beyond itself, De Coelo i. 9, which, to be sure, relates to the lifetime

above cited no less than eleven join the adjective to the noun "life," "zoe aionios"; the inherent content of the phrase "eternal life" precludes limitation. Both the Rabbinical theology and Greek philosophy already found the specific difference of the word in its negation of any recognizable time-extent beyond. By the Rabbins "the future aion" is characterized as "perfectly long," Kiddush xxxix. 2. Aristotle speaks of aionios as that which by nature has nothing beyond itself, De Coelo i. 9, which, to be sure, relates to the lifetime of a person, but in the same sense can be applied to the cosmical span of time. But, when speaking of the philosophical "ἀπειρία," he admits that the transfer of the period-limitation to this is of the nature of an epinomy, that is metaphorical. We see, therefore, that the word-forms, both Semitic and Hellenic, bear the seed of the concept non-cessation in themselves although in each of the two spheres it required a different principle to mature the term to its predestined absoluteness.

When the eternal character of the final state is put over against the time-character of the present state the distinction proximately bears a popular meaning. While in no wise denying the philosophicotheological conception of an existence outside of and above time attributed to the divine nature, for which, subjectively speaking, the categories of present, past and future do not exist, and to a certain degree even suggesting this, the suggestion, if such there be, could only apply to the divine nature, and transcends the state of the creature under all circumstances, the consummate eschatological state not excepted. Paul nowhere affirms that to the life of man, after the close of this aeon, no more duration, no more divisibility in time-units shall exist. Life so conceived is plainly the prerogative by nature of the Creator: to eternalize the inhabitants of the coming aeon in this sense would be equivalent to deifying them, a thought whose place is in a pagan type of speculation but not within the range of biblical religion. Paul clearly makes a difference to his own mind, not only between dying before the parousia and surviving till then, for these contingencies involve, of course, a prius and a post, both subject to the law of time, but he likewise, in his conception of

a possible post-mortem state of nakedness, longer or briefer, projects the idea of perceptible duration into the life beyond. The declaration of the angel in the Apocalypse, 10:6; "χρόνος οὐκέτι ἔσται," is not meant to infringe upon the principle just laid down; it may be translated with A.R.V. "that there shall be delay no longer." Nevertheless time in the present life is so inseparably connected with the great astral movements that, when the latter should cease to exist or to operate, it could be truly said that time in the old terrestrial form had with them ceased to be.8 Apart from such statements the descriptions in the Apocalypse of the dramatic developments in the supernal sphere are full of the movement of time.

If further inquiring into the characteristics of the aionion, still keeping its formal aspect rather than its substantial content in view, the first feature obtruding itself is that of the imperishableness, including the unchangeableness, of the things pertaining to it. Paul declares, almost after the manner of an axiomatic truth: "the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal," 2 Cor. 4:17. At first this reads like a differentiating appraisal of the visible and the invisible, something reminding of the antithesis between the two worlds of the ideal and the sensethings with Plato. A closer examination of the words in their context will soon convince that this exegesis would convey only part of the meaning, and for the other part produce a wrong perspective. The emphasis does not rest on the seen versus the unseen, but on the fact that the former, under the present circumstances happens to consist of perishable things, whereas the other under the same circumstances possesses the nature of the eternal, of what from its very nature cannot perish, because it carries the principle of eternity in itself. A permissable paraphrase would be: the things that in this lower, preliminary, state engage our interest are transitory and corruptible; the things which in the present dispensation the believer cannot yet lay hold of by vision are the eternal, incorruptible realities. It goes without saying, that the distinction thus interpreted partakes not of the nature of a cool, disinterested

diagnosis of metaphysical difference; there is a degree of pathos in the declaration, occurring as it does in a highly emotional context. Paul is conscious of σκοπεῦν "looking at," that is contemplating with interest the make-up of the invisible world. Only, this mode of contemplation is with the Apostle not induced by the invisibleness of the things in question; in the abstract he practises no cult of the invisible as partaking per se of a superior complexion: that would be a Hellenic thought, but he has learned to recognize in the things unseen to the present aion the enduring things of the world to come, a world already in principle present, the contemplation of which can consequently render solace and support in the affliction of the moment. That thus and thus only the stress is rightly divided will be perceived from the closely following word: "for we pilgrimage through a land of faith, not of sight," 2 Cor. 5:7. Here the unseen things of the other passage are precisely the things of future sight, deriving their supreme value from this prospective visibleness, whilst the walking through a region of faith is felt precisely as a matter of relative lack of importance. After essentially the same fashion Paul measures the superiority of the building from God above the present tent-abode by this one supreme characteristic that it is "aionion," to be possessed and inhabited in heaven, 2 Cor. 5:1. Here also the synonymity of the "ouranion" and the "aionion" is clearly observable.

The emphasis placed on the aionion should not mislead us into assuming that Paul was most stirred by the mere endlessness of the state hoped for. In any ordinary prospect of felicity mere endlessness as such could not fail to prove an attraction, almost a thought of compulsion. But it is necessary to remember that the object or the objects to the possession of which endlessness is ascribed are of an altogether unique kind, of such a nature in fact that the endlessness became a part of their adequate apprehension. Common things can be appropriated and assimilated in a finite succession of single moments and part by part. The fugitiveness of occupation or intercourse with them may cause that wistful regret that is inseparable from converse with the finite. With God it is

different. He himself being aionios, there can be no thorough, no adequate reception of Him into our finite consciousness, unless there be some assurance of the unceasingness of our communion with Him. He is not a God of the dead but of the living. All temporal, partial experience of God inevitably leaves a sense of dissatisfaction behind. God remains the Eternal One but we can never be lifted out of the sphere opposite to this. None the less practically this problem can be met through God's imparting a reflection of his unique eternal existence to our life as creatures, through admitting us into the realm of the aionion. In this He not merely confers a boon upon man, but at the same time provides a true satisfaction for Himself. Although in the abstract being self-sufficient as God, He has freely chosen to carry his concern with us to the extreme of eternal mutual appurtenance of which the creature is capable. Paul affirms both, on the one hand that God is the only immortal Being 1 Tim. 6:16 and, on the other hand, that He has appointed as the eschatological goal of religious fellowship with Himself, among other things, the prize of an incorruption, Rom. 2:7 such as is equivalent to eternal life. And that this attribute, existing in Him alone in its highest potency, and in us in an ectypical form means in both cases more than mere endless existence, but has a content commensurable with its eternity, should not be overlooked. The biblical terminology does not in respect to believers employ, after the philosophic fashion, the word "immortality," but chooses as a larger, deeper receptacle the term "life." We find that the aionionconcept, thus understood, belongs to the acme of religion, serving to express its absoluteness. Eschatology ceases for those who have learned, and in principle experienced this, to be an abstract speculation: it becomes the profoundest and most practical of all thought-complexes because they, like Paul, live and move and have their redemptively-religious treasures in God.

To the opposite state awaiting the condemned after the judgment aionios is applied by Paul only once, 2 Thess. 1:9. This is the statement most frequently depended upon to tone down the principle of two-sided eternal retribution traditionally ascribed to

the Apostle. It not being feasible to modify the eschatologicallyconstant value of aionios, the attack has centered upon the noun or nouns to which the adjective is attached. "Olethros" and "apoleia" have been given the sense of "annihilation." The absolute universalism thus forced upon the Apostle has a weak basis to rest upon. It can appeal to one passage only besides the one under review from 2 Thess. 1:5–9, viz. to the statement in 1 Cor. 15:22 where the promise is found that in Christ all shall be made alive with the same universality as all die in Adam. The latter passage has been examined by us at an earlier point in the chapter on the Extent of the Resurrection. At any rate it does not speak of annihilation. As concerns the statement in 2 Thess. no one can deny that it posits a strong contrast between the destiny of believers and the end of their persecutors. Only, the question arises, whether the thought of annihilation is fitted to serve as the evil opposite pole in a contrast so sharply stressed by Paul. It will have to be remembered at the outset that "annihilation" is an extremely abstract idea, too philosophical, in fact, to find a natural place within the limits of the realistic biblical eschatology, least of all, it would seem, in this outburst of vehement indignation against the enemies of the Gospel. Closely looked at it is not a stronger but a weaker concept than that of protracted retribution to threaten with, so that, instead of contributing to the sharpness of the opposition intended, it would to a certain extent obliterate the latter. Nor is there any need etymologically of foisting this absolute meaning upon "olethros" or "apoleia," a derivative of the same root. The idea of a "second death" occurring in Rev. 20:6, 14; 21:8 has indeed suggested the thought of "annihilation" to commentators, but in the Pauline contexts no such idea appears. In point of etymological import "apoleia," stands at a sufficiently far remove from even the milder sense of destruction, not to say from its extreme force found in annihilation. The verb originally means "to lose" and out of this first develops the signification "to ruin," "to destroy." In English idiom "to destroy" without difficulty passes over into the meaning "to annihilate," as when the philosophical physicists assert that matter cannot be destroyed, but this is deceptive, because it is a technical adaptation

of a more general term to a specific usage for which, on account of the very strangeness of the idea, it is hard to find a proper English equivalent, so that the Latin "annihilate" for precision of speech would have been preferable. In Greek "apollunai," even when involving violent death, does not go beyond the limit of ruining, destroying. The exclamation "olola," "I am ruined," presupposes that the person using it has not ceased to exist. Interesting for the point in question is from the classical language Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus, vs. 399: "Now the gods are setting thee up, formerly they destroyed thee." The upshot of the matter is that apollunai is but a stronger synonym for apokteinein, cp. Matt. 10:28, where the contrast lies between "killing the body" and "destroying both soul and body in Gehenna," the verb in the former clause being apokteinein in the latter apollunai. Instances elsewhere in the New Testament, e.g. Jno. 6:27; 1 Pet. 1:7 do not allow the rendering "annihilatio." The same question that is here raised in regard to "apollunai" arises also in regard to the verb "katargeisthai" as used by the apostle in 1 Cor. 15:24, 26; whether this signifies "to annihilate" or "to render inoperative" has been discussed in the chapter relating to the Question of "Chiliasm in Paul."

The problem of the relation of "olethros" and "apoleia" to existence or non-existence could be solved without much difficulty, were writers willing to test the Pauline statements by reference to the words of Jesus, because the latter on the one hand uses "apoleia" of the state and Gehenna of the place of eternal destruction and on the other hand combines with these the strongest predicates of unceasing retribution; cp. Matt. 5:29; 7:13; Mk. 5:29, 30; 9:43, 44, 46, 48; Lk. 12:5. But the argument would mean little to those who are bent upon deëschatologizing the teaching of Jesus, to the extent of declaring unauthentic what is called the "small apocalypse" in the closing part of the Synoptics. Even the Fourth Gospel in what it says about Jesus does not differ in this matter from the united testimony of the Synoptical Gospels Jno. 17:12. Could Paul in a matter like this have shown less severity than Jesus?

The eschatological process, then, on its evil no less than on its favorable side, issues into a state that is literally eternal. The attribute "aionion," however does not remain entirely within the quantitative sphere. It attracts to itself certain associations of quality. The circumstance that the word had become so intimately and consistently attached to the realm of future blessedness has made it strongly suggestive of richness and nobility of content. In so far as this is the case it cannot be denied, that the reverse, sinister significance suffers a partial eclipse. The fact of its restricted occurrence, in that ominous sense, bears out this feature. It would nevertheless be a mistake to infer that the Apostle's conviction regarding the tremendous reality of the punitive side of the subject had received any impairment. The terms considered could never have been joined to the predicate of "aionios" at all, if the sharp edge of the Apostle's eschatological "dualism" had been actually worn off to any degree. The relative scarcity of usage is naturally explained from the fact that Paul was before aught else a minister of the grace of eternal life, an Apostle rather than a doom-foretelling prophet. We have already met the same phenomenon of unequal division of stress in discussing the doctrines of the resurrection and the judgment. In that connection no one would be so foolish as to infer a tendency on Paul's part towards detracting from the importance of these central topics of all biblical eschatology.

Passing on now from the more formal to the material make-up of the future state, we must endeavor to analyze the elements entering into its content. The Apostle has not left us without guidance in this endeavor. The category of time is exchanged for that of space when the final state is located in or identified with heaven. The "aionion" and the "ouranion" belong together and evince mutual attraction. It has already been noticed in a previous connection that the conjuncture was naturally brought about through the entrance of Christ into heaven in the course of historical development. There remains to be added, however, that the ultimate ground for this historical event lies far deeper. The primacy of the celestial sphere in the eschatological universe antedates as a constitutive principle

every other reason. The structure of the two strata placed one above the other, with the higher stratum made regulative for the lower one in its laws and ideals, is, of course, older than Paul. It underlies the parabolic teaching of our Lord in the Synoptics, and more abstractly and principially reveals itself both in the setting and in the discourses of the Fourth Gospel. And this scheme, far from being a purely speculative construction, is of eminently practical import. It is the basis of what in devotional language we call otherworldliness. Other-worldliness neither with Paul nor elsewhere in Scripture is a negative state; it does not involve any morbid or distorted religious habit of mind. Every tendency or attempt to replace it by an earthly-oriented type of religion is productive or symptomatic of a basic disturbance in the very groundwork of the Christian mind. The Christian religion was born under the auspices of this primordial and irreducible contrast of the two worlds involving the trend of the pious from below to on high and their destiny to arrive at the goal of their deepest aspiration. Nothing can so ill afford a disavowal of its native milieu as historic Christianity. How easily to the mind of Paul the eternal and the heavenly melt into one may be gathered from such passages as 1 Cor. 15:47; 2 Cor. 5:5; Col. 1:5. "Heaven" is to our feeling, possibly even more than to the Apostle's, a definition of what locally surrounds and encloses the realities and delights of the eternal state rather than a description of the context of these.

The actual elements into which the eternal and heavenly unfold themselves are chiefly four: the Spirit, life, glory, the kingdom of God. The first of these four underlies and produces the second and the third, so that the whole might be reduced to the Spirit and the kingdom of God. The Spirit is the fundamental creative factor as regards life and glory in the saints. It is a pity that the word "spiritual" has through the devotional usage become so wedded to the ideas of fineness and supersensuousness of religious texture as to lose some of its power for conveying to us the deeper core of its significance. It is easier to regret than to correct this, all the more so, since the states called "spiritual" in popular parlance are

actually, the product of the Spirit's inworking. Another cause interfering with a clear solution of the problem of the Spirit's eschatological operation lies in the fixed antithesis between the "σάρξ" and the "Πνεῦμα" in the Pauline teaching. The flesh "lusteth" against the "Pneuma" and vice versa, Gal. 5:17. If we knew for certain what is the background of the evil associations of the flesh which are so much in evidence as to render "sarx" with Paul practically the synonym of sin, we should likewise be able, on the principle of opposites, to discover why the Spirit is the Antagonist and Conqueror of the flesh, and that not in virtue of some function given to Him as a mere matter of fact, but so as to be able to tell what there is in the nature of the Spirit to make Him the executive of the Godhead in this particular respect. The anthropological or psychological theory scarcely helps us on with the problem as regards the history of revelation. For on the one hand there seems to be no Old Testament passage associating the "flesh" with sin after the characteristic manner of Paul, nor, on the other hand does the Old Testament particularly place the Spirit's function in the ethicoreligious sphere so as to make Him the Exterminator of sin par excellence as Paul does. The "flesh" is in the Hebrew Scriptures no less than in Paul a mystery. In the somatic constitution of man, as contrasted with his psychical make-up, no principle of sin is sought by the Old Testament. Nor can this have been the belief of Paul. The source of sin according to the Apostle does not lie in the flesh as a product of creation, but in the act of the First Adam imputed to all. Notwithstanding the present-day unpopularness of this exegesis of Rom. 5, it is our conviction that a doctrinally unprejudiced scrutiny of the famous passage will compel a return to it, whether it agree with the doctrine or not. No more than a glance at Gal. 5:13 ff. is needed to prove that Paul reckoned among the works of the sarx things that have from an ethical standpoint nothing whatever to do with the body. Now it is quite true that the same Paul means to characterize sinful human nature by the name sarx. Only the very point at issue is, whether this can be wholly due to the notorious fact that many sins actually take their point of departure from the body. That would be denominating a group of phenomena from one

peculiar feature which would be unappropriate to the larger remainder of the group. To say, therefore, sarx is not human nature as such, but sinful human nature, does not bring one step nearer the solution of the problem. It amounts to a matter-of-fact observation where explanation is desired so far as possibly attainable. And the explanation should cover not merely the ordinary soteric operation of the Spirit in the Christian subject during this life, but likewise cast light upon his eschatological presence and operation in the world to come. To our mind there is but one, at least halfway satisfactory explanation of this. It amounts to this that the central significance in all manifestations of the Spirit, both those that we are accustomed to call ordinary or those called extraordinary, consisted for Paul in the tremendous irresistible power with which the Spirit makes his impact and produces his results in every sphere of operation. This was something inherent in the nature of the Spirit. All the phenomena revealing his presence and working bore witness to this. The fundamental note in his activity was that of divine, unique forthputting of energy. In the Old Testament this can be tested easily; one passage for many may suffice: "Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not Spirit," Isa. 31:3. But, according to this statement "flesh" is the direct opposite of "Spirit" for no other reason than that its characteristic is inertia, lack of power, such as can only be removed by the Spirit of God. The two terms are not only correlatives but are mutually exclusive: where the one is the other is not. We can understand from this that in early times of the Christian faith the factor of the Pneuma was most easily associated with the manifold and variegated supernatural forms of miraculous expressions which marked the life of the Church. Paul did not put as high an estimate in point of edification upon this wonder-world of young Christian growth and the vigorous stirring of sap revealed in it. He knew full well and told his converts with great frankness that these were the things intended to pass away, and that there were other more distinctively ethico-religious things characterized as "abiding." Unfortunately in recognizing this state of facts a twofold mistake has but too often been made. The

first is that the Apostle is represented as denying the provenience of these extraordinary gifts and modes of expression from the Spirit. There is no evidence to that effect. The second mistake is so to represent it that to his mind the relatively quieter and more equable impulses and habits of life among his converts were somehow detached from the Spirit, or that perhaps a somewhat modified and toned-down conception of the Spirit was substituted for the original one. For this there is no evidence either. We must, in order to understand the Apostle, first of all rectify the somewhat misapprehended antithesis in question. It is an antithesis expressive of a comparative judgment on the usefulness of these two different groups of phenomena for edification, not an antithesis between a non-Spirit-caused and a Spirit-caused group of things. The Spirit is in both. The, originally perhaps slight, shift in perspective might easily in the future course of thought give rise to the serious error, that Paul meant to desupernaturalize the quiet and in part unobservable processes, that, delighting more in the triad of faith, hope and love, he therefore conceived of these three as having no particular impulse or impact of the Spirit underlying them. Modern less enthusiastic and more self-restrained habits of religion easily favored this, even where there was no conscious intent to that effect. We must refamiliarize ourselves with connecting these quiet virtues and graces with the constant powerful urge and influence of the Spirit. The cultivation of faith and hope and love was perhaps not entirely confined for Paul to "the hidden man of the heart," nor need it have been overmuch governed by the desire to escape the charge of demonstrativeness. By remembering these things we shall better understand how the Spirit, in the center of whose operation stands out the feature of impulsive superhuman energy, can form the connecting link between the mode of the "believer's life on earth and that in the age to come in heaven. Thus it may also become clearer to us how the firstfruits and the harvest can be identical in character. The Apostle's teaching may at least negatively supply a caution not to empoverish our eschatological hope to the unruffled surface of the

waters of Shiloah. There may enter into it more than we suspect of the mighty rushing of the Pentecostal wind.

The three other remaining conceptions conveying to us the contents of the eternal state are those of "life," "glory" and "the Kingdom of God." They sustain to the Spirit the relation of products to the Producer. Further they possess this in common that they set forth the eternal state in the most comprehensive manner conceivable. Herein also the Apostle shows himself as at one and the same time sensitively receptive to the influx of revelation and capable of the firm grasp of the theological thinker. His utterances reflect less of the charm of the pictorial than of the luminosity radiating from the core of condensed ideas. Where with Paul the concretely-pictorial does appear, it seldom fails to bring with it the impression of a mysteriousness incapable of being translated into terms of the reproductive imagination. It is what ear has not heard, what eye has not seen and what has not ascended into the heart of man, 1 Cor. 2:9, 10. Even where the transcendental is anticipated in the concreteness of a visionary experience, and avails itself for expression of the forms of number and space combined, the inherent difficulty of speaking about such things, and the doubt about the "lawfulness" of doing so, show how thoroughly the Apostle remained convinced of the strangeness to an earthly creature of the concrete forms having their habitation above.

In view of this humble reticence, based in part on the consciousness of ignorance, we ought to be all the more grateful that, though not in detail, yet the Apostle has most positively named the great outstanding categories of heavenly experience as destined to fill the vast spaces above. The most intimate and highly spiritualized relation of the believer to Christ as the focus of heaven points the way in this respect. In regard to what further belongs to this as its proper accompaniment and needful environment we may cherish the same conviction. And still further particular stress among this is laid upon the affectional attitude towards Christ which rounds off heaven in itself. Only we must not let the unavoidable stress thrown

on this obscure to us the reference of all beatitude to God. The deepest-sounding notes in Paul's melodies of heaven find their point of unison in God the Father through His Son. Of a Jesu-latry such as would have forced the First Person of the Trinity into the unknown, uncultivated background Paul knows nothing. The deity of Christ surely needs not any repression of fact to prove its apostolic provenience. Paul's religion was from the very outset of his Christian life "theocentric," and it could never have become so "Christocentric" as it actually is, had not the rich, religious occupation with the Saviour secured for the latter the indisputable place wherein He appears in the closest unity with the Father. This was to Paul not so much a matter of doctrinal necessity as of devotional indispensableness. Though the ordinary prepositions are "ἐκ" and "εἰς" with reference to the Father, and the corresponding preposition for the Son is "διά," yet Paul does not fall short in his highest doctrinal flight from declaring that the universe was created "εἰς" Christ. All this harmoniously existing inter-communion, as it existed before the aeons, could not possibly cease to exist in the transcendental aeons of the world to come.

The second and most frequent mould into which the content of the coming age is cast is that of "ζωή" or "ζωὴ αἰώνιος." The mere fact of the frequency of the conjunction of "life" with "aionios" shows how eminently eschatological the conception of life grew to be from the simplest beginnings. There are two distinct strands in Paul by means of which "life" attains, this eschatological completion. The first springs from the ancient antithesis in which life stands opposite to death since the very beginnings of the race. We may not let ourselves be drawn aside from the biblical emphasis thrown on this point by any findings or dogmas of evolutionary science; for here our sole purpose is to ascertain what was Paul's view on the subject, and in which respect it has influenced his doctrine of life. Two things are certain: whatever the modernly conceived provenience of venerable opening narratives in Genesis may be, to Paul they stand for real occurrences recorded as facts in an inspired record. But, one will ask, what have they to do with eschatology?

"Much every way." For no matter whether the account involved is preëxilic or postexilic or harks back, as Gunkel and many others believe, to an ancient Babylonian soil, pregnant with eschatological mythology, the subject-matter after which we are enquiring is most certainly there. The tree of life and the other tree and the primeval paradise and the fall and death and the expulsion from the garden on account of the sin committed, all these are present in the scriptural narrative, and a single glance at Rom. 5 is sufficient to convince of the fact, that in the most fundamental manner they support (qua history) the entire eschatology of Paul. And the Apostle's eyes were centrally focussed on life and death in their forever interacting force. The only reasonable interpretation of the Genesis-account (e mente Pauli) is this, that provision was made and probation was instituted for a still higher state, both ethicoreligiously and physically complexioned, than was at that time in the possession of man. In other words the eschatological complex and prospect were there in the purpose of God from the beginning. This, then, represents the first two of the eschatological strands spoken of above. Its eminent significance arises from connection with the individual's part in eschatology. The collective interpretation of the genesis of Biblical eschatology, while not untrue or out of place, has yet, together with critical aspersions cast on Genesis, had the result of obscuring the supreme importance of this great primordial event for the unfolding of Paul's doctrine. Probably it was not even necessary to contribute much de novo to this circle of ideas, for here, if anywhere, Jewish or Jewish Apocalyptic literature had, on the basis of the Old Testament, prepared the way for the Apostolic doctrine. The momentous sentence, "through one man death came into the world" itself is as to its substance derived from the Book of Wisdom 2:24, although there "the devil's envy" has the place of what Paul simply calls "one man," evidently for the sake of a clearer parallelism between the First and Second Adam, vss. 12, 15. This original conception of life with its antithesis to death bore in itself, however, the seed of the collective conception, because the terms in which it is spoken of in the ancient narrative are not applying to our first parents alone, but

mean to be taken generically; on Adam's son and on his son and similarly on successive generations the same curse and punishment fell that overtook him. Death and Life having been in this manner become collective ideas, there was only one step further required to objectivize them, and in particular to make out of the many living ones to be restored in the subsequent course of redemption the inhabitants of a comprehensive realm of life. Over against the nation that is subject to death revelation posits the nation that shall come to life again, and through the contact of this idea with the ultimate future hope and its projection on a large scale the appropriate issue of this development is reached; the future blessedness emerges as "the life" par excellence. Still one more consideration must be taken into account: so soon, and in the proportion that the promise of the resurrection began to stand out clearly on the horizon of religious hope, nothing else could fill the content of a state thus projected but the pregnant conception of "life." It is remarkable how deeply rooted in past religious experience, how compact and at the same time rich in content from an eschatological point of view this revelation-product has become. It is not possible here to trace the history in detail, but the point of departure and the point of arrival of its course lie clear before our eyes. It is needful in endeavoring to construe what lay between to distinguish carefully between "long life," i.e. a gift of divine favor for the single Israelite or the nation on earth, and the great prospective gift reserved for "the latter days," and no longer confined to the earthen vessels in which it had so long through the ages been carried. In Deuteronomy and in the Psalter there are some data helpful for this, but unfortunately in the latter book uncertainty concerning the date in which the single Psalms were written renders it hard to draw definite conclusions. If the "tree of life" spoken of in Prov. 3:18 consciously and directly refers back to the original tree of paradise, the ultimate eschatological import admits of no doubt; there must have attached to this ancient concept some clear, more or less widespread, remembrance of an objective sphere of life once potentially realized, and beckoning again for the future. Deut. 30:15 represents Jehovah as setting before Israel "life and good" with, as

opposites, "death and evil"; at first sight one is inclined to connect with such an absolute antithesis some outlook into the future world. Where, however, in vs. 19 the thought is repeated in slightly different form, the prospect draws back again into the present: "Therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may live." Nearly the identical phraseology in Jer. 21:8 plainly speaks of the Godappointed and pre-determined issues of national destiny in the earthly sphere. The Psalter makes more frequent reference to the paradisical rivers of life than to the condensation of the idea in the one tree of life, and the former have fully retained their eschatological associations: Psa. 35:9; 46:4, 5. These waters must be intended to refer back to paradise, because they issue from (underneath) the throne of God, cp. Gen. 2:10, and, as the counterpart of this, we learn in the vision of the Apocalypse of the same waters with undoubted eschatological perspective: 2:7; 21:6; 22:1–17. What lends confirmation to thus joining the earliest and the later is the emphasis placed upon the divine favor as an indispensable concomitant of the eschatological life. The concept of life would never have obtained in the Old Testament its comprehensive and pregnant significance, had it not from the outset been wedded to the profoundly-religious thought of prospering in the favor of God.

"Life bears the stamp of its eschatological nature upon itself through frequent combination with the attribute "aionios." The Pauline instances where this is found are Acts 13:46; Rom. 2:7; 5:21; 6:22; Gal. 6:8; 1 Tim. 1:16; 6:12; Tit. 1:2; 3:7; a dozen passages altogether. The phrase is, however, by no means original with Paul. Our Lord accepts it as a phrase in common use, when asked by the rich young ruler, regarding the condition of entering "eternal life," and suspends its attainment after the orthodox Jewish fashion on the fulfilment of the law: Mk. 10:17; Lk. 10:25; 18:18. When the disciples feel perplexed about the hardness of the task, Jesus gives an answer in which "eternal life" is equated to "the Kingdom of Heaven." The latter is meant in precisely the same sense in which the enquirer spoke of "entering eternal life." The difference between

"inheriting" and "entering" is in this connection of no further significance than its adjustment to the two terms. The mode of our Lord's dealing with the terminology proves that it had been in use considerable time before Him. In fact He Himself makes use of it on other occasions: Matt. 19:29; Mk. 10:30; Lk. 18:30. We must go back as far as Dan. 12:2 to find the antecedents of the phrase; it occurs in Ps. Solom. 3:12; En. xxxvii. 4; 2 Macc. 7:9, 26; 4 Macc. 15:3. By way of antithesis it receives its full meaning from the contrast with "death," and it is in part through this contrast with a comprehensive sphere of life that "death" in its turn likewise ceases to be an individual experience and becomes a realm with extension, as is clearly perceptible in 2 Cor. 2:16: "the savor of death unto death … the savor of life unto life." There is, however, perceptible a difference here in that the conception of death, objectively taken, is more strongly personalized, whence some have inferred actual personal existence, whereas life being less the agent of aggression than the passive object of enjoyment tends more to remain a term of abstract comprehensiveness.

Life not only is pointedly opposite to "death" it likewise forms a sharp contrast to such precursors and concomitants of death as are destructive of life. Thus the category of "δύναμις," "power" obtains a place in the concept of life. It becomes a life not so much lived in quietness, but to a considerable extent a life asserting itself, a trait which again has its affinity with the attribute "aionios." The intimate relation between "life" and "Pneuma" could not fail bringing this about. Likewise the opposition of life to "φθορά," "corruption" Rom. 8:21; 1 Cor. 15:42, 50; Gal. 6:8 proves it; corruption is a process that has in itself fatal power of increase and intensification. There is no reason to limit this, where the Spirit comes under consideration, to one only of the twin aspects of the latter's vivifying task. The Spirit cannot deny Himself in whatever sphere His energy is introduced, least of all where He works in the consummate state, where all God's works and ways run together to produce a perfect issue.

Of the soul transformation at death Paul speaks comparatively little in particulars. That sorrow, death, sin and all sin-born evils must make halt before entrance into the eternal state is self-evident. Such things as dishonor and weakness are incompatible with the lifestate in heaven. But there also is joined to these a character of "humiliation" affecting even the body with its enveloping sphere, Phil. 3:21. That the Spirit has again his part in effecting the necessary change requires no demonstration, it being included in the change wrought by the resurrection. Such things should not be minimized in the interest of a hyper-spiritualizing of the content of the future life. Their incompatibility with the absolute perfection of God, with whom nothing of the frailness and corruption of the sinful can have fellowship is to be taken into account. It is noteworthy, however, that silence is observed on this aspect of the matter, so far as concerns the intermediate state. The great sinextruding and evil-conquering processes are relegated, as it were, to the climacteric epoch at the end. It is there that Death and all that inevitably trails in his wake shall be swallowed up in victory, and the body of sin delivered from all that causes its bearer, or erstwhile bearer, to groan.

One more point is to be considered before dismissing the idea of "life" in its eschatological import. As it is strongly bound to God in its production, so it has a telic character directing it to God as its solitary goal. This is true of its earthly prototype, the life that believers live here below while still in the flesh. It is particularly at the height of his contemplation of it that the Apostle is reminded of this. No less than in the sphere of justification, the instinct of life tends to concentrate all its forces and aspirations upon God, and this law of existence is observable in the eschatological prolongation and consummation of the life of the world to come. This convergence upon and final arrival of life at the center of satisfaction in God, while inextricably interwoven with the fundamental texture of religion, receives with Paul an additional and intensified force from its connection with the life of the exalted Christ, and thus the deepest mystical verity in soteriology and

Christology is found to join itself to the eschatological prospect. The reign in life promised to believers for the coming age is a dominion fulfilling itself through Jesus Christ, Rom. 5:17. When Abraham waxed strong through faith he in doing so gave glory to God, 5:21. The life lived by Christ is defined as "lived unto God," and this serves as a basis for the exhortation: "Present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead," Rom. 6:13. The conception of "sanctification," but too often restricted in practice to the soteric progress in assimilation to the ethical perfection of God, has for its irremovable core the idea of consecration to God and consequent appurtenance to Him. It cannot be too much emphasized that "holiness" is in the Pauline vocabulary never ethical perfection as such and without regard to its terminus in God. No construction of the idea losing this out of sight is from the Apostle's viewpoint a thoroughly Christianized idea. Whatever fruit it may cultivate, it can never produce the highest, which is in this case the only truly religious fruitage, its subserviency to the glory of God who is the absolute end of all ethical striving.

Among the constituent elements of the life-organism no mutilation of what properly is called "religion," is countenanced by the Apostle. The modern deplorable neglect, or even disavowal, of large normal and indispensable religious territories is unknown to, Paul. In particular the noetic, or to speak in more popular language, the intellectual element in religion is recognized, and recognized in such terms that the primacy of doctrinal knowledge in all normal religious experience is on principle upheld. In Eph. 4:17–20 the walk of the Gentiles in their pseudo-religion is from this point of view characterized as a walk in the vanity of their minds ("nous"); they are darkened in their "understanding" ("dianoia"); subject to "ignorance" ("agnoia"), which exists on account of the "hardening of their hearts," ("porosis tes kardias"). The salient point in this enumeration is the clause in vs. 18, obviously intended to explain the several abnormalities and perversions named as sprung from the basic religious ignorance in which paganism had become involved through sin. And it is in striking correspondence with this

state of facts that the Apostle stresses the principle that, at their conversion they had "learned" (ἐμάθετε) Christ in a different way. It is true this peculiar noetic mode of approach to the Christ and the Christian world-view had probably something to do with the philosophic complexion of the problems it was by the Apostle intended to meet. Nevertheless it remains also true that Paul has, after a philosophico-religious manner contended with this untruth, and in doing so has diagnosed the entire complex of religious malformation, as it were, embryologically, from some ancient flaw in the thought-form of paganism. It was in its origin "alienation from the life of God" that gave birth to the ill-shapen product. Perhaps no more incisive criticism of the false modern slogan "religion is not doctrine but life" than these few verses from Ephesians can be conceived. What Paul says is not that perverted ideas concerning religion and Christ are unimportant and their correction negligible; what he maintains is that they are subversive of the true Christian religion, and ought to be resisted to the utmost. And the Apostle intimates by the phrase "life of God," that in the internal constitution of the divine life itself there exists a typical antecedence of mind upon which every religious reflex of the nature of God in the human subject ought to model itself. There cannot remain any reasonable doubt that what Paul considered essential for the present (in Ephesians particularly emphasized) semi-eschatological life on earth he regarded as in the highest degree normative for the heavenly life in the fully-attained state of eternity.

The question seems permissible, in view of what we have found, whether the Apostle regarded the state of life in the future aeon as in an absolute sense immune to further invasion of antagonistic forces from without. That he considered it unending has already been shown to sufficiency. It might be thought that therein lay irrefutable evidence in proof of its immunity to invasion from without. Still, strictly speaking, the two affirmations are by no means identical. Something might, as a matter of fact, continue indefinitely without termination, and yet the cause for this might

not lie in any inherent essence of eternity. God Himself is "eternal" or "immortal" after this matter-of-fact fashion: metaphysically speaking He is immune to and incapable of death. The question can hardly be suppressed, how much of this essence of eternal life has been imparted as its inherent, inalienable character to the future aeon and everything that moves therein. And this leads us back once more to the deep unfathomable mysteries of the aionion-concept. The close assimilation and association between believers on the one hand and God and the divine Christ on the other hand seem to decide the question in favor of a principially and inherently uninvadable and unchangeable life-state. The supreme ideal of religion likewise would seem to postulate it. It is another question whether Paul has anywhere explicitly expresed himself to that effect. Nevertheless, in so far as he speaks of God as "the King immortal, invisible, the only God," 1 Tim. 1:17, and as "the One who alone has immortality," 6:17, a distinction with regard to the presence of this attribute in God and in believers cannot be denied. God possesses this immunity to death per essentiam; to believers it comes per gratiam, yet so that an unceasing action on God's part secures its permanence. Like God possessing the fount of life in Himself, no creature even in the consummate state is permitted to be. Yet there is in each of them some reality vouchsafing continuity in the possession of what they have. The Second Adam dwells in them as a Quickening Spirit as undisplaceable as He lives in the human nature of the Lord Himself. In the discourses of the Fourth Gospel the presence of eternal life and the promise of its permanence forever are most unequivocally affirmed, cp. Jno. 3:36; 5:26; 6:53; 11:25. And Paul is persuaded that neither death nor life, nor any of the demonic principalities, nor any creature will be able to separate him from the love of God which is in Christ. He who is united to Christ and lives within the circle of his love, to him the eternal retention of the supreme eschatological life is absolutely secure. Mortality is in every one made partaker of the resurrection swallowed up of life, 2 Cor. 5:4. The life of the Colossians is hid with Christ in God, so as to partake of the same security, notwithstanding its present invisibility, that pertains to the inward

things of God and Christ. And the whole intimate life-union existing between the believer and Christ vouches for the certainty of the eternal persistence of this bond. Christ has abolished death and, brought life and immortality ("ἀφθαρσία") to light through the Gospel, 2 Tim. 1:10.

With the second chief ingredient of the eternal state we can deal more briefly. In regard to it likewise Rom. 2:7 lays down the fundamental rule: to seek after incorruption is equivalent to seeking after glory. Rom. 3:23 names as the result of universal sin that all "ὑστεροῦνται τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ." In Chap. 5:2 the glory of God is projected into the future and represented as an eschatological inheritance, the means of its apprehension being hope. The Aorist in Chap. 8:30 "He has glorified" is anticipative: the act is as certain as if it had been already accomplished. Some questioning has arisen concerning the precise force of the Genitive in the phrase "the glory of God." Gramatically considered this could mean "the glory possessed by God." Parallel constructions are: "the life of God," "the peace of God," "the righteousness of God"; the peculiar feature of which is that they are pregnant constructions, in which the triple ideas of "original in God," "reflected from God" and "communicated in an ectypical sense to man" meet. The underlying principle is in each case that the inherent excellence of God is reproduced and brought to revelation in his beatified creatures. No stronger witness than this to the God-centered character of the eternal world can be conceived. "Δόξα," glory, must be distinguished from "τιμή," honor, as appears from their occurring together in Rom. 2:10. "τιμή" is good appraisal in the opinion of others; it is a judgment passed by others on somebody, something inward, therefore, not something substantially-outward. By right of etymology the two terms ought to exchange places, for it is precisely "doxa" that is derived from the verb "δοκεῖν," "to bear a certain reputation." But this rule was no longer of strict observance at the time of Paul's writing. Glory is as closely connected with the Spirit as life is. The distinction lies in this, that what life is for the hidden side of the eschatological subject, that doxa is for the outward side in which the higher life

comes to revelation. The doxa plays a large rôle in the interrelation between the risen Christ and the believer. The union of what is the personal possession in Christ (ἐκ τοῦ ἐμοῦ, Jno. 16:14) and the Spirit-endowment of the Christian is of the closest, so close in fact as to permit of the statement "the Lord is the Spirit," an equation not, of course, meant trinitarianly, but soteriologically. Because doxa pertains to the sphere of manifestation, Paul speaks of it as that "which shall be revealed to usward." The application of the general concept to the believer's state and condition works in two directions. There is a somatic and there is a doxa of the inner man. In both respects the Spirit is the Agent for its creation and bestowal. The body is raised "ἐν δόξῃ," 1 Cor. 15:43. Doxa belongs to "ζωή" Col. 3:4. In not a few instances, however, the idea is deepened so as to stand for religious excellence as such. How solidly the endowment with doxa is conceived appears from 2 Cor. 4:17: "an eternal weight of glory." The fundamental conception is aesthetic; doxa constitutes the beauty of the children of God. The "liberty" that comes at the end to the creation, now bound to the bondage of sin through the sin-bondage of man, forms part of it, because it draws into the light whatever change has taken place: for groaning there is substituted joy. By no means is doxa to be limited to somatic radiancy, although this forms an essential part of it; it was precisely from this (aesthetic) point of view, and not from purely-sentimental motives that Paul desired to be clothed, 2 Cor. 5:3. But doxa undoubtedly dwells also in the things that eye cannot for the present see, nor ear for the present hear, and that for the present do not come up in the hearts of men. For these things are not intrinsically incapable of the vesture of glory; they only require the proper eye, the proper ear, the proper heart, the proper milieu. And, since they are the Spirit's workmanship, the Spirit will impart to them that uniquely heightened intensity, which it is His nature and mode of working to produce. Whatever of anticipation there is of such things in this life is always viewed as a "Pneumatikon" par excellence, 2 Cor. 3:18.

We close this discussion of the aionion-character of the world to come with the briefest of references to a question which sometimes unduly engages men's eschatological occupation with the future. It is the question concerning possible further progress for the inhabitants of the coming age beyond the point already attained by them when entering it. Strange to say, this question is not always predominantly concerned with inward ethico-religious growth, but not seldom relates to external increase in the visible embodiments of religion. Will there be worlds beyond this eschatologicallyconsummated world to conquer? It is not likely that from Paul we may expect information or encouragement in such a speculation. For, although Paul exhibited in all his labors for the Gospel the most intense zeal, and an outpouring of apparently exhaustless energy, yet, when it comes to the point of eschatology, there is to all this a sort of counterpoise, owing to which the Apostle never loses the desire of finding rest in the unnamable, unfathomable depths of a mystic satisfaction in God and Christ, such as craved no further out-venturing into realms beyond. All Paul's labor was a most strenuous endeavor to bring the restlessly-temporal to where it would lose itself in the forever-undisturbable aionion. There is no passage in the Epistles indicative of an opposite trend or desire. There may be heavens in the plural numerically or structurally, but there is no succession of ages or worlds to come. Eternity is not pregnant with other eternities. We do not hear of further sowings nor further reaping in the fields of the blessed. It is useless to carry the spirit of time into the heart of eternity. There clings an earth and time-savor to this questioning what there will be to occupy one's self withal when arrived above. As if the Lord God Himself would not be there with his inexhaustible fulness! In his presence there can be neither surfeit nor teadium. The noblest distinction of the eschatological Church consists in this that thenceforth she will be able to lay aside the armor of her militancy, because she has become the Ecclesia triumphans in aeternum.

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