1 Cor. 6:3. Immediately before (vs. 2) it takes the form "Or know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?" It is not quite certain that Paul meant these two objects "angels" and "the world" to be understood interchangeably. In that case only evil angels could come under consideration, for "kosmos" with Paul has as a rule evil associations, although not uniformly so. Where the subject of the judging is God the term might be taken quantitatively in the sense of totum mundum, Rom. 3:6, still this is not probable, cp. the accumulation of evil aspects of the world in 1 Cor. 1–3. It will be noted that Paul speaks of this function of judging angels and judging the world as something familiar to the Corinthian readers, which indicates that it was a commonly accepted belief; otherwise the statement could not have been put in the form of a question: "Know ye not that, etc." In the Pauline writings there is no further reference or allusion to this matter. Everling, who relies much on parallels from the Apocalyptic literature, has little light to shed on the question here. All he is able to quote for comparison is the Book of Enoch, Chap. xiii. to the

effect that Enoch was commissioned by God to deliver to the evil spirits who had intermarried with the daughters of men (Gen. 6) the condemnatory sentence of God, passed by God after the accusation presented by the Archangels. This latter feature, viz. that precisely the accusers are found among the Archangels, whilst the "sons of God" are the small group of Azazel with his two hundred angels, does not fit well into the quite unrestricted statements of Paul that "the saints shall judge the world," or that "we shall judge angels." The only thing furnishing a parallel are the words of Jesus assuring the Apostles that they are to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, Matt 19:28; Lk. 22:30. Judging is in the Orient a regal function, the king being lawgiver and law-executor in one. But, whilst the saying of our Lord could be placed under the general rubric of the saints reigning with Him, the statement of Paul is too specific to permit of such exegesis. What the Apostle finds fault with in his readers is not their domineering attitude towards fellow-Christians but their litigosity: they go to law before the unrighteous (pagans) and not before the saints. And they do this in regard to "the smallest matters," things pertaining to this life. There are in this two points of disapprobation on Paul's part. First, it is beneath the dignity of believers, who formed, even in Corinth, an aristocracy of the Spirit, to submit their trivial bread-and-butter differences (biotika) to common pagans. Secondly, in seeking redress from pagans they contemptuously pass by fellow-believers as not wise or distinguished enough to settle points of difference, where such arose. In both respects the reminder of their destiny to judge angels is (not without a certain admixture of irony) made by Paul to serve as a corrective. From this we may gather that the future judging of angels was not to the Apostle's mind a negligible function; it required respectful recognition from Christian to Christian; a slight in connection with it deserved rebuke. And further, the things which the judgment of the angels to be held related to were not small matters but matters of the life to come and consequently of supreme importance. Now, while this gives us a glimpse of what lay in the Apostle's inner mind on this subject, it by no means satisfies our not illegitimate curosity, the less so since it

is evident that the Corinthian Christians knew more, perhaps all, about it.

There remains still one question that needs briefly to be considered. It is the question of the Judge who, according to Paul, will preside at this solemn function and render the supreme decision. It is God from whom all righteousness and judgment issue, and to whom all the, to men un-disentangible, threads of conduct, be it inward or outward, are clear, who as His divine right executes this conclusive judicial act and thus receives this part of the glory that must accrue to Him from all that has ever happened in the world. This indeed is the finest note in Paul's manifold pursuit of the idea of the righteousness of God. It is not enough to be righteous objectively, nor sufficient to carry the approval of one's conscience within one's self, the crown in the process is not put upon it until God by formal judgment has declared a man absolved sub specie juris divini. As an undertone this may be overheard even in such an occasional utterance as of 1 Cor. 4:3–4: "But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of man's day (i.e. in a human court): yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: he that judges me is the Lord." But this isolated note is not in principle different from the music of the full chorus of the doctrine of justification: "That He might Himself be just, and (none the less) the justifier of him that has faith in Jesus," Rom. 3:26; or: "let God be found true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy words, and mightest prevail when thou comest into judgment," vs. 4. At this high point the theocentric principle of God's judgmentprocedure and of his soteric justification-method are clearly seen to spring from the same root.

Side by side with the judgment of God stands that of which Christ is the presiding figure, 2 Cor. 5:10. This, however, is not to be interpreted as a later accretion to the dignity and office of Christ, and therefore particularly quotable as evidence for the Saviour's deity. Evidence to that effect it no doubt is, but it is by no means a

piece of the investiture of Jesus with divine attributes or functions on the part of the early Church. The roots lie much farther back, viz. in the Old Testament conception of the Messiah as the representative of God, who on that account also is the executor of and the participator in the divine judgment. And even this rests ultimately on the inseparable union upon which the reigning and the judging function had entered in the Shemitic world from times immemorial.

There is one instance in a Pauline discourse where the Apostle reflects upon the essentialness of the human nature of Christ as a qualification for his holding judgment. This occurs in the Areopagus discourse, Acts 17:31: "inasmuch as He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has ordained." A similar statement occurs in the Fourth Gospel, 5:27: "And he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man." It is not clear in either passage what motive underlies this stressing of the participation of Jesus in human nature. The ability on his part to enter into the subjectivity of those whom He is to judge has been thought of; this would approximate the thought to that so prominent in the Epistle to the Hebrews, only that there a specific turn is given to the idea: Jesus' sympathy is chiefly concerned with the temptation that befalls believers through suffering; it is profoundly moral and not merely emotional sympathy with suffering as such.

CHAPTER XII: THE ETERNAL STATE

The main character of the state following the resurrection and the judgment is described by the adjective "αἰώνιος." As will be presently shown, the character so named does not exclusively express some relation to or severance from time; certain qualitative associations are bound up with it. Of the final issue of the eschatological succession of events it occurs in the Pauline Epistles fourteen times: Rom. 2:7; 5:21; 6:22, 23; 2 Cor. 4:17, 18; 5:1; Gal. 6:8; 2 Thess. 1:9; 2:16; 1 Tim. 2:10; Tit. 1:2; 3:7; Phi. 15; to these must be added Acts 13:46, 48. Of these passages the only one explicitly joining the term to the destiny of those condemned in the judgment is 2 Thess. 1:9: "ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον." The Hebrew " ʽOlam" to which the noun "αἰών" in "αἰώνιος" must be traced back seems to be in its original significance what the philosophers call a "Grenzbegriff," but conceived after a rather concrete fashion; it denotes what is "unreachable to the time-sense of man. This seems first and chiefly to have related to the past when lying beyond the reach of remembrance; "the hills of eternity" are the immemorially existing hills, which, of course, does not imply that they had no beginning in fact, Gen. 49:26; Deut. 33:15. Doubled phrases such as "leʽloam waʽed" came into use to intensify the idea by means of repetition. Duplication could also serve the purpose of distinguishing between eternity "a parte post" and "a parte ante": "me-ʽolam ʽad ʽolam." It has been held by some that "αἰώνιος" is derived not from the Old Testament concept of eternity but from the formal eschatological distinction between "this aion" and "the aion to come." This is unlikely for more than one reason. The notion of perpetuity, unendingness, while perfectly applicable to the age to come, is obviously inherently opposed to the phrase "the present age." Besides, the entirely uneschatological Hellenic "aion" is doubtless related to the word "aiei," "always," so that every derivation from a technical eschatological system appears superfluous. The present age is precisely the opposite of aionios, for it has a "συντέλεια." As for Paul's usage in particular, the Apostle finds in the consummate state the antithesis to "chronos," "time," Gal. 4:4. There is not a single instance in Paul which compels us to restrict the adjective aionios to a relative duration; of the instances

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