5. The will of God revealed as the ultimate ground of moral ideals.-The ethical value and force of the story of Christ is not yet fully stated. Another element, the greatest and most potent of all, is involved in it. Jesus Himself, as the product of a pure human will (Mk 1018, Mt 117). It was the product in Him of the spirit of holiness, which became incarnate in Him (Ro 18.), of the Logos incarnate in Him (Jn 114), of the Son of God incarnate in Him (Ro 88) by For that event is distinctly and repeatedly described as the will and deed of God. Jesus Himself so regarded it when He spoke of being 'delivered up into the hands of men (Mk 931), of the Son of Man having come-being sent to give His life as a ransom (Mk 1045 987; cf. Ac 22), of His blood being shed to establish the new covenant of God with man (Mk 1424), and in the Agony (Mk 1436; cf. Jn 1018). The apostolic literature is full of this fact (Ro 58 83, Gal 45, 2 Co 521, Ph 28, 1 Jn 410 etc.). The supreme passage is Ro 321., where God is described as having set forth Jesus Christ,' i.e. on the Cross, as a propitiation, whereby the righteousness of God became a realized and living force in history. (c) In His Resurrection, which is viewed always as the seal set by God Himself, in an act of transcendent power, upon the redeeming work of Christ, and as the revelation to all men of the destiny of the sons of God (Ac 224. 313. 1040ff., Ro 1, 1 Co 15, Eph 119-23, Ph 310.). The Risen Christ is the full revelation of the ideal man, of the predestined triumph of believing humanity (He 25. 10, 1 Co 1545-47). In the Book of Revelation the conception of the glory and power of Him who was dead and is alive for evermore fills the successive scenes with their apocalyptic splendour. All these events, in their meaning for Christian faith, have proved themselves to be charged with creative moral energy, and have entered deep into the ethical history of Christendom. In them the very character of the Creator of the universe stands revealed, and His will concerning man is seen in action. In all of them His holiness and what holiness means, His love and what love means, His mercy and its nature, His final purpose with man, are made known. The suggestions of nature, the premonitions of conscience, the yearnings of the spirit of man, have been insufficient guides. But the deeds of God in Christ have for a believing Church so revealed the righteousness and the love of God, in action upon the believing man, that the nature of righteousness and love stands clear, and the will of the Creator is proved to be concerned supremely with a realm of spiritual beings in whom these shall be completely realized. All the risks and sacrifices of the virtuous man, all his implicit faith in a moral universe, are confirmed by the work of God in Christ. (a) A permanent problem in the history of the will of God. (b) In His sacrifice on the Cross. morality. That we may estimate aright its true significance, let us recall one of the central problems of the higher ethical systems of different ages, which have often penetrated far into the heart of virtue and have tried to picture the perfect man. Aristotle did so, and discovered that the virtuous man is alone capable of true happiness. But he was apparently baffled by the fact that he cannot be pictured as attaining the ideal in our world because the environment proves hostile. There ought to be a relation of 'perfect virtue' and 'perfect life.' But the latter fails even the best of men, either through misfortune in life or through the close of life itself in death. The Stoics faced the same situation, and their very name means for us in English what it does because they girded themselves to meet it not merely in speculation but in practical life, by the discipline not merely of the mind but of the will. They sought their sure guide to virtue and peace in an appeal to the Reason which informs the universe as a whole. Yet, just because their vision of this Reason was won only by the severe labour of elect souls, and they had no objective ground, but only an inner and therefore indemonstrable conviction, their virtue lacked joy. It could not and did not become a social good, a wide and permanent force in history. In Kant, again, the same opposition between a very high conception of the good will and of duty and the actual situation of man appears. For he too saw-and more clearly, as the heir of Christian culture-that in the end virtue must find its justification in a universe made to harmonize with it. His solution lay in what from the metaphysician's point of view must always appear as a violent use of the idea of a Deus ex machina. God must be conceived of as somehow and somewhere creating the perfect environment for the good will, that the need of happiness may be enjoyed. Höffding, from a narrower vision and in the language of recent thought, puts the same problem when he says, 'the conservation of value is the characteristic axiom of religion,' and adds that, therefore, the religious problem also is concerned with the continuity of existence, although from a special point of view' (Philosophy of Religion, Eng. tr., London, 1908, pp. 10, 13). The same principle or problem appears in the Hebrew Scriptures in the terms of practical religion. It created the drama of Job. It even produced the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. The Psalms ring with its passion and wail. For Israel was confronted with the fact that the man who was righteous, who was conscious of integrity before the will of Jahweh, was yet left to the mischances of life and the doom of the grave, just like the virtuous man of Aristotle. Man needs for his clear and sure grasp of the idea of goodness, and for its social fulfilment on a large scale, the assurance not only that the universe is ultimately in accord with it, but more definitely that the Will which rules history confirms and secures it finally and for ever. (b) Its solution in God's will concerning Christ. -According to the NT and the continuous faith of the Church since then, this supreme problem was solved in the story of Jesus Christ. For the whole fact of Christ' is viewed steadily as an act of God (Jn 316, Gal 4, He 11-8). Outwardly this is depicted for us in the stories of His birth and His resurrection. Inwardly it is made certain (a) in His own consciousness of union with the will of God. That is not viewed either in the NT or in the faith of the Church, it was not viewed by | 6. The moral foundations of the Church.We have already seen that, in gathering His disciples into the nucleus of the new community of God upon earth, Jesus united them with Himself by the ethical bonds of penitence, trust, obedience, and hope. The apostolic communities grew up in various parts of the Roman Empire on the same foundation (Mt 1618, 1 Co 31). These new social groups are filled with the consciousness of a divine indwelling (1 Co 316, Ac 216-36, Ro 81f., Col_17, Jn 14-16) which they describe under the three names of God, Christ, and Spirit. They live in new ethical relations with God, and accordingly all human relationships appear in a new light. A new form of moral consciousness has taken its place in human history. It was destined to pass through many outward phases, to wax and wane in alternate periods of clearness and confusion, of effective energy and feebleness. But, having the secret of renewal within its own nature and in its connexion with the history of its origin and type, which is God in Christ, it has proved itself an inexhaustible source of light and power for all periods of culture and all races of man. In proportion as the religious life feeds itself directly upon the deeds of God in Christ, and upon Christ's character, word, and work, as the embodiment and manifestation of those deeds, it becomes aware again of its moral ideals and becomes charged afresh with faith and passion for their fulfilment. A few words only can be used here upon | the social influence of the Church as a moral organism. As a social group its outward moral influence on the State and on all other social groups and institutions is based upon the principles of its own organization. Those principles are faith, love, obedience towards God, and mutual love and service towards one another. The Church as a distinct institution is created by these. The measure of the intensity with which they are practised by the Church has always been the measure of the Church's moral influence on society. Not its mere teachings, but its actual rules of combination and co-operation have proved to be the most potent revolutionary forces. The meaning of these rules, their inner logic, has not yet been all read off into the continual flux and change even of its own life. But the humanizing of man's heart, the democratizing of his governments, the socialization of his possessions and all 'values' are the laboured, slow, and never completed effort to translate the ideals or principles which give the Church its own being into the organization of the whole world. And that process is slow and laboured, because the Church, being composed of only partially enlightened human hearts, has found it so hard to understand itself, as well as because the kingdoms of this world' fight for the hostile principles on which they are so widely and firmly established (Mt 2020., Ro 131-7). From this aspect we can see the ethical meaning of the fight of Paul for the universality of the gospel against the Judaizers. It was a movement of the Spirit by which the will of Jesus in relation to the Kingdom, and the moral value of God's deeds in Him, were translated into human action, and into the very organization of the Church. That all races, both sexes, every grade of social life, every quality of mind, should be baptized into Christ and become one body in Him, on the same ethical terms, was necessary to make the practice of righteousness and love, as He taught them (and, in His own work, fulfilled them), possible to the whole human family. The great idea of the brotherhood of man could arise, so as to become a historic force, only in communities which had begun to practise it across all these gulfs which cut the race into unsympathetic groups. The hope of the speedy return of Christ mercifully hid from the imagination of the first Christians the length and breadth and height and depth of the task of the Church as the embodiment and promulgator of the will of God in Christ for the re-organization of society. But they did their work no less effectively. It is not the possession of any theory as to the ideal form of general society, whether politically or economically considered, that has given the Church its power. Where it has attempted to dictate such a form it has always incurred disaster. Its supreme function and power have come from the possession of those deepest principles of control by which the ambitions, passions, appetites, and convictions of men-out of these the forms of government and society grow-are themselves regulated and directed within its own life. These principles of control lie in its continuous sense of responsibility to the living Christ and its continuous dependence upon the manifestation of His will in all the transactions of his earthly life. 7. Eschatology and morals.-The attempt of some recent eschatologists to prove that the teach ing of Jesus contains an Interimsethik-a view of conduct dictated by the expectation of the speedy establishment of the Kingdom of God in which the whole conditions of life would undergo a catastrophic change-deserves a few words. There is no teaching of Jesus which relieves men from the regular duties of life. No reasonable man so interprets the words about hating one's family (Lk 146; cf. Mt 1037), or applies to all men the demand made on the rich ruler (Mk 10a1), or understands that the forbidding of anxiety about clothing and food (Mt 625.) is the bidding of idleness, even for a season. Jesus could not have seen less clearly than Paul did that dishonour lies in the refusal to work (2 Th 36-13). The deep moral and religious principles underlying the commands about the laying up of treasure (Mt 619), the deceitfulness of riches (Mt 1322), are frittered away by the idea that they were based upon an excited view of the imminence of the last day. The teaching about eunuchs (Mt 1910-12) is likewise misunderstood and lowered in its tone if it is taken to mean that men should not marry because the day of heaven is near when there shall be no marrying or giving in marriage. On the contrary, our Lord assumes that men will have money to use for their almsgiving (Mt 512 614 255f., Lk 161-13), while such a passage as Lk 1412. (with every mark of authenticity) assumes a condition of society in which money is still possessed by those whom He would instruct. His deepest teaching about love of enemies, service as the true ground of personal distinction and the basis of divine rewards, the nature of lust, superiority to the joys of mere wealth, are not intelligible if read in relation to an unimaginable state of life follow. ing the great catastrophe, and far surpass the purview of a mere emergency legislation. They presuppose, and are relevant to, a continuation of human nature and of its social foundations, as we have them now. On the other hand, we must take account of the fact that in a certain sense all Christian ethics must be Interimsethik. The pilgrim spirit is the life of the Church. The final facts (rà coxara) are always present to its consciousness. Death and judgment, the transitoriness of this world and the ideal life of complete holiness and blessedness for the race in the unseen universe, the brief life of the individual and his eternal destiny-these facts make all the possessions and relations of society on their earthly side temporary, limited in their positive value, dangerous in their misuse, good only in their subjection to the ends of the soul and the meaning of the Kingdom of God. The antinomy that lay in the consciousness of Jesus, as we have seen, concerning the advent of the Kingdom and His own relations to the events in time is reflected also in His ethical teaching concerning the duties and the spirit of His true disciples; and it has passed into the consciousness of the Church, which also must live as if the Lord were at hand, and yet face the fact of His tarrying. It is hard to see how the matter of the moral evolution of the race could be dealt with otherwise. For that evolution is inconceivable on the assumption either that the earthly life is all and to be pursued for its own sole sake or that the day of the Lord' is so near and so destructive of the present constitution of man and nation that the earthly life has no value at all. The element in the teaching of Jesus which looks like Interimsethik is not contradictory of the doctrine of evolution, as Schweitzer and others suppose, but actually essential to its application in the moral history of man. For the evolution of a rational moral will in humanity is possible only when the reality and imminence of the eternal fills him with a sense of solemn urgency and makes the joys of earth seem by comparison meagre and incomplete, and when, on the other hand, the reality and definiteness of the holy will and the loving mercy of God, apprehended now and here, make the earthly task seem noble. Christ's own character, and even His work of redemption, was evolved from the appeal to His will of these two aspects of the human situation. And His disciples were taught by word and example, and His Church by His spirit, to cherish both the urgency and the calm, the dissatisfaction and the enthusiasm, the eager waiting for a Saviour and the determined devotion to the present opportunity, out of which the loftiest morality has arisen, and through which alone the perfect civilization can be evolved. V. APOSTOLIC CHRISTOLOGY.-i. THE CHRISTOLOGY OF PAUL THE APOSTLE.-I. His religious experience. All attempts to explain Paul's fundamental doctrine of the Person of Christ except through his contact with the primitive Christian community, and through his faith in the risen Christ, have utterly failed. A profound experience was the beginning of his Christology. Not merely in the Acts of the Apostles but in his own letters the evidence on this matter is as direct and conclusive as possible. Many writers from Baur onwards have treated him as primarily a speculative theologian whose opinions about Jesus have the value only of deductions from Jewish Messianism and of attempts to reconcile these with Alexandrian philosophy. But all such views fail to do justice to the central things in the selfrevelation of his own letters. whole soul; and that implies at least a general knowledge of their claims concerning Jesus. (c) The grace of God.-When this man became a believer in the gospel, he attributed the change not to the processes of his own mind, but to the gracious act of God (Gal 1151., Eph 37 etc.). The revealing act was so direct, vivid, personal, objective, that he never after had a moment's doubt that he had seen Jesus even as the other apostles (1 Co 91 158, Gal 116). His heart was changed, and all his letters pulsate with the light and joy and love and power from the very spirit of God, which henceforth filled his consciousness. It is at this point that some writers, like Percy Gardner (The Religious Experience of St. Paul, London, 1911), pass too hastily to a supposed preparation of the Apostle's mind in his pre-Christian days for his distinctive Christology. Gardner not only attributes to him a reasoned Jewish conception of the Messiah, and knows its outlines, but credits him with a conception already illumined and expanded by Alexandrian philosophy (pp. 26, 86). Against this must be set two facts. First, the hints' of Paul's familiarity with Greek speculation before his conversion are obscure and precarious. The elements in his Christology which ally themselves with the Greek world are found in his later Epistles, after he had spent years in direct missionary work and controversy in Asia Minor and Achaia. Scores of modern missionaries can parallel this experience, even as (a) As a Jew. It is abundantly proved, first, late in life as he. Secondly, it is clear that the that his original and deepest interest was in effect of his conversion was to make him receive practical religion. He was exceedingly zealous' Jesus as the primary apostles declared Him. The for the traditional faith of his race (Gal 118.). It differences which developed later between some of would seem that he had given years to the earnest that first group and himself were never concerned study of the Jewish religious system, and that he with the Person of Christ, but with the contrast had given himself with great energy to the practical between the act of faith on which the Church was side (Ph 35.). The intensity of his love for his race founded and the act of circumcision on which the never abated, and proves that, while it was fired Jewish system was based, or with the work of by a deeply contemplative habit of mind, it was no divine grace in Christ as over against the principle less active and practical in the demands which it of legalism. There is no sign that he had any conmade upon his will (2 Co 1121., Ro 31t. 9-11). His troversy with the original group in the field of ardour for the fulfilment of the Law carried him Christology. apparently to all lengths. His contemporaries saw him 'advanced' beyond them all and excessive' in his zeal (Gal 14; cf. Ac 223); they found him 'blameless' (Ph 36 auеμTTOS; cf. Lightfoot, in loc.) in the details of legal observance. According to Ac 26 he could appeal before Agrippa to the reputation which he had won as a Jew for strictness in practical religion. (b) As a foe of Christianity.-His intensely practical nature made him the bitter and most powerful enemy of the gospel. He refers to this period with shame (1 Co 15; cf. Eph 37, 1 Ti 113), in proof of his Jewish orthodoxy (Gaf 113, Ph 36), and as proof also of the power of the free grace of God in Christ. The grounds of that fierce hatred of the Way,' and of Jesus, may be surmised to have included the usual prejudices of others, his fellowpersecutors. He led in the attack on Stephen, who was condemned for teaching the abolition of Temple-worship and the Law (Ac 613), and for blasphemy in ascribing a divine exaltation to Jesus the Crucified as 'Son of Man' (Ac 755.). It would seem that Paul must have felt a peculiar horror at the idea that the crucified and accursed Jesus should have been made the Messiah and Saviour of the world (Gal 313); and he ever after realized that this constituted a peculiar obstacle to all Jews (1 Co 123). It is accepted, therefore, by most scholars who are not exploiting some private method of approach that Paul before his conversion knew what the disciples believed Him to be, and that this was the origin of his hatred of them. To make them curse Jesus was for him a religious act, a service of Jahweh which he must render with his VOL. VII.-34 2. Three stages in his Christology.-It was natural and inevitable that a mind so keen and powerful should seek to interpret the Person and Work of Jesus, and on this three distinct strata of thought are discernible in his letters. (a) Data from earlier believers.-He received from the primitive Church, as confirmed in his own experience, the fact that Jesus must be called Messiah (Christ), Son of God, and Lord (Kúpios). Of course these are not mere titles of honour. They are so closely descriptive of His very being and of His functions in the salvation of men that they are used by Paul as proper names. Moreover, as proper names they are applied to that one historical Person who is known to him as Jesus, of whom Peter, standing up with the eleven, spoke in Jerusalem, and who is described in every paragraph of the Synoptic Gospels. Hence Paul is free to use these terms, whatever status he is thinking of. It was Christ' who existed eternally in the nature of God (Ph 26); it was 'Christ' who was crucified (1 Co 117. 24, Gal 220), who died for our sins (1 Co 153), who was raised from the dead (1 Co 1512), who is exalted and ever liveth (Ph 211, Ro 834), who is the final judge (2 Co 510). It was the Son of God' who was sent forth (Gal 4, Ro 83), who gave Himself up (Gal 220), whose nature as Son was definitely marked out in the Resurrection (Ro 14), in whom the universe has its origin, its order, and its meaning (Col 116-18). It was the Lord' whom men must see and confess in Jesus (Ro 109), who was betrayed (1 Co 1123), who is received as the Spirit (2 Co 3171), who controls human experience (2 Co 128.). To confess Him as Lord absolutely is not, like the worship of heathen gods, to detract from, but, on the contrary, it is to manifest and magnify, the very glory of God (Ph 211). And this Lordship extends over the created universe (Ro 149, Ph 21). All three original titles are brought together by Paul into one full-hearted and glorious description of this Person when he says: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ' (2 Co 13, Eph 13. 17). (b) Two elements from Jewish thought.-At least two new elements appear in the Apostle's thought which indicate that he found himself compelled to consider the relations of Christ, the Redeemer from man's racial sin and the Lord of man's destiny, to mankind and to God respectively. (a) The man from heaven.-In two passages of great difficulty Paul draws a parallel between the relation of Adam to the race and that of Christ. In Ro 512. he discusses the fact that sin and death entered into history through Adam, whereas righteousness and life have entered and shall yet 'reign' through Christ. In 1 Co 1521-23. 45-49 a like comparison appears again, without direct reference to the fact of sin, in presence, however, of the facts of death and resurrection. Some theologians have made much of these passages. (The fullest discussion in English is that of David Somerville, St. Paul's Conception of Christ, Edinburgh, 1897.) It is asserted that Paul conceived of Christ primarily and definitely as 'the heavenly man,' 'the archetype of humanity,' and that we must connect with this, as his fundamental conception, the discussion of His redemptive work, His mystical union with humanity in the Church, and even His cosmic relations. There is some exaggeration here, though there can be no doubt that the Apostle's mind did strive to institute a certain parallelism between the 'natural' and the 'spiritual' heads of the race. For him the moral dualism in human (Christian) experience (Ro 512. 77.) is fully explained only when a double 'law' operating in human life is related with two separate origins, viz. Adam and 'the one man, Jesus Christ,' and with two separate destinies, viz. death and eternal life. And Christ is called the last Adam' because 'at his coming' (1 Co 1528. 45. 47) the new and final order of humanity will be established, in which righteousness shall reign (Ro 519), and whose members shall be united with Christ as the lifemaking spirit,' and bear in their own perfected nature the image of Him in His Resurrection glory. So far as Paul refers in these passages to Christ as • head of a new race, his mind is moving in the eschatological field. The Man from heaven' (1 Co 1547) is not the pre-incarnate Logos (the opposite view is taken by J. Weiss, Christus, p. 37 ff.), but Jesus Christ, in whom at His coming all shall be made alive (v.22; cf. Ro 517) and receive 'the victory' (v.57). The recognition of the eschatological atmosphere in these passages undermines much of the speculation regarding the central, organizing value of the heavenly Man' conception, and it gives more probability to the thought that Paul is here indebted to the title 'Son of Man' or 'the Man' as Jesus used it at His trial, and has simply (some would say, more correctly) translated it into the man from heaven' (cf. Jn 313). It is less likely that reflexion upon the origin of sin (Ro 5) led to the idea of the Spiritual Man who is to found the new order at His appearing (1 Co 15) than that reflexion upon the latter idea, as given to him in the disciples' accounts of Jesus and His words, led him to carry the parallel back to the former. J. Weiss in his Christus, p. 42 f., traces Paul's conception to the influence of Ps 8, Dn 713, and the 'Similitudes' of Enoch without the mediation of the words of Jesus. (8) Relation to the Spirit of God.-In the mind of Paul the supreme term for Christ is 'Son of God,' and the greatest and most complete_name which he can give to God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.' But the relation of Christ to God is also stated in a very different way, through the use of the term 'Spirit.' Paul identifies this Spirit as an eternal element of the very being or life of God Himself (1 Co 210.), and as the form under which God enters and operates in the heart of man. And the same Spirit is also spoken of in a distinctive way, as the Spirit of Christ. It is going too far perhaps to say with some that the Spirit is the essence or basis of His personality; even Ro 14 (cf. 1 Co 1545) will hardly carry us so far. The famous passage in 2 Co 31. does indeed seem to carry the identification through to the end -The Lord is the Spirit,' 'even as from the Lord the Spirit.' But this must be compared with the elaborate interchange of names in Ro 81-11, where this identification is deliberately avoided. And yet a form of unity is even there implied which is supra-temporal. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ, and the experienced presence of the Spirit in the believing man is at once the presence of God and of Christ. The two main practical aspects of this conception for Paul are these: and qualities of Christ Himself, especially sonship, holiness, (a) The Holy Spirit reproduces in men the divine relations and victory over death. The love of God for His Son, which is presupposed as the fountainhead of all grace (Col 113), is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Ro 55), and awakens in us the sense of divine sonship which He sets forth in divine majesty (Ro 81417). It is the spirit of life in Christ Jesus that gives men freedom (Ro 812), and becomes the principle or source of their life (vv.5.9; cf. Eph 316.) and consummates Resurrection of Christ (Ro 811. 17; cf. Ph 321). The Holy Spirit is His work by reproducing in them the supreme wonder of the then for the mind of Paul that principle or energy whose power in the Christian community has opened a new order of human experience (Gal 32-5). Its operation is viewed by the Apostle in the most concrete and vivid way as a living force manifested in many forms, in xapíopara of many kinds (1 Co 121-11). (b) Here the second practical aspect appears. For the Holy but as the Spirit of Jesus Christ, becomes available as a true Spirit, when viewed, not as a formless and unknown energy, test of the soundness of those varied and sometimes dangerous workings which manifested themselves so profusely in the enthusiastic life of those days, as well as in corresponding Spirit of God (Gal 522) is the reproduction in men of the moral crises in other days down to our own. The true fruit of the qualities of Christ. All spiritual 'gifts' must be tested by the attitude of those who possess them towards Jesus (1 Co 123) and subjection of life to His Lordship. It is the Spirit which inhered in His character, as the 'Spirit of holiness and as the miraculous energy through which He was raised from the dead, for which His disciples must pray and hope. As He cannot be fully conceived apart from the Spirit, so the Spirit cannot be hearts. On the other hand, we must remember, this is the experienced by us except as the manifestation of Him in our 'Spirit of God' no less truly essential henceforth to our conception of the Father than to that of the Son. Inherent in the very 24. 10. 11, Ro 811. 27), He is yet spoken of as having a distinction, being of God, organ of the divine intelligence and power (1 Co or form of reality, which must not be confused with or made merely subjective to the reality of the Father and of the Son. Inherent in the life of God and of Christ, the Spirit is yet a coordinate name with these, and must be specially named in a full statement of the God in whom Christians believe and whom they worship (2 Co 1814). (y) Anticipations of this doctrine.-Once more we must be careful, while allowing for the origin ality and power of the Apostle's mind, to recognize that in this magnificent doctrine he bases himself upon the common experience of the Christian community. For the Holy Spirit is one of the supreme revelations of Christianity. All earlier references to that divine power, even in the OT, fall far short of the sudden, definite, dazzling conception which opens upon us in the NT, where the inbreaking of the divine life upon the human, as an abiding presence and experienced energy, is attributed by all writers to the Spirit of God. As Paul did not invent the idea of the Spirit of God, so also he was not the first to connect it with the Person of Christ. The Fourth Gospel explicitly traces the main features of the Pauline doctrine to the conscious ness of Jesus (Jn 182. 14-16), who promised this supreme gift to His Church (cf. 2022).' Even in the Synoptics we find that: (a) the Holy Spirit is described in the accounts of the Virgin Birth as the energy which caused the new being to live in the womb of His mother (Mt 118 20, Lk 185); (b) John the Baptist named the gift of the Spirit as a distinctive feature of the Messianic day (Mk 18, Mt 311, Lk 316; cf. Jn 133); (c) the four Gospels also name the baptism of Jesus as the hour of the coming upon Him of the Holy Spirit, for His anointing to the active work of Messiahship (Mk 110, Mt 316, Lk 322, Jn 132f.; cf. Mt 1218, Lk 418); (d) it is asserted in these Synoptic passages that He went to the desert to face His trial in the power of the Spirit; (e) Jesus claims that He does His works of wonder by the Spirit of God (Mt 1228 31f., Mk 328-30); (f) He asserts that His disciples will receive the Holy Spirit for their service of Him (Mk 181, Mt 1020; cf. Lk 1113). , quality or dignity to the glory of Christ, but to The extraordinary fullness of reference to the presence and workings of the Spirit in the book of Acts can only be accounted for ultimately through some communal experience which was, in their minds, at once a manifestation of God's presence and power and also connected directly with Jesus and their past experience of Him. That whole situation is needed to explain the significant fact that Paul everywhere assumes that his readers must understand his references to the Spirit in relation to Christ and to the Church life. Here as throughout His central teachings, even as to what he calls my gospel,' he appeals steadily and even passionately, not to his speculative presuppositions as a theologian, but to the real and characteristic experience of every Christian community. (c) The influence of Greek thought. There is yet another range of Pauline thought concerning Christ, that, namely, which comes to expression in Colossians and Ephesians. There are evidences in nearly all his Epistles that Paul in his mission work strove to make sympathetic contact with the modes of thought peculiar to the people whom he taught (cf. Ac 1716-84, and W. Ramsay, Galatians, London, 1899). Much controversy has been waged Lest the simplicity of faith should seem to have in recent years as to the extent and content of been betrayed in this use of philosophical catehis indebtedness as a theologian to the mystery-gories (are they not after all very human categories, religions, the Gnostic philosophy, and even the Stoic the stuff of 'common sense,' and inherent in all philosophy, which were popular at the great centres rational life?), the Apostle keeps the reader's mind where his work lay. It has not been proved that close to the fact that he is describing-the functions anything essentially new was added to his Chris- of an actual personal being. He probably avoided tology from any of these sources. But it has become the use of the term Logos, for the reason that the very clear that he did set himself to make Christ conceptions named above are not found in that intelligible to minds saturated with Gnostic inter- philosophy alone, though brought to exceptional pretations of life and attractive to souls absorbed clarity there. They are embedded even in the in practices of religious fervour. As it is ridiculous OT, as in Pr 8, which cannot have been absent to argue from Ph 411f. (μeμúŋuai) that he had person- from his mind. He may also have instinctively ally passed through a form of mystic initiation or avoided the obvious accusation, now levelled at that his frequent use of the word vorýpov confirms him by some modern scholars, that he derived his this notion, so it is an exaggeration to say that he Christology primarily from the Logos speculations learned to think of the cosmic Christ' from the and clothed with them the 'pure-human' figure Philonic doctrine of the Logos or some Asiatic of Jesus, hiding His winsome Self in a cloud of reflexion of it. That he was compelled, as a abstractions. On the contrary, he takes extramissionary is often compelled nowadays, to relate ordinary pains in this very passage to avoid this the doctrine of Christ to the intellectual concepts reproach. He is dealing from first to last with of his field of labour, and that this led to the use a personal being, who has appeared in history, who of new terminologies, is obvious. But it is sig- has shed His blood, in the body of His flesh (vv. 20. 22), nificant that, while the term 'Logos' occurs in the been raised from the dead (v.18), drawn the Church. 'Pauline' Epistles about eighty times and occasion- by His living personal force (vv.17. 21) under His ally in meanings verging on the technical philo- control. This is not abstract idealism of the sophical use of it, there is not one occasion when he Philonic or the Hegelian type. It is 'personal does use it in the Philonic sense. In the critical idealism' which assumes that personal, conscious passage of this kind (Col. 115-20) he undoubtedly will is the ultimate seat of reality, fountain of addresses men who have cherished some phase of history, secret of destiny. what is generally known as the Logos doctrine. And the result is a setting forth of the eternal being and the pre-eminence of Christ which is more elaborate philosophically than we find in any other place, except Jn 11. and He 114. But the exposition is intended deliberately to exclude all comparison of Christ with other angelic beings, or heavenly powers (v.1), which Gnostic philosophers described as emanations from the absolute and controllers of the world. He does not borrow their categories to add some new and unthought of ii. CHRISTOLOGY IN JOHN AND THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.-It is now generally agreed that the Christology of the Johannine writings and of the Epistle to the Hebrews is in substance identical with that which we have found in the Pauline Epistles. 1. Characteristics common to both.-In the two great passages Jn 11. and He 11-4 a terminology is employed which is drawn from an atmosphere charged with the Logos doctrine. It must, however, be carefully noted that these writers move " |